Train of Rubbish

One day last week a friend of mine walked down Piccadilly behind a lady who was wearing a dress fitted with the long train now in vogue. Opposite St. James's Club she got into a cab. She consequently left behind her on the pavement all the rubbish which her skirt had collected as it swept down Piccadilly. My friend, being of a scientific turn, proceeded to make an inventory of the collection, and he has been good enough to send it to me for publication. I give it below. In the days when germs and microbes play such an important part in social life, I question very much whether these trains should be permitted by law. This lady left her street sweepings on the curb-stone; but it might be remembered that many convey them into their own or their friends' houses:-

2 cigar ends.
9 cigarette do.
A portion of pork pie.
4 toothpicks.
2 hairpins.
1 stem of a clay pipe.
3 fragments of orange peel.
1 slice of cat's meat.
Half a sole of a boot.
1 plug of tobacco (chewed).
Straw, mud, scraps of paper, and miscellaneous street refuse, ad.lib.

Lady F.W. Harberton, "Symposium on Dress," Arena, vol. 6. New York, 1892, p. 334.

[with thanks to Chia Evers for pointing this out to me]

Recycling

I've pointed out before that the Victorians 'recycled' with a vengeance. Here's what they did with their rubbish, all done by 'sifters' (generally women) who worked the mounds of 'dust':

The principal ingredient of all these Dust-heaps is fine cinders and ashes; but as they are accumulated from the contents of all the dust-holes and bins of the vicinity, and as many more as possible, the fresh arrivals in their original state present very heterogeneous materials. We cannot better describe them than by presenting a brief sketch of the different departments of the Searchers and Sorters, who are assembled below to busy themselves upon the mass of original matters which are shot out from the carts of the dustmen.
    The bits of coal, the pretty numerous results of accident and servants' carelessness, are picked out, to be sold forthwith; the largest and best of the cinders are also selected, by another party, who sell them to laundresses, or to braziers (for whose purposes coke would do as well;) and the next sort of cinders, called the breeze, because it is left after the wind has blown the finer cinders through an upright sieve, is sold to the brick-makers.
    Two other departments, called the "soft-ware" and the "hard-ware," are very important. The former includes all vegetable and animal matters--everything that will decompose. These are selected and bagged at once, and carried off as soon as possible, to be sold as manure for plowed land, wheat, barley, &c. Under this head, also, the dead cats are comprised. They are generally the perquisites of the women searchers. Dealers come to the wharf, or dust-field, every evening; they give sixpence for a white cat, fourpence for a colored cat, and for a black one according to her quality. The "hard-ware" includes all broken pottery pans, crockery, earthenware, oyster-shells, &c., which are sold to make new roads.
    The bones are selected with care, and sold to the soap-boiler. He boils out the fat and marrow first, for special use, and the bones are then crushed and sold for manure.
    Of rags, the woollen rags are bagged and sent off for hop-manure; the white linen rags are washed, and sold to make paper, &c.
    The "tin things" are collected and put into an oven with a grating at the bottom, so that the solder which unites the parts melts, and runs through into a receiver. This is sold separately; the detached pieces of tin are then sold to be melted up with old iron, &c.
    Bits of old brass, lead, &c., are sold to be molted up separately, or in the mixture of ores.
    All broken glass vessels, as cruets, mustard-pots, tumblers, wine-glasses, bottles, &c., are sold to the old-glass shops.
    As for any articles of jewelry, silver spoons, forks, thimbles, or other plate and valuables, they are pocketed off-hand by the first finder. Coins of gold and silver are often found, and many "coppers."
    Meantime, everybody is hard at work near the base of the great Dust-heap. A certain number of cart-loads having been raked and searched for all the different things just described, the whole of it now undergoes the process of sifting. The men throw up the stuff, and the women sift it.

Household Words, 1850

Street Orderlies

Another Victorian trade I've never heard about, in the professionalised late-Victorian world of rubbish collection - the street orderly ...

That the city is so clean - and it is by far the cleanest part of the huge territory of London - is in a large measure due to the "street-orderlies," officially so called - the "city collectors" of the commercial humorists. The horse-waste is by them cleared off at once; were it allowed to remain the enormous traffic would squeeze it into "grease," which it would almost take scrubbing with soap and water to get off. A more seemingly dangerous occupation than that of a street-orderly boy it would be difficult to find. With his handbrush and peculiar scoop - invented by Mr. Swale, the superintendent - in which the handle bends forwards instead of backwards, so as to bring the weight when full or empty always under the centre of the hand, the boy glides about under the horses' heads and among the crowding wheels in a way that is nothing less than miraculous to the timid on the footway. From his "bin" by the kerb as his centre, he works right and left and across the street, his object being to remove every atom of dirt within the area assigned to him before it has been run over by a wheel. That is his object, but in the throng of London vehicles he is lucky if he manages to clean the road before the dirt has been run over twice or thrice.
    Every morning these boys, about a hundred and fifty in number, muster at Stoney Lane for breakfast. The yard is not a large one. On the left is the office; on the right is what looks like a school-room; on the outer walls of each range in the central yard the numbered racks on which the boys keep their tools. After breakfast the boys file off to work, armed generally with brush and scoop, but sometimes with scraper or squeegee; and from the main thoroughfares they break off into the crossing roads, and thence into the minor streets and courts, each boy with a definite task allotted to him, and most of them anxious to have done with the task as early as possible, and return to the risky work on the main thoroughfares. To control all these boys, scattered off in all ways like rabbits in a warren, is not an easy task, but it is rarely that they give trouble, and a good worker is sure of recognition. The best boy is the one who needs least looking after, and the inspector, very naturally, soon discovers him, and puts him on the list for increased wages. He begins with six shillings a week; he soon gets seven shillings and sixpence a week; he may pass through the hobbledyhoyhood into manhood, and thence into old age, by turns handling scraper and broom, and sorting in the yard, and driving a van, and making himself useful about the wharf, and in some few cases may work through to the end, and retire on a pension of fifteen shillings a week. For there is a " career" open even in the city dust yard, nearly all in the service having entered it as boys, and worked up to fair wages step by step. It is not a career in which refinement or high educational qualifications are in demand, and of this the boys are well aware, to judge by the ill-success which has attended every effort to school them after hours. The day is long, the work requires constant alertness, and when evening comes the street-orderlies are only too glad to hurry home and get to bed.
    Scavengers do not belong so often to a class by themselves as formerly. Not so very long ago scavenging and sorting in the dust yards was a hereditary occupation, whose secrets were transmitted from father to son and from mother to daughter. But now that the municipalities are withdrawing their work from contractors and doing it themselves, they take their labourers from a wider area. One result of this is that woman's work is discouraged, and the woman on the dustheap is yearly becoming rarer.

Here's the full article, from 1889's Leisure Hour.