At page 171 of the present volume I have described one of the yards
devoted to the trade in house-dust, and I have little to say in
addition regarding the premises of the contracting or employing
scavengers. They are the same places, and the industrious pursuits
carried on there, and the division and subdivision of labour, relate
far more to the dustmen’s department than to the scavengers’. When the
produce of the sweeping of the streets has been thrown into the cart,
it is so far ready for use that it has not to be sifted or prepared, as
has the house-dust, for the formation of brieze, &c., the “mac” being
sifted by the purchaser.
These yards or wharfs are far less numerous and better conducted now
than they were ten years ago. They are at present fast disappearing
from the banks of the Thames (there is, however, one still at
Whitefriars and one at Milbank). They are chiefly to be found on the
banks of the canals. Some of the principal wharfs near Maiden-lane, St.
Pancras, are to be found among unpaven, or ill-paved, or imperfectly
macadamized roads, along which run rows of what were once evidently
pleasant suburban cottages, with their green porches and their trained
woodbine, clematis, jasmine, or monthly roses; these tenements,
however, are now occupied chiefly by the labourers at the adjacent
stone, coal, lime, timber, dust, and general wharfs. Some of the
cottages still presented, on my visits, a blooming display of dahlias
and other autumnal flowers; and in one corner of a very large and very
black-looking dust-yard, in which rose a huge mound of dirt, was the
cottage residence of the man who remained in charge of the wharf all
night, and whose comfortable-looking abode was embedded in flowers,
blooming luxuriantly. The gay-tinted holly-hocks and dahlias are in
striking contrast with the dinginess of the dust-yards, while the canal
flows along, dark, sluggish, and muddy, as if to be in keeping with the
wharf it washes.
The dust-yards must not be confounded with the “night-yards,” or the
places where the contents of the cess-pools are deposited, places
which, since the passing of the Sanatory Act, are rapidly disappearing.
Upon entering a dust-yard there is generally found a heavy oppressive
sort of atmosphere, more especially in wet or damp weather. This is
owing to the tendency of charcoal to absorb gases, and to part with
them on being saturated with moisture. The cinder-heaps of the several
dust-yards, with their million pores, are so many huge gasometers
retaining all the offensive gases arising from the putrefying organic
matters which usually accompany them, and parting with such gases
immediately on a fall of rain. It would be a curious calculation
to estimate the quantity of deleterious gas thus poured into the
atmosphere after a slight shower.
The question has been raised as to the propriety of devoting some
special locality to the purposes of dust-yards, and it is certainly a
question deserving public attention.
The chief disposal of the street manure is from barges, sent by the
Thames or along the canals, and sold to farmers and gardeners. In the
larger wharfs, and in those considered removed from the imputation of
“scurfdom,” six men, and often but four, are employed to load a barge
which contains from 30 to 40 tons. In such cases the dust-yard and the
wharf are one and the same place. The contents of these barges are
mixed, about one-fourth being “mac,” the rest street-mud and dung.
This admixture, on board the vessel, is called by the bargemen and the
contractors’ servants at the wharfs Leicester (properly Læsta, a load).
We have the same term at the end of our word bal-_last_.
I am assured by a wharfinger, who has every means of forming a correct
judgment, it may be estimated that there are dispatched from the
contractors’ wharfs twelve barges daily, freighted with street-manure.
This is independent of the house-dust barged to the country
brick-fields. The weight of the cargo of a barge of manure is about
40 tons; 36 tons being a low average. This gives 3744 barge-loads, or
132,784 tons, or loads, yearly; for it must be recollected that the
dirt gathered by pauper labour is dispatched from the contractors’
yards or wharfs, as well as that collected by the immediate servants
of the contractors. The price per barge-load at the canal, basin, or
wharf, in the country parts where agriculture flourishes, is from 5_l._
to 6_l._, making a total of 20,594_l._ The difference of that sum, and
the total given in the table (21,147_l._) may be accounted for on the
supposition that the remainder is sold in the yards and carted away
thence. The slop and valueless dirt is not included in this calculation.