“Familiarity with streets of crowded traffic deadens the senses to the
perception of their actual condition. Strangers coming from the country
frequently describe the streets of London as smelling of dung like a
stable-yard.”
Such is one of the statements in a Report submitted to Parliament, and
there is no reason to doubt the fact. Every English visitor to a French
city, for instance, must have detected street-odours of which the
inhabitants were utterly unconscious. In a work which between 20 and
30 years ago was deservedly popular, Mathews’s “Diary of an Invalid,”
it is mentioned that an English lady complaining of the villanous
rankness of the air in the first French town she entered--Calais, if I
remember rightly--received the comfortable assurance, “It is the smell
of the Continent, ma’am.” Even in Cologne itself, the “most stinking
city of Europe,” as it has been termed, the citizens are insensible
to the foul airs of their streets, and yet possess great skill in
manufacturing perfumed and distilled waters for the toilet, pluming
themselves on the delicacy and discrimination of their nasal organs.
What we perceive in other cities, as strangers, those who visit London
detect in our streets--that they smell of dung like stable-yards. It
is idle for London denizens, because they are unconscious of the fact,
to deny the existence of any such effluvia. I have met with nightmen
who have told me that there was “nothing particular” in the smell of
the cesspools they were emptying; they “hardly perceived it.” One man
said, “Why, it’s like the sort of stuff I’ve smelt in them ladies’
smelling-bottles.” An eminent tallow-melter said, in the course of his
evidence before Parliament during a sanitary inquiry, that the smell
from the tallow-melting on his premises was not only healthful and
reviving--for invalids came to inhale it--but agreeable. I mention
these facts to meet the scepticism which the official assertion as
to the stable-like odour of the streets may, perhaps, provoke. When,
however, I state the _quantity_ of horse-dung and “cattle-droppings”
voided in the streets, all incredulity, I doubt not, will be removed.
“It has been ascertained,” says the Report of the National
Philanthropic Association, “that four-fifths of the street-dirt consist
of horse and cattle-droppings.”
Let us, therefore, endeavour to arrive at definite notions as to the
absolute quantity of this element of street-dirt.
And, first, as to the number of cattle and horses traversing the
streets of London.
In the course of an inquiry in November, 1850, into Smithfield-market,
I adduced the following results as to the number of cattle entering the
metropolis, deriving the information from the experience of Mr. Deputy
Hicks, confirmed by returns to Parliament, by the amount of tolls, and
further ratified by the opinion of some of the most experienced “live
salesmen” and “dead salesmen” (sellers on commission of live and dead
cattle), whose assistance I had the pleasure of obtaining.
The return is of the stock _annually_ sold in Smithfield-market, and
includes not only English but foreign beasts, sheep, and calves; the
latter averaging weekly in 1848 (the latest return then published),
beasts, 590; sheep, 2478; and calves, 248.
224,000 horned cattle.
1,550,000 sheep.
27,300 calves.
40,000 pigs.
---------
Total 1,841,300.
I may remark that this is not a criterion of the consumption of animal
food in the metropolis, for there are, besides the above, the daily
supplies from the country to the “dead salesmen.” The preceding return,
however, is sufficient for my present purpose, which is to show the
quantity of cattle manure “dropped” in London.
The number of cattle entering the metropolis, then, are 1,841,300 per
annum.
The number of horses daily traversing the metropolis has been already
set forth. By a return obtained by Mr. Charles Cochrane from the Stamp
and Tax Office, we have seen that there are altogether
In London and Westminster, of private
carriage, job, and cart horses 10,022
Cab horses 5,692
Omnibus horses 5,500
Horses daily coming to metropolis 3,000
------
Total number of horses daily in London 24,214
The total here given includes the returns of horses which were either
taxed or the property of those who employ them in hackney-carriages
in the metropolis. But the whole of these 24,214 horses are not at
work in the streets every day. Perhaps it might be an approximation to
the truth, if we reckoned five-sixths of the horses as being worked
regularly in the public thoroughfares; so that we arrive at the
conclusion that 20,000 horses are daily worked in the metropolis; and
hence we have an aggregate of 7,300,000 horses traversing the streets
of London in the twelvemonth. The beasts, sheep, calves, and pigs
driven and conveyed to and from Smithfield are, we have seen, 1,841,300
in number. These, added together, make up a total of 9,141,300 animals
appearing annually in the London thoroughfares. The circumstance of
Smithfield cattle-market being held but twice a week in no way detracts
from the amount here given; for as the gross number of individual
cattle coming to that market in the course of the year is given, each
animal is estimated as appearing only once in the metropolis.
The next point for consideration is--what is the quantity of dung
dropped by each of the above animals while in the public thoroughfares?
Concerning the quantity of excretions passed by a horse in the
course of 24 hours there have been some valuable experiments made by
philosophers whose names alone are a sufficient guarantee for the
accuracy of their researches.
The following Table from Boussingault’s experiments is copied from the
“Annales de Chimie et de Physique,” t. lxxi.