The noun Scavenger is said by lexicographers to be derived from the German schaben, to shave or scrape, “applied to those who scrape and clear away the filth from public streets or other places.” The more direct derivation, however, is from the Danish verb skaver, the Saxon equivalent of which is sceafan, whence the English shave. Formerly the word was written Scavager, and meant simply one who was engaged in removing the Scrapeage or Rakeage (the working men, it will be seen, were termed also “rakers”) from the surface of the streets. Hence it would appear that there is no authority for the verb to scavenge, which has lately come into use. The term from which the personal substantive is directly made, is scavage, a word formed from the verb in the same manner as sewage and rubbage (now fashionably corrupted into rubbish), and meaning the refuse which is or should be scraped away from the roads. The Latin equivalent from the Danish verb skave, is scabere.
I believe that the first mention of a scavenger in our earlier classical literature, is by Bishop Hall, one of the lights of the Reformation, in one of his “Satires.”
“To see the Pope’s blacke knight, a cloaked frere,
Sweating in the channel like a scavengere.”
Many similar passages from the old poets and dramatists might be adduced, but I will content myself with one from the “Martial Maid” of Beaumont and Fletcher, as bearing immediately on the topic I have to discuss:—
“Do I not know thee for the alguazier,
Whose dunghil all the parish scavengers
Could never rid.”
Johnson defines a scavenger to be “a petty magistrate, whose province is to keep the streets clean;” and in the earlier times, certainly the scavenger was an officer to whom a certain authority was deputed, as to beadles and others.
One or two of these officials were appointed, according to the municipal or by-laws of the City of London, not to each parish, but to each ward. Of course, in the good old days, nothing could be done unless under “the sanction of an oath,” and the scavengers were sworn accordingly on the Gospel, the following being the form as given in the black letter of the laws relating to the city in the time of Henry VIII.