| £ | s. | d. | |
| Wages to working scavengers (as before shown) | 9,443 | 0 | 0 |
| Wages to 48 bargemen, engaged in unloading the vessels with street-dirt, 4 men to each of 12 wharfs, at 16s. weekly wage | 1,996 | 0 | 0 |
| Keep of 300 horses (26l. each) | 7,800 | 0 | 0 |
| Wear and tear (say 15 per cent. on capital) | 2,250 | 0 | 0 |
| Rent of 20 wharfs and yards (average 100l. each) | 2,000 | 0 | 0 |
| Interest on 15,000l. capital, at 10 per cent. | 1,500 | 0 | 0 |
| £24,989 | 0 | 0 |
I have endeavoured in this estimate to confine myself, as much as possible, to the separate subject of scavengery, but it must be borne in mind that as the large contractors are dustmen as well as scavengers, the great charges for rent and barges cannot be considered as incurred solely on account of the street-dirt trade. Including, then, the payments from parishes, the account will stand thus:—
Yearly Receipts of Master Scavengers.
| From Parishes | £9,450 |
| From Manure, &c. | 19,000 |
| Total Income | £28,450 |
| Deduct yearly Expenditure | 25,000 |
| Profit | £3,450 |
This gives a profit of nearly 182l. to each contractor, if equally apportioned, or a little more than 41l. on each contract for street-scavenging alone, and a profit no doubt affected by circumstances which cannot very well be reduced to figures. The profit may appear small, but it should be remembered that it is independent of the profits on the dust.
Of the Contractors’ (or Employers’) Premises, &c.
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.