London Labour and the London Poor, Vol. 2

TABLE SHOWING TOTALS OF EVERY DESCRIPTION OF VEHICLE PASSING PER HOUR AND PER DAY OF 12 HOURS THROUGH CERTAIN STREETS WITHIN THE CITY OF LONDON.

TABLE SHOWING THE TOTAL NUMBER OF EACH DESCRIPTION OF VEHICLE PASSING THROUGH CERTAIN STREETS WITHIN THE CITY OF LONDON, BETWEEN THE HOURS OF 8 A.M. AND 8 P.M. (12 Hours.)

The commodities whose residuum goes to swell the annual supply of rubbish, are generally of an earthy nature. Such commodities as are made of fibrous or textile materials, go, when “used up,” chiefly to form manure if of an animal nature, and to be converted into paper if of a vegetable origin. The refuse materials of our woollen clothes, our old coats and trousers, are either torn to pieces and re-manufactured into shoddy, or become the invigorators of our hop and other plants; whereas those of our linen or cotton garments, our old shirts and petticoats, form the materials of our books and letters; while our old ropes, &c., are converted into either brown paper or oakum. Those commodities, on the other hand, which are made of leathern materials, become, when worn out, the ingredients of the prussiate of potash and other nitrogenised products manufactured by our chemists. Our old wooden commodities, again, are used principally to kindle our fires; while the refuse of our fires themselves, whether the soot which is deposited in the chimney above, or the ashes which fall below, are employed mainly to increase the fertility of our land. Our worn-out metal commodities, on the other hand, are newly melted, and go to form fresh commodities when the metals are of the scarcer kind, as gold, silver, copper, brass, lead, and even iron; and when of the more common kind, as is the case with old tin, and occasionally iron vessels, they either become the ingredients in some of our chemical manufactures, or else when formed of tin are cut up into smaller and inferior commodities. Even the detritus of our streets is used as the soil of our market gardens. All this we have already seen, and we have now to deal more particularly with the refuse of the sole remaining materials, viz., those of an earthy kind, and out of which are made our bricks, our earthenware and porcelain, as well as our glass, plaster, and stone commodities. What becomes of all these materials when the articles made of them are no longer fit for use? The old glass is, like the old metal, re-melted and made into new commodities; some broken bottles are used for the tops of walls as a protection against trespassers; and the old bricks, when sound, are employed again for inferior brick-work; but what becomes of the rest of the earthen materials—the unsound bricks or “bats,” the old plaster and mortar, the refuse slates and tiles and chimney-pots, the broken pans, and dishes, and other crocks—in a word, the potsherds and pansherds[34], as the rubbish-carters call them—what is done with these?

But rubbish, as we have seen, consists not only of refuse earthen commodities, but of refuse earth itself: such as the soil removed during excavations for the foundations of houses, for the cuttings of railways, the levelling of roads, the formation of parks, the laying down of pipes or drains, and the sinking of wells. For each and all of these operations there is necessarily a certain quantity of soil removed, and the question that naturally occurs to the mind is, what is done with it?

There is, moreover, a third kind of rubbish, which, though having an animal origin, consists chiefly of earthy matter, and that is the shells of oysters, and other shell-fish. Whence go they, since these shells are of a comparatively indestructible nature, and thousands of such fish are consumed annually in the metropolis? What, the inquirer asks, becomes of the refuse bony coverings of such fish?

Let us first, however, endeavour to estimate what quantity of each of these three kinds of rubbish is annually produced in London, beginning with the refuse earthen commodities.

There is no published account of the quantity of crockeryware annually manufactured in this country. Mr. McCulloch tells us, “It is estimated, that the value of the various sorts of earthenware produced at the potteries may amount to about 1,700,000l. or 1,800,000l. a year; and that the earthenware produced at Worcester, Derby, and other parts of the country, may amount to about 850,000l. or more, making the whole value of the manufacture 2,550,000l. or 2,650,000l. a year.” What proportion of this quantity may fall to the share of the metropolis, and what proportion of the whole may be annually destroyed, I know of no means of judging. We must therefore go some other way to work in order to arrive at the required information. Now, it has been before shown, that the quantity of “dust,” or dry refuse from houses, annually collected, amounts to 900,000 tons or chaldrons yearly; and I find, on inquiry at the principal “yards,” that the average quantity of Potsherds and broken crockery is at the rate of about half a bushel to every load of dust, or say 1 per cent. out of the entire quantity collected. At other yards, I find the proportion of sherds to be about the same, so that we may fairly assume that the gross quantity of broken earthenware produced in London is in round numbers 9000 loads or tons per annum. The sherds run about 250 pieces to the bushel, and assuming every five of such pieces to be the remains of an entire article, there would be in each bushel the fragments of fifty earthenware vessels; and thus the total quantity of crockeryware destroyed yearly in the metropolis will amount to 18,000,000 vessels.

As to the quantity of refuse bricks, the number annually produced, which is between 1,500,000,000 and 2,000,000,000, will give us no knowledge of the quantity yearly converted into rubbish. In order to arrive at this, we must ascertain the number of houses pulled down in the course of the twelvemonth; and I find, by the Returns of the Registrar-General, that the buildings removed between 1841 and 1851 have been as follows:—

Decrease in the Number of Houses throughout London between 1841 and 1851.