Rubbish and Resource – Waste in 18th Century London

Neumann was amazed: “Disposable products – that didn’t fit with my conceptions of waste management during the early modern period.” In the archives she found documentation of an early modern discussion that also felt oddly contemporary. It concerned “sweepings” or unsaleable commodities. “Under customary law,” she explains, “dockworkers could appropriate tea or sugar that had gotten dirty or wet in transit. But in the mid-eighteenth century you had the problem that these remainders were accruing to the point where they were then resold in a kind of shadow economy. So merchants started systematically destroying these leftovers. That of course reminds me of today’s discussions about dumpster diving. I found that sensational – there was the same debate in the eighteenth century!”

It soon became clear to Neumann that her research project would not only be about waste and its management but about questioning our often idealized images of the past. “We have this notion that everything used to be better, that it wasn’t a throwaway society and everything was recycled, that we took a wrong turn at some point and now have to get back to that earlier state. But in looking at the past we see it’s more complicated than that.” So the history that Neumann is writing will focus on the Janus-faced nature of waste – as both refuse and a resource. 

“Wherever people live together, waste accumulates,” says Neumann: ashes from the hearth, offal and other kitchen waste, fecal matter, broken objects that are no longer usable or wanted. Especially in cities, lots of waste accumulates in a confined space, and of course it can’t just lie around stinking and obstructing traffic. That’s as true today as it was in the early modern period. In London, by the mid-seventeenth century, there was already a weekly pick-up of household garbage. 

Twice a week the dustman paid a visit, says Neumann, ringing his bell and the servant girl bringing a crate or basket filled with ashes out to him. Dustmen were wage laborers who worked for a raker, a kind of waste-disposal contractor who applied to the city for concessions to collect the household refuse. Londoners paid a tax for this service – and they demanded their money’s worth. If a dustman missed his rounds then there was a barrage of complaints, which Neumann uncovered in the archives: “People took rather accurate notes: ‘No ashes collected for three weeks!’”

Additionally, there were numerous “recycling specialists” who collected certain kinds of refuse and turned it to account; ragpickers bought or gathered scraps of cloth that were needed for paper production; and responsible for the latrines – into which “non-recyclable waste” was often thrown – were the nightmen who came by that name because they performed their duties after dark to spare people the stench. “One of them would climb down into a pit and shovel everything out,” details Neumann. “It was execrable work and dangerous due to the gases.” Apart from municipal trash disposal and the specialized collectors, there were plenty of second-hand markets where used items could be sold.

What some wanted to discard was a valuable resource for others. The ash was brought to landfills and sold to brickworks where it was mixed with clay. The city was growing, it needed bricks, and ash was in such demand that ash-thieves disguised as dustmen – so-called flying dustmen – collected it illegally. “This clearly shows that certain waste materials like ash were so lucrative that a variety of players vied for it,” says Neumann. “There was also discussion as to whether human excrement might be used as fertilizer. But it’s hard to tell whether that was actually effected.”

Because of such practices, the early modern period is often recruited as an exemplary model of how recycling should be done. Neumann thinks this is going too far: “It forces a complex subject into the Procrustean bed of a modern perspective.” She prefers to focus on the values, norms and knowledge systems that shaped the treatment of waste as both refuse and a resource – and on those people who performed the labor. 

“Of course a lot was recycled,” she confirms, “but that was only possible because many people sorted and processed waste materials for a starvation wage and under miserable conditions. And these were typically not the people who benefited from recycling. A history of recycling in the early modern period is also a history of social inequality and poverty, so hardly a model for the present.

That’s also true for London. But not only. “Waste-disposal contractors such as the rakers and nightmen could achieve a modest prosperity through garbage,” says Neumann. “One would think that these men were part of the underclass, but they were more middle class, not wealthy but owning a certain amount of property. They weren’t social outcasts – they even aggressively advertised their services.” Recycling didn’t happen because people wanted to be nice to the environment; rather, trash was in demand and you could earn your living with it.

The values that shaped the consumption and management of refuse and resources in the early modern period were influenced by a Christian ethic of thrift and moderation. “You were supposed to be frugal and not wasteful, while also living in accordance with your status and social rank. The mending and darning of textiles was considered a good thing, many women acquired these skills, but there was a difference between mending and going about in rags. One had to know the difference,” explains Neumann, who in fact sees a more interesting connection to the present day in this value system than in recycling. “Today we ask ourselves what our own responsibilities are in a consumer society. What do we buy and how much? Then as now it isn’t a question of all or nothing, black or white, but shades of gray.”

Moreover, consumer cultures underwent a change in the eighteenth century: people had more possessions – such as ceramics and textiles – which became finer due to new forms of production and hence more fragile and potentially less durable. “Any history of waste in eighteenth-century London is just as much a history of maidservants carrying ashes out to the dustman’s cart as it is a history of waste entrepreneurs making a profit from recycling,” says Neumann. “It is a history of waste avoidance but also of broken teacups. Recycling was certainly an important part of early modern waste management, but it’s ultimately just a sole perspective on waste.”

Asking how waste is handled can disclose much about a city – which is also why Franziska Neumann finds the subject so stimulating: “There are so many interesting aspects and phenomena, the topic is like a prism or magnifying glass held up to urban society. You learn about the organization of households, about municipal responsibilities, infrastructure, the social tectonics of a city.” In criminal records, for instance, she found true-life accounts of dustmen who came into houses and then nicked certain objects when the servant girl stepped out to fetch them a beer. 

And Neumann repeatedly finds her topic resonating with students, colleagues and even those from other disciplines: “I’m at a technical university and scholars from other departments are more than happy to engage me on the subject of waste. I’ve never had someone wrinkle their nose – instead they immediately say: Of course, it’s an important topic!” She has had a similar experience at the Wissenschaftskolleg. “The exchange with other Fellows is exciting, they all have a strong desire to understand what the others are working on. I’m certain that I’ll leave here with a wealth of new ideas for my book.”

And in her book you will vainly search for early modern solutions to the current problems of our throwaway society. “But to say that everything back then was completely different and has no bearing on the present is also wrong,” she asserts. “In history we don’t find any directives for action today, but looking at the early modern age helps to enrich current debates with historical depth. This historical perspective allows for a reflective distance and in the best case can help to challenge our modern assumptions.”