Why Did Someone Sweep the Road So You Could Cross It? Horses, Everywhere
By the BrainSnail editorial team. How these articles are written and checked, and how to tell us when one is wrong.
Victorian streets were covered in mud and horse dung, and children and the elderly cleared a path across for anybody who would tip them. The job says more about nineteenth century cities than almost any other.
What the streets were like
A large nineteenth century city ran on horses, and the numbers were extraordinary, with London supporting well over a hundred thousand of them at the peak and each producing many kilograms of dung daily along with urine. That fell onto road surfaces, mixed with mud, coal dust, straw, rainwater and the general refuse of the street, and was churned by wheels into a deep and evil-smelling paste that observers described in terms of horror. Crossing a road in ordinary clothing meant ruining it, which mattered enormously in a society where a respectable appearance was the basis of employment and where clothing represented a substantial investment.
How the work was done
The arrangement was informal and had recognised conventions:
- •A sweeper claimed a particular crossing and defended it against others
- •The work was done with a broom, continuously, since the surface was resupplied constantly
- •Payment was a voluntary tip rather than a fixed charge
- •Regular users were known and greeted, which improved the takings
- •Children and the elderly dominated the trade, being unable to do heavier work
- •Positions on busy respectable streets were the most valuable and the most contested
Where the evidence comes from
The trade is unusually well documented for an occupation of the very poor, principally because of Henry Mayhew, a journalist who interviewed London street workers at length in the 1840s and 1850s and published their accounts in their own words. His work records how much these people earned, where they slept, how they organised territory, what they thought of their customers and how children entered the trade, and it is among the most valuable sources for nineteenth century urban poverty precisely because it quotes rather than summarises. Dickens put a sweeper at the centre of a novel published in 1853, drawing on exactly that world, and the figure became a recognised symbol of neglected childhood.
The other street trades
This occupation belonged to a whole economy of marginal street work that a modern city has no equivalent of. Mudlarks searched the river foreshore at low tide for coal, rope, nails and anything saleable, working in conditions that were filthy and dangerous. Pure finders collected dog dung from the streets and sold it to tanneries, which used it in preparing leather. Bone grubbers and rag gatherers supplied the trades that recycled those materials. Costermongers sold fruit and vegetables from barrows under a dense set of customs about pitches. Match sellers, shoe blacks and errand runners occupied the rest. What united them is that each converted something free and unwanted into a few pence, at the cost of a great deal of labour.
What ended it
Several changes removed the trade within a few decades. Road surfaces improved, with macadam and later asphalt replacing earth and cobbles, which produced a surface that could be cleaned properly and drained. Municipal street cleaning departments were established and took over the work with paid staff, carts and eventually machinery. Sewers and drainage removed the standing filth. Compulsory schooling from the 1870s took children out of street occupations, which was a deliberate intention of the legislation. And the replacement of horses by motor vehicles from the 1900s removed the source of the problem entirely, which is the change that made the older arrangement unimaginable within a generation.
The takeaway
Cities running on horses produced a road surface of dung, mud and refuse deep enough to ruin the clothing that respectable employment depended on. Sweepers claimed crossings, worked them continuously and lived on voluntary tips, with children and the elderly dominating. Mayhew's interviews record the trade in the workers' own words. Improved surfaces, municipal cleaning, compulsory schooling and motor vehicles ended it.