Mediæval London, Volume 1: Historical & Social

by Walter Besant

In 1372 another Royal Proclamation was issued against the defilement of the bank. This kind of proclamation always proved futile, because no one could enforce it.

In 1379 another order of the Common Council was made about keeping the streets clean. This time the Corporation seems to have recognised the absurdity of prohibiting what they could not prevent. They no longer forbid the citizens the throwing of “ordure, filth, rubbish and shavings” into the kennels, but they say that they must not throw those things into the kennels except in the time of rain so that they will be washed away, and they give the Officers of the Wards power to use loam, sand, and gravel carts for the purpose of carrying off the refuse and cleaning the kennels.

The result of many centuries’ conversion of the streets into sewers was of course the saturation of the soil with poisonous matter, which powerfully assisted the spread of plague.

These are the principal regulations as to the cleaning of the streets during a hundred years, all of the same tenor, thirteen proclamations and orders—that is to say, one in every eight years—and no effect produced.

I have made one or two notes from Riley’s Memorials on other points connected with the government of the City. Thus, in 1288 it was ordered that the course of Walbrook was to be kept clean. In 1374 a lease was granted of the Moor to a certain person coupled with the duty of keeping the Walbrook reasonably clean. Along the Walbrook every house had its latrine built out over the bed of the stream, and for each, at one time, a rent of 12d. was paid yearly. The now greatly narrowed bed of the stream was constantly becoming choked with the accumulation of filth of all kinds thrown into it: the slender stream was not strong enough as of old, before the wall was built, to carry things down to its mouth.

There were public latrines along the river bank—sometimes built out on quays, sometimes on piers, roofed. The Master of the Temple was bound to keep up one on the “Temple bridge,” i.e. the Temple pier, to which access was the right of the public. We hear also of a public latrine without the postern where now Moor Lane begins. It was condemned as a nuisance, A.D. 1415, and was removed. Another public latrine was at Bishopsgate just without the gate, probably built over the ditch. The City gates continued, down to the time of their removal, to have lay-stalls and heaps of filth and rubbish lying piled without them. Probably there was a public latrine outside every gate. That of Bishopsgate was also condemned, and another constructed just within the walls over the much-enduring bed of the Walbrook. In other places, the cesspool added its contamination to whatever part of the soil escaped the contamination of the street. The first construction of the cesspool was in the reign of Henry III. We shall find, presently, certain wise laws as to its isolation.

There were men in every ward appointed to be “sweepers of litter,” and they were sometimes called “rakers.”

Scavagers were officers who took custom upon the Scavage (showage) of imported goods. They also discharged various other duties, one of which was to see that precautions were taken in case of fire. Later, they kept pavements in repair and looked after streets and lanes, so that they gradually became what we now call scavengers, giving the name of an honourable occupation to a menial office. On this word Professor Skeat sends me the following remarks:—

“Another London word is scavenger; the solution of which, without the Liber Albus, would have been hopeless. It arose in a way we could never have suspected, and could never have anticipated; and it shows the futility of guessing. To begin with, the old sense was quite different, and the old form was not scavenger, but scavager. The man whom we now call a scavenger was formerly called a raker; Langland tells us that, amongst the company in the tavern of which I have already spoken, there was ‘a raker of Cheapside,’ i.e. one who had to rake the filth together and keep the street clean. The inspection of streets came to be included among the duties of a scavager, but this was not so at first. Originally, his business was scavage; and scavage meant the inspection of imported goods, which had to be submitted or shown to the scavagers, or inspectors. As to the word scavage itself, it is a Norman coinage meaning ‘show-age’ or exhibition, coined in an extraordinary fashion by adding the French suffix -age (as seen in porter-age, or broker-age), to the Middle-English word schaw-en, which we now pronounce as show. And the net result is, that, once upon a time, a scavenger was one who was busied about the ‘inspection’ of imported goods; which is quite a recondite point of history. And it is clear to me, though the fact has never been made out before, that—when we come to consider that Chaucer was controller of the City Customs, that it was his special duty to inspect the imports of wool, and that wool was one of the commodities on which there was a duty of twelve-pence for every ‘cark’ or load—it is clear to me (as I said before) that Geoffrey Chaucer the poet was, by occupation, neither more nor less than a scavenger.”

Complaints were made in 1298 that the people took the stones from the wall and the timber from the gates, so that both wall and gates were falling into ruin.