“The Oath of Scavagers, or Scavengers, of the Ward.
“Ye shal swear, That ye shal wel and diligently oversee that the pavements in every Ward be wel and rightfully repaired, and not haunsed to the noyaunce of the neighbours; and that the Ways, Streets, and Lanes, be kept clean from Donge and other Filth, for the Honesty of the City. And that all the Chimneys, Redosses, and Furnaces, be made of Stone for Defence of Fire. And if ye know any such ye shall shew it to the Alderman, that he may make due Redress therefore. And this ye shall not lene. So help you God.”[14]
To aid the scavengers in their execution of the duties of the office, the following among others were the injunctions of the civic law. They indicate the former state of the streets of London better than any description. A “Goung (or dung) fermour” appears to be a nightman, a dung-carrier or bearer, the servant of the master or ward scavenger.
“No Goungfermour shall spill any ordure in the Street, under pain of Thirteen Shillings and Four Pence.
“No Goungfermour shall carry any ordure till after nine of the clock in the Night, under pain of Thirteen Shillings and Four Pence. No man shall cast any urine boles, or ordure boles, into the Streets by Day or Night, afore the Hour of nine in the Night. And also he shall not cast it out, but bring it down and lay it in the Canel, under Pain of Three Shillings and Four Pence. And if he do so cast it upon any Person’s Head, the Person to have a lawful Recompense, if he have hurt thereby.
“No man shall bury any Dung, or Goung, within the Liberties of this City, under Pain of Forty Shillings.”
I will not dwell on the state of things which caused such enactments to be necessary, or on the barbarism of the law which ordered a lawful recompense to any person assailed in the manner intimated, only when he had “hurt thereby.”
These laws were for the government of the city, where a body of scavengers was sometimes called a “street-ward.” Until about the reign of Charles II., however, to legislate concerning such matters for the city was to legislate for the metropolis, as Southwark was then more or less under the city jurisdiction, and the houses of the nobility on the north bank of the Thames (the Strand), would hardly require the services of a public scavenger.
As new parishes or districts became populous, and established outside the city boundaries, the authorities seem to have regulated the public scavengery after the fashion of the city; but the whole, in every respect of cleanliness, propriety, regularity, or celerity, was most grievously defective.
Some time about the middle of the last century, the scavengers were considered and pronounced by the administrators or explainers of municipal law, to be “two officers chosen yearly in each parish in London and the suburbs, by the constables, churchwardens, and other inhabitants,” and their business was declared to be, that they should “hire persons called ‘rakers,’ with carts to clean the streets, and carry away the dirt and filth thereof, under a penalty of 40s.”