The great Horse Manure Crisis in 1894
Posted by Norman Dunn on 24/1/2025, 6:21 pm
I was sent this article below, by a friend to put on the board as it is something we'd never have thought happened long before we were born. -------------------------------------------------- A 1894 newspaper article in the 'Times' of London predicted that in 50 years, “every street in London will be buried under nine feet of manure.” In America, at the time New York was estimated to be the home of 150,000 horses, so it was targeted as well. One Horse produces 15 to 30 pounds of manure daily so multiplied by the number of horses in New York City this resulted in more than three million pounds of horse manure per day that somehow needed to be disposed of. That’s not to mention the daily 40,000 gallons of horse urine. A new money making gig popped up. Urban streets were manure minefields so crossing sweepers stood on street corners and for a fee they’d clear a path for pedestrians. Wet weather turned the streets into manure rivers, but dry weather turned the manure into dust, which was then whipped up by the wind, choking pedestrians and coating buildings. Early in the century, farmers were thrilled to pay good money for the manure but by the end of the 1800s stable owners had to pay to have it carted off. As a result of this glut, vacant lots in cities across America were used to pile manure. Supposedly, New York had 40 to 60 foot mountains of the stuff. And of course, excess manure led to disease, in particular, outbreaks of typhoid and “infant diarrhea, diseases can be traced to spikes in the fly population. Finally, one article compares fatalities associated with horse-related accidents in 1916 Chicago versus automobile accidents in 1997, and concludes that people were killed nearly seven times more often back then thanks to the skittishness of horses adding a dangerous level of unpredictability to nineteenth-century transportation. And how, ultimately, was the Great Horse Manure Crisis of 1894 resolved? Well, it wasn’t. Urban planners worked for years to come up with an effective cleaning method, but basically cities just lived with the filth until motorized vehicles, electric trams and buses solved the problem on its own. (One could argue that this created another problem that we’re still dealing with today.)
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