The usage of waste was quite fascinating, “as towns grew, so did urban- rural manure trade” (Angus, pg. 32).  This was how many people created sources of income, they would clean out cesspools for a fee, and then later trade to nearby farmers. However, as cities began to grow, such as Cities like London with a million or more people at the time, many farmers could not take on the large amounts of waste that the city was producing.(Angus, Pg. 33). As water became more mainstream, there was a tendency to overflow cesspools which would cause “…many homeowners and builders to connect household drains to public sewers that were supposed to carry only rainwater.” (Angus, PG. 36) or many would dispose of such waste into the street gutters (Geels, Pg.1073).  In addition to public cesspools, “Middle and upper class families had in-house privies, where excrements fell down a tube into privy vaults. Cesspools and privy vaults were cleaned by private contractors” (Geels, Pg. 1073). It wasn’t until 1851 when public health hygiene and social order was addressed. This could be majorly contributed to the fact of the epidemics of cholera that struck in the 1830’s (Geels, Pg 1073).  It wasn’t until 1842, when Chadwick  proposed a plan to streamline manure to farmers with a sewer system that would allow for London to charge for the manure while having it be transported by this new system (Angus, Pg. 41).

Due to the lack of sanitation that cesspools and lack of a sewer system, many people living in poverty were likely to fall ill more frequently. In 1842, Edwin Chadwick wrote a report The Sanitary Condition of the Laboring Population, this highlighted the conditions in which poorer neighborhoods as well as health conditions they may face as well. (Angus, Pg. 39). Chadwick research led him to believe that the illness was not caused by physical contact, but “illness was caused by miasma, the foul air emitted by rotting organic matter” (Angus, Pg. 40). He proposed the following solutions, every dwelling has a water closet and is able to revive freshwater and take waste away from the city itself (Angus, Pg. 41). However, this proposal was passed on and in 1847, 30,000 people were killed due to a typhus epidemic. It wasn’t until the 1850’s weather water closets and houses with running water were in homes (Angus, Pg. 50).

Angus, Ian. Cesspols, Sewage, and Social Murder: Environmental Crisis and Metabolic Rift in Nineteenth-Century London. 

Geels, Frank W. The Hygenic Transition from Cesspools to Sewer Systems  (1840-1930): The Dynamics of Regime Transformation

Unearthing the Health of Victorian London. Unearthing the health of Victorian London | Wellcome Library

Jane Austen’s World: 1931 image of Woman dumping waste water down the sewer.