4 – Living in Your Own Filth
Waste management was a constant problem during the 19th century. The age of industrialization helped invent many new things, but it also led to mass urbanization. Cities became overcrowded rapidly and the powers that be had no idea what to do about the waste that was accumulating at warp speed.
In cities like London during the Victorian Era, gutters were filled with litter, and streets were covered in animal and human excrement. Human waste was also thrown directly into the sewers and ended up in nearby rivers. On at least one occasion, the Parliament in London had to stop working because the smell of waste was so overpowering. While legislation was brought in to try and combat the problem, the poor were left exposed to all manner of diseases.
New York City had a unique problem in the 1880s: An excessive amount of horse manure that was clogging up the streets. At that time, there were anywhere up to 200,000 horses living in the city, and each one was capable of producing an average of 22 pounds of waste a day. One article from the New York Times in 1880 outlines the case of a large horse manure pile remaining uncollected on East 52nd Street for a year. The problem continued into the 20th century when it was alleged that 20,000 New Yorkers died from airborne diseases, typically generated by horse manure.
The city also had a serious problem with animal carcasses. Approximately 15,000 dead horses were removed from the streets in 1880 and in some cases, these large carcasses were left to rot until they disintegrated. There were so many dead animal carcasses tossed in the Hudson River that they started to wash up on the shore and make residents ill. Even when the carcasses were dumped outside the city, the water would often bring them back in.