[825] This contract is inserted in Perrot, Dictionnaire de Voierie, p. 305. In 1445 six carts were employed at Dijon in cleaning the streets.
[826] Histoire de la Ville de Paris, par Sauval, vol. ii. p. 640.
[827] De la Mare, iv. p. 253. Perrot, p. 307.
[828] Letters from Scotland, 1760, 2 vols. 8vo. [At this period, when the luxury of water-closets was unknown, it was a custom for men to perambulate the streets of Edinburgh, carrying conveniences (pails) suspended from a yoke on their shoulders, enveloped by cloaks sufficiently large to cover both their apparatus and customers, crying, “Wha wants me, for a bawbee?” It has since been used against the Edinburgh people as a joke or satire upon an ancient custom. By way of a set-off, however, it may be observed that at the present day there is a water-closet in almost every house in Edinburgh.]
[829] Cook’s First Voyage, 4to, vol. ii. p. 281.
[830] Whoever wishes to enter deeper into the history of this family convenience, certainly an object of police, the improvement of which the Academy of Sciences at Paris did not think below its notice, may consult the following work, Mém. de l’Acad. des Sciences, Inscriptions, Belles Lettres, Beaux Arts, etc. nouvellement établie à Troyes en Champagne. A Troyes et Paris 1756. The author, who by this piece of ridicule wished, perhaps, to avenge himself of some academy which did not admit him as a member, has collected from the Greek and Latin writers abundance of dirty passages respecting this question: “Si l’usage de chier en plein air étoit universel chez les anciens peuples.” He proves from a passage of Aristophanes, Ecclesiaz. ver. 1050, that the Greeks had privies in their houses.
[831] De la Mare, i. p. 568, and iv. p. 254. “Tous propriétaires de maisons de la ville et fauxbourgs de Paris sont tenus avoir latrines et privez suffisans en leurs maisons.” [They should also have been compelled to make use of them.]
[832] De la Mare, [ut supra].—Coûtume de Mante, art. 107.—Etampes, art. 87.—Nivernois, chap. x. art. 15.—Bourbonnois, art. 515.—Calais, art. 179.—Tournay, tit. 17, art. 5.—Melun, art. 209.
[833] Historische Beyträge die Preussischen und benachbarten Staaten betreffend. Berlin, 1784, 4to, iii. p. 373.
[834] Nicholai Beschreibung von Berlin, p. 26. The author quotes, from the order published at Berlin, Nov. 30, 1641, respecting the buildings of the city, section fourth, the following words: “Many citizens have presumed to erect hog-sties in the open streets, and often under the windows of bed-chambers, which the council cannot by any means suffer;” and in the seventeenth section hog-sties are forbidden to be erected in future in the small streets near the milk-market.