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Regulating filth: cleansing in Scottish towns and cities, 1840–1880

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 December 2014

DEBORAH BRUNTON
DEBORAH BRUNTON*
Affiliation:
History of Medicine, The Open University, Walton Hall, Milton Keynes, MK7 6AA, UK
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Abstract

Although little explored, regulations – in the form of laws and byelaws – formed an important technique of nineteenth-century government. This article explores the implementation and enforcement of two sets of regulations regarding the keeping and disposal of dirt imposed by Scottish local authorities: one on behaviours around the disposal of domestic refuse, the other on the keeping of dung – a form of property. While behaviours around refuse were more stringently policed than those affecting property, in both cases regulations were not the basis of a strict disciplinary regime, but a means of informing, educating and persuading residents into cleanly habits.

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Research Article
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Urban History , Volume 42 , Issue 3 , August 2015 , pp. 424 - 439
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Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2014 

In recent years, historians have explored the development of the practices of liberal governance in nineteenth-century cities – the development of a range of techniques to create an ordered, moralizing, healthy and prosperous society without overt and frequent intervention. Local government authorities aimed to shape space and deploy technologies, including urban planning, architecture, infrastructure and services, to create and maintain a framework for the free operation of self-governing citizens. Within this framework, citizens would choose to display certain behaviours – cleanliness, sobriety, morality, honesty and politeness – and would maintain their homes and workplaces in equally good order. These self-regulating citizens respected the freedoms of other residents, but also scrutinized and commented on their fellow citizens and government bodies.Footnote 1

The material aspects of liberal governance – from lighting and road surfaces to public baths, libraries and slaughterhouses – have been the subject of extensive study. However, the proliferation of nineteenth-century regulations, the laws and byelaws that underpinned the rights of individuals, have received much less attention. Tom Crook has pointed to the role of regulations and attendants in ensuring the smooth and orderly running of public baths and the role of sanitary inspectors in enforcing regulations around domestic and public infrastructure that might result in threats to health.Footnote 2 Pat Joyce has also recently reminded us of the violence with which liberal states acted against those who failed to exert self-control and broke the law.Footnote 3

This article explores the operation of two sets of regulations that aimed to control the accumulation and disposal of dirt in a range of Scottish communities, ranging from major cities to small towns, during the middle decades of the nineteenth century.Footnote 4 While they shared a common objective – reducing the amounts of dirt held in private space – the regulations incorporated two strategies. Regulations on the disposal of domestic refuse through public collections and on the movement of dung aimed to shape behaviour by dictating where, when and how refuse should be put moved ready for disposal. Regulations on the storage of dung prescribed exactly how much, where and for how long the material could remain within town boundaries. Although both sets of regulations were enforceable by fines or jail sentences, they were not used to coerce residents into good behaviour and fitted with liberal forms of governance. Regulations set standards of appropriate behaviour and thus informed the actions of self-regulating citizens who voluntarily adopted the new rules. Where residents failed to comply, the authorities employed a process of education and persuasion, with prosecution as a last resort.

Cleaning public space

In the nineteenth century, dirt was a constant feature of urban life. Streets, squares and market places received the manure generated by horse-drawn traffic and rubbish left by pedestrians, street traders and residents. Domestic refuse, including excrement, was collected and temporarily stored in ashpits and middens, prior to disposal, or simply dumped in any convenient space: in closes, yards or in ruined buildings. Rubbish from trades, manufacturing and food production, including slaughtering animals, piled up in yards, on waste ground or was dumped in rivers or on the shore. Over the course of the century, urban dirt became a matter of ever more acute concern. Scottish towns and cities grew rapidly, and as their populations doubled and trebled within a few decades, so did the amounts of refuse generated in urban areas.Footnote 5 At the same time, perceptions of dirt shifted: residents were increasingly unwilling to tolerate filth and the concomitant assault on the senses prompted ever more intense feelings of disgust.Footnote 6

Traditionally, responsibility for removing dirt from towns was divided between private citizens and local government. Householders, landlords and the owners of businesses arranged for refuse from their premises to be carted outside the town boundaries; in poor areas, this was often neglected and middens and ashpits were reported to overflow with filth. Responsibility for cleaning the public spaces in Scottish towns – the streets, squares and marketplaces – fell to the burgh councils. The councils, some of which dated back to medieval times, were primarily responsible for promoting trade. This included some aspects of urban improvement, such as maintaining harbours and roads, but did not necessarily extend to the organization of street cleaning. Although some burgh councils did take street cleaning on, in general streets appear to have been cleaned infrequently, and probably not very thoroughly.Footnote 7

Cleaning urban space acquired a new impetus under the police commissioners, a new form of local government agency. Established in response to a perceived rise in unrest and environmental degradation, and inspired by ideas of civic responsibility drawn from the Enlightenment, police commissions were created in 30 towns and cities through local acts of parliament between 1770 and 1825. Thereafter, the Burgh Police Acts of 1833, 1850 and 1862 provided a cheaper and quicker method of establishing a police commission.Footnote 8 By 1870, well over 100 communities, including all the major towns and cities across Scotland, had police authorities.Footnote 9 The Scottish police commissions were created by, and reflected the views of, respectable sections of the urban population. Commissioners were elected on a relatively broad franchise and served for a fixed term. Property qualifications meant that in larger towns and cities, members were retailers, traders and businessmen or drawn from the ranks of the professions, while in smaller towns, shopkeepers and artisans predominated. Serving as a commissioner required attendance at meetings for a few hours a week at most: thus, while members served the community as commissioners, they were simultaneously private citizens, and brought these concerns to the council chamber. The police commissions’ work was subjected to close scrutiny by residents of all classes. Anyone could (and did) object to actions that interfered with their freedom to trade or otherwise harmed their economic interests.Footnote 10

The commissioners had broad responsibilities for all aspects of urban governance: they were ‘police’ in the European sense of the word. Funded by local rates, the commissions kept order among the urban population by organizing local police forces and imposed order upon the town environment by creating and maintaining infrastructure such as lighting, paving and drainage, and services such as water supply and cleaning. Cleansing was an important part of the commissions’ work: it was often one of the first tasks tackled by the new police commissioners and virtually all were granted powers to clean public spaces in towns large and small.Footnote 11 Clean, well-ordered public space served the community in a number of ways. Getting rid of the filth and smells believed to be the source of miasmas helped to reduce the epidemics that regularly swept through nineteenth-century towns.Footnote 12 Clean streets achieved a central objective of liberal government – the free movement of goods and people.Footnote 13 Dirt also had profound social effects. The unpleasant smells and sights associated with filth offended residents’ sensibilitiesFootnote 14 and were believed to have deleterious effects on character. Constant exposure to filth was believed to blunt the physical senses and morals of residents. As a result, it was argued, slum dwellers lost their self-respect, gave up any efforts to keep clean or to find work, and turned to drink, crime and begging, putting an intolerable strain on charities and poor relief.Footnote 15 By contrast, clean public spaces provided a salutary lesson to residents: if the public authorities showed an interest in the sanitary condition of the town, then the inhabitants were more likely to keep their homes and neighbourhood clean.Footnote 16

New levels of cleanliness were achieved not by the application of new technology but by the more rigorous use of old technologies: manpower, brooms, buckets, wheelbarrows and horse-drawn carts. Men, known as ‘scavengers’, either employed directly by government or through contractors, swept up the dirt from the streets and carted it away to a depot on the outskirts.Footnote 17 While some larger towns experimented with street-sweeping machines, large staffs of scavengers remained the mainstay of urban cleaning throughout the nineteenth century.Footnote 18 Under the commissions in large towns and cities, traditional methods of cleaning were married with modern organization. Cleansing was timetabled early in the morning and evening to minimize the disruption to traffic and the exposure of pedestrians to dust and odours. Typically, refuse was collected from the streets at 7am and 5pm in summer and 9am and 5pm in winter.Footnote 19 All public spaces were cleaned seven days a week, or twice on Saturdays to avoid breaking the Sabbath.Footnote 20 In small communities, regular cleaning was introduced for the first time, with streets cleaned once or twice a week. Over time, the frequency of cleansing tended to increase.Footnote 21 In Stornoway, on the Isle of Lewis, the scavenger was instructed to sweep the streets from ‘time to time’ in 1868 but by 1873 he was expected to clean them every day.Footnote 22 Standards of cleanliness were enforced through various forms of surveillance. Large towns employed an inspector of cleansing to ensure that the streets were swept ‘sufficiently and timeously’.Footnote 23 In small towns, scavengers were required to keep a time book.Footnote 24 In many places, the police commissioners themselves periodically perambulated the streets to check on the work of cleaners.Footnote 25 Residents helped to enforce high standards of cleanliness. In many towns, the commissioners received letters from members of the public, complaining of dirty streets.Footnote 26 In Selkirk, for example, members of the United Presbyterian Church petitioned the commissioners to improve the filthy state of the lane leading up to their building.Footnote 27

Disposing of domestic refuse

Urban filth in private space presented the same problems as dirt in public areas. Smells seeped out into streets and homes and the sight of piles of refuse in yards and gardens offended the sensibilities of residents and passing pedestrians, while the miasma generated by filth disseminated through the air, threatening the health of everyone nearby. To reduce the amount of dirt held in private space, the police authorities introduced domestic refuse collections as part of street cleaning. Householders either threw their refuse directly into the scavenger's barrow or cart as it passed on its rounds or placed buckets of refuse on the kerbside (shifting the material from private into public space, and thus into the purlieu of the commissioners), and the scavengers collected the contents along with the street sweepings. Later, some police authorities set up dustboxes or ashbins in public areas where refuse could be deposited at any time; these were emptied by the scavengers on their rounds.Footnote 28

New refuse collection services required residents to acquire wholly new habits by internalizing new codes of behaviour and observing new levels of discipline.Footnote 29 Instead of dumping refuse in any place at any time, residents had to put their refuse into specified places, often at set times. Regulations, set out in byelaws, informed residents how to use the service by specifying exactly where and when domestic refuse should be placed. In Dalkeith, for example, household refuse had to be put onto the street by 8am in summer and 9am in winter.Footnote 30 The new rules were enforced by penalties. Under the 1850 Burgh Police Act, for example, householders could be fined up to 10s if they deposited their refuse on the street rather than in the public authorities’ dustboxes.Footnote 31 In Kelso, householders faced fines of 2s 6d for putting out their refuse at the wrong time; if they repeated the offence the penalty was increased to 5s.Footnote 32

Use of domestic refuse collection was widely adopted, by working-class as well as middle-class residents. A correspondent to the Scotsman described how he was forced to flee when the scavenger's cart came through the Grassmarket, a working-class area of Edinburgh, and he found himself suddenly surrounded by ‘nearly 100 women, who had come out of one of the closes, with pails and buckets’, creating a ‘very tempest of ashes and other abominations’.Footnote 33 However, not all residents found the new habits easy to acquire and they continued to dispose of refuse in places and at times that suited their convenience. The Selkirk Police Commissioners’ minutes contain a dry comment that the streets were well cleaned but would be even cleaner if householders put out their refuse at the correct time.Footnote 34 A letter to the Dundee Courier complained

Although we have a bell-cart, which passes up and down the streets night and day, and policemen who perambulate day and night these cannot compel slovenly inclined persons to take advantage of the cart. The offenders do not care themselves for the smells, and with them it is too much trouble to take their pitchers to the street, consequently they watch their opportunity when the ‘bobby’ is absent, and empty the contents of their pitcher right into . . . the close opposite their own door and just exactly under the doors and windows of their neighbours.Footnote 35

The habit was not confined to poor areas. Letters in the Scotsman claimed that the servants of upper-class householders in the New Town ignored the rules by putting refuse buckets out early in the morning instead of depositing their refuse on the street in the evening.Footnote 36

Although the police commissioners had powers to prosecute defaulters, their first response was to persuade residents to comply by reminding householders where and when to dispose of refuse through notices and handbills.Footnote 37 Alternatively, the police authorities tried to make domestic refuse collection more convenient. In Peterhead, the police authorities provided extra ashpits to encourage residents not to throw rubbish in the street.Footnote 38 Edinburgh's police commissioners changed the time of collections, sending out the dust carts in the evening rather than the morning, but this caused complaints about the disorder caused at times when many residents were out and about, and the necessity of sending respectable female servants into the streets at a late hour, where they mixed with lower-class inhabitants.Footnote 39

Only if these strategies failed did the police commissioners resort to legal action. It is difficult to be certain about the likelihood of offenders being brought to book. Police court records have rarely survived and newspapers present contradictory opinions. The Caledonian Mercury reported that only one in twenty cases of laying down ashes resulted in a prosecution, but later the Aberdeen Journal claimed that residents were ‘daily brought before the court’ charged with throwing ashes in the street.Footnote 40 Certainly, the number of cases reaching the courts increased over time, perhaps due to more effective enforcement or to an increasing intolerance of dirt.Footnote 41 Proving exactly who was responsible for deposits of refuse in densely populated and multi-tenanted properties was difficult. According to a letter to the Dundee Courier surveillance by policemen was the only means of securing evidence as other residents would not inform the police of instances of their neighbours dumping refuse. A search of four newspapers which routinely covered police court business found 51 reports of prosecutions for throwing or laying down ashes and filth on the street between 1840 and 1880 involving over 170 individuals.Footnote 42 Although similar regulations were in place in many Scottish towns, they appear to have been enforced more regularly in cities and expanding towns: prosecutions were reported from Aberdeen, Dundee, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Arbroath, Brechin, Kirkcaldy, Forfar, Greenock, Inveraray and Banff. Perhaps a higher toleration of dirt lingered in villages, or less dense housing made higher levels of filth appear less unpleasant. Those brought to court spanned the social spectrum, from residents of crowded closes in poor areas of Glasgow and EdinburghFootnote 43 to suburban districts.Footnote 44 The Aberdeen Journal recorded the appearance in court of ‘respectably-attired’ and ‘respectable-looking’ women.Footnote 45 Virtually all the defendants were women: only a handful of men were prosecuted and most of those came from Dundee.Footnote 46

The presiding magistrates applied the regulations rigorously: protests that the defendants were ignorant of the regulations or that their neighbours were also in the habit of depositing refuse on the streets had no effect. Equally, claims that residents were forced to lay refuse in the street because their landlord failed to empty their ashpit was not accepted as an excuse: tenants should demand action from their landlords.Footnote 47 Punishments reflected the seriousness of the offence: depositing ashes was seen as a less serious offence than throwing filth, night-soil or dirty water into the street or courtyard.Footnote 48 A handful of defendants escaped with being admonished, including two ‘respectable’ women (perhaps the shame of appearing in court was felt to be sufficient punishment) and a first offender. Footnote 49 Fines were generally small, most commonly 1s to 3s 6d with the option of a period in jail ranging from eight hours to three days. Fines were not just about punishing individuals for their behaviour, but also about educating the wider population. In a number of cases, the presiding magistrate made it clear that fines were imposed as a deterrent or a warning to others. Footnote 50

Regulating the trade in manure

Around the same time, police commissioners drew up a body of regulations controlling the storage and movement of domestic and commercial refuse collected for sale. Dirt may have been a source of danger and discomfort but it was also a valuable fertilizer. Victorian efforts to create a virtuous cycle in which urban sewage fertilized rural fields to grow food for towns have been interpreted by historians as at best optimistic and at worst hopelessly ill-founded.Footnote 51 However, there was a thriving market in solid wastes – animal manures and domestic and industrial refuse – which were used as fertilizer throughout the nineteenth century. At the beginning of the century, the use of urban refuse was limited by the cost of transporting such heavy, bulky material.Footnote 52 With the expansion of canals and railways and improved road transport, it became economical to move refuse over long distances: this coincided with the rise of intensive ‘high farming’ and an increasing demand for fertilizers to raise the productivity of soils depleted by continuous cropping. This demand was partly satisfied by new substances, initially guano – seabird droppings from islands off Peru – and later by chemical fertilizers.Footnote 53 However, organic materials in the form of animal manures remained a hugely important form of fertilizer: agricultural writers suggested adding as much as 60 cartloads or 40 tons to each acre.Footnote 54 ‘Town manures’ became an important source of fertilizer, and street sweepings, manure from stabled horses and cows, household refuse, fish and animal offal, rags, bones and leather scraps all found their way onto fields.Footnote 55

Many town residents – both individual householders and businesses collected refuse for sale. John Galt's account of late eighteenth-century village life, Annals of the Parish, vividly describes how the ‘reeking’ contents of middens were put out in the main street for collection by farmers, presenting a serious hazard to travellers.Footnote 56 However, the practice was not confined to rural areas. The rights of urban householders to collect horse and cow dung from urban stables and byres were enshrined in law: the 1850 Burgh Police Act, for example, stated: residents ‘may keep and remove any such Soil, Ashes, or Rubbish as shall be made on his own Premises, and shall be kept for Manure’.Footnote 57 A survey conducted by the police authorities in Montrose in 1847 revealed over 300 private dung stances owned by all sections of the community from the ‘upper classes’ to the poor. Each yielded around two cartloads of dung per year (between one and two tons).Footnote 58 Urban businesses such as breweries, livery stables and hotels and institutions such as hospitals all sold refuse Footnote 59 as did fishermen, fish curers and butchers, whose businesses generated particularly valuable manures in the form of fish and animal offal and the shells from the limpets or mussels used for baiting fishing lines.Footnote 60

The police commissions also participated in the manure market. Selling street refuse had a double benefit: it provided a convenient means of disposing of the material and brought in a return to the public coffers. Indeed, street cleansing was organized to ensure the saleability of refuse. Under the police acts, the local authorities were granted the right to collect and sell only specific forms of refuse: ‘fulzie’, dung, soil, dust and filth.Footnote 61 Other refuse – ‘Ashes or Danders, Coal, Culm, Sweepings of Cellars, or other Rubbish of whatever description . . . not fit to be used or sold for Manure’ (emphasis added) – remained the property of individuals, who had responsibility for its removal.Footnote 62 The police authorities collected vast quantities of refuse for sale: around 40,000 tons were lifted each year from the Edinburgh streets in the 1840s and 1850s.Footnote 63

While the market in town manures continued to flourish through the nineteenth century (apparently little affected by the availability of chemical fertilizers) the demand and thus the price commanded by refuse varied according to season, the quality of the material and a town's proximity to areas of arable farming.Footnote 64 A cubic yard of town manure fetched as little as 7½d or as much as 5s.Footnote 65 In order to maximize profits, householders and small businesses needed to store their refuse until peak demand in late autumn, then sell direct to one or more farmers who collected the material. Even so, individual households made only small amounts from refuse sales. Dundee households sold their refuse for ‘two or three shillings’Footnote 66 while the contents of a dunghill in Montrose realized around 10s.Footnote 67 Large businesses and the police authorities could not store hundreds of tons of refuse and instead sold the material throughout the year, adjusting the price according to demand. The sale of street sweepings by local authorities in villages raised between £10 and £50; larger towns could expect to make £1,000 to £2,000.Footnote 68 Cities like Aberdeen and Glasgow made between £6,000 and £12,000.Footnote 69 These sums were sufficient to offset a substantial part or even the whole costs of cleaning the streets.

Collecting dung and other refuse for sale might have been both legal and lucrative, but it presented problems for the urban authorities. Perhaps more than any other form of dirt dunghills were an eyesore, they smelt unpleasant and were perceived to be a threat to health. On the other hand, the collection and sale of refuse was part of the urban economy and the police authorities were generally unwilling to interfere with the economic activities of residents. Indeed, the police commissions were created in part to protect traders and businesses from rising crime and urban unrest.Footnote 70 Scottish urban authorities squared the circle between protecting the health and amenity of the community and allowing trading in potentially noxious refuse by imposing restrictions on the storage and movement of manure through the police acts.

The regulations varied slightly between the different acts, but all shared the same principles. Laws and byelaws specified where dung could be stored – dunghills had to be placed at a minimum distance from dwelling houses and out of sight of the general public.Footnote 71 They set limits on the length of time and the quantities of refuse that could be accumulated. The 1850 Burgh Police Act, for example, permitted accumulations of less than one ton of manure for up to 20 days; larger amounts had to be removed after 7 days.Footnote 72 The authorities also established limits on how and when refuse could be moved. Dung could only be moved in the morning, usually before 8am or 9am, and in covered carts.Footnote 73 Any breaches of these rules could result in owners being ordered to remove the material within a specified time (causing both inconvenience and potentially some loss of income if the manure was sold at a time when prices were low) and the owner could also be fined for each day that the refuse remained. If not removed within the time allowed, the dung became the property of the police commissioners who were then permitted to sell it.Footnote 74 There was one notable exception to these rules: the authorities, who accumulated vast amounts of refuse, were exempted from the regulations.Footnote 75

Like the rules on domestic refuse disposal, the police authorities enforced these regulations through a process of negotiation that prioritized the removal of the refuse rather than the punishment of the owner. In Thurso, when the police were faced with a large number of dunghills, handbills were circulated requesting owners to remove them within eight days.Footnote 76 In most cases, a local government officer – usually the inspector of cleaning or sanitary inspector – requested individual owners to remove the offending material or face legal proceedings.Footnote 77 This generally resolved the issue but if owners failed to act, or the offence was repeated, a case was brought to court. If found guilty, the owner was ordered to remove the dung within a specified time and fines were usually, but not always, imposed.Footnote 78

While many urban residents kept refuse, very few were prosecuted for keeping dung in an unsuitable manner. Just 25 reports were found in the newspapers over the period 1840 to 1880, and 10 of these cases involved breaches of the rules on the movement of dung – either depositing it on the street ready for removal, driving it through the streets during the day or allowing dung to fall from a cart. Fines were substantially larger than for breaking the rules on the disposal of domestic refuse, ranging from 5s to the substantial sum of £2 plus £2 expenses.Footnote 79 As with the prosecution of the dumping of domestic refuse, regulations were enforced not simply to punish offenders but also to provide a warning against future misconduct. The defendants in a case where the accused pleaded that they had no idea that their actions were unlawful was dismissed with a warning to observe the rules in future.Footnote 80

Given that quantities of manure were more likely to be found reposing in a dunghill than being carted through the streets, it seems odd that this was the cause of so many of the prosecutions around dung-keeping. The authorities were clearly willing to pursue cases involving dung when travelling through public space (and where breaking of these rules undermined the police authorities’ efforts to keeping the streets clean) and residents were prosecuted for careless or improper behaviour.

The remaining cases were concerned with dunghills. Two cases were concerned with enforcing regulations on where dunghills could be sited, with prosecutions for keeping dung close to houses or in the cellars of dwellings.Footnote 81 Other prosecutions were for allowing dung or offensive matter to accumulate but made no reference to the carefully prescribed amounts of dung that could be stored and the time allowed for storage, probably because of the difficulties of proving breach of the rules without regular monitoring of dunghills.Footnote 82 (Possibly such regulations were intended to articulate acceptable dung-keeping practices, and probably reflected existing unwritten rules on best practice shaped by the sensibilities of householders and neighbours.) The police authorities also dealt with overlarge dunghills under the 1856 Nuisance Removal Act, which required them only to show that they might reasonably be considered to present a threat to the health of the public.Footnote 83 Fines ranged from 2s to 20s. In court, defendants sought to negotiate. A Glasgow trader in dung charged with failing to abate a nuisance persuaded the magistrate to allow additional time to remove the 800 tons of refuse at his depot and to have his fine reduced from £30 to £4.Footnote 84

The status of dung as an asset with some value, and of the trade in urban refuse as a long-established form of economic activity, meant that the commissions’ efforts to reduce and control the amounts of urban manure aroused opposition. Owners of dunghills prosecuted by the Dundee police authorities complained bitterly in a series of letters to the Dundee Courier that justice was not being applied in an even-handed manner.Footnote 85 While some traders in dung were prosecuted, others continued their work uninterrupted and while the police authorities were responsible for carting the greatest amounts of refuse and owned the largest dunghills – often close to residential areas and frequently a cause of public complaintFootnote 86 – they were exempt from the regulations. The status of refuse as a form of property and an object of trade also created tensions between residents and the authorities. The police commissioners’ exercise of their right to remove and sell refuse that was deemed to constitute a nuisance was regarded as akin to theft and left the authorities open to accusations of seeking profit rather than safeguarding the common good.Footnote 87 On a number of occasions, owners protested that the police had exceeded their powers when seizing dung left on the street or declared to be a nuisance.Footnote 88 In Peterhead, a public meeting was held over a case in which the police commission had ordered the removal and sale of dung from private ground.Footnote 89 Because dung was valuable, owners were ready to take action to defend their property, and the fine distinctions which defined ownership – whether the refuse was purely animal dung (and so belonged to the owner) or if it included other substances (in which case it was ‘manure’ and belonged to the authorities) – opened up the prospect of expensive legal battles. Faced with this level of public concern over property, the commissioners’ enforcement of regulations on dung-keeping did not constitute a rigorous disciplinary regime, in which offenders were routinely pursued and punished. Instead, the police authorities preferred to proceed by a progression of actions, informing, warning, negotiating and only then prosecuting.Footnote 90 It is significant that prosecutions over the siting of dunghills occurred during the threat of cholera: in 1866, a string of stable and byre owners in Edinburgh appeared in court at a time when the rights to keep dung had to be balanced against an increased threat to the health of the community.

Conclusion

Cleansing was an important responsibility of nineteenth-century local government. Powers to clean public space were granted to virtually all police commissions in towns across Scotland. Regulations – in the form of legislation and byelaws – were at the heart of the cleansing project, providing a mechanism by which liberal local government achieved the goal of an ordered environment and civilized population. Rules informed the actions of citizens – of new ways of disposing of domestic rubbish via the public collection, of standards for the movement and management of accumulations of dung and other refuse prior to sale. The Scottish records suggest that many citizens were happy to observe these instructions. For those who chose not to cultivate new habits, the local authorities did not rush to punish recidivists. Instead, as Crook has suggested, authorities sought to negotiate to achieve a satisfactory outcome.

The Scottish records show that this process took a number of forms. Where the authorities sought to alter behaviour on the disposal of domestic refuse, they encouraged voluntary adoption through information and by adjusting services. Even when enforcement was applied through the courts, outcomes were intended not simply to punish but to educate both offenders and the wider public. When dealing with private property in the form of dunghills, these steps were augmented by direct negotiations aimed at the rapid removal of refuse. The distribution of power with Scottish towns encouraged the use of negotiation over coercion in regulating the environment. Although many accounts of urban improvement assume a clear separation between authority and people, local government bodies were created, elected and staffed by private citizens, and their work was subjected to scrutiny by the general population. The structure of the police commissions therefore lent itself to a style of government more co-operative than coercive, with the commissioners not imposing urban reform but devising policy that reflected the desires of a broad section of the community

Public attitudes may also have informed the rigour with which enforcement was pursued. The increase in prosecutions over time probably reflects an increasing popular intolerance towards filth. It is interesting that newspaper reports suggest that regulations were more rigorously enforced in larger towns where a collective revulsion at levels of dirt drove more vigorous efforts to keep the streets clean. Clearly, regulations offered an immensely flexible means to pursue urban improvement. The ways in which they were formulated and used mediated a complex relationship between the public and the local authorities who served the community that deserves further research.

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11 Urquhart, Burgh Police Act 1833, 102–5; idem, Police of Towns Act 1850, 246–9; idem, The General Police Improvement Act 1862, 442–57. See for example National Archives of Scotland, (NAS), B 76/2/1, Prestonpans Police Commissioners’ minutes (PCM), 9 Jun. 1862; Caithness Archive Centre (CAC), NC 1/3/1 Thurso PCM, 13 Nov. 1841, 3 Jan. 1842; Hebridean Archives (HA), R1.473, Stornoway PCM, 3 Feb. 1864; Angus Archives (AA), K1/2/1, Kirriemuir PCM, 27 Jan. 1835.

12 ‘An act to consolidate, amend, and extend the provisions of several acts for the better paving, watching, lighting and cleansing, and for regulating the police of the city of Glasgow’, 6 & 7 Vict., c. xcix (hereafter Glasgow Police Act 1843), cl. 148.

13 NAS, B 52/3/11, Musselburgh Town Council minutes (TCM), 26 Feb. 1861. The Musselburgh Town Council acted as police commissioners under the 1833 Burgh Police Act.

14 Edinburgh City Archives (ECA), E9/1/4, Edinburgh PCM, minutes of general commissioners, 5 Nov. 1821.

15 Bell, G., Blackfriar's Wynd Analysed (Edinburgh, 1850)Google Scholar; idem, Day and Night in the Wynds of Edinburgh (Edinburgh, 1850); ‘Shadow’ [A. Brown], Midnight Scenes and Social Photographs, beings Sketches of Life in the Streets, Wynds and Dens of the City (Glasgow, 1858).

16 ECA, SL 80/4/10, Leith Police Commissioners (PC), committee minutes, 26 Jan. 1846.

17 Ferguson, T., The Dawn of Scottish Social Welfare. A Survey from Medieval Times to 1863 (London, 1948), 137–46Google Scholar.

18 ECA, SL 80/4/16 Leith PC, committee minutes 25 Mar. 1867, 20 May 1867; Aberdeen City and Aberdeenshire Archives (ACAA), CA 9/1/8, Aberdeen PCM, 30 Dec. 1844; Glasgow Herald, 13 Jul. 1869; Dundee Courier, 24 Sep. 1844.

19 ECA, ED9/1/4, Edinburgh PCM, general commissioners’ minutes, 5 Nov. 1821; Scottish Borders Archives (SBA), BK/1/2, Kelso PCM, 11 Feb. 1839; NAS, B 52/6/1, Musselburgh TCM, 14 Mar. 1865; NAS, B 56/7/8 North Berwick TCM, 9 Nov. 1868.

20 St Andrews University Library (SAUL), B 65/13/3, St Andrews PCM, 9 Nov. 1849; ACAA, CA 9/1/8 Aberdeen PCM, 28 Feb. 1848; Dundee City Archives (DCA), Dundee PCM, 1842–51, 9 May 1849; CAC, NC 1/3/2, Thurso PCM, 9 Jul. 1867; CAC, BW 1/7, Wick PCM, 7 Mar. 1860; ECA, SL 80/4/11, Leith PCM, 24 Feb. 1853.

21 Dumfries and Galloway Council Archives (DGCA), LN1/1/10, Lochmaben PCM, 4 Mar. 1867; Highland Archive Centre (HAC), BF 1/1/5, Fortrose PCM, 4 Jan. 1858.

22 HA, R1.473, Stornoway PCM, 12 Sep. 1868, 13 Jan. 1873.

23 ‘An act for more effectually watching, cleansing and lighting the streets of the city of Edinburgh and adjoining districts, for regulating the police thereof, and for other purposes relating thereto’, 11 & 12 Vict., c. cxiii (hereafter Edinburgh Police Act 1848), cl. 76. Similar officials were employed elsewhere. See HAC, IB 1/4/1, Inverness PCM, 19 May 1868; SBA, 139/1/1, Selkirk PCM, 28 Dec. 1863; ACAA, AS/Aphd/2/3, Peterhead PCM, 2 Apr. 1863; NAS, B 52/6/1 Musselburgh TCM, 16 Aug. 1866.

24 SAUL, B 3/6/1, Kilrenny PCM, 29 Jun. 1858; SAUL, B 24/12/1, Elie PCM, 28 Jul. 1877.

25 NAS, B 52/3/9, Musselburgh PCM, 17 Mar. 1846, 23 Jan. 1847; NAS, B 76/2/1, Prestonpans PCM, 12 Aug. 1862.

26 HAC, IB 1/4/1, Inverness PCM, 2 Dec. 1851; AA, K 1/2/3 Kirriemuir PCM, 8 Feb. 1866; AA, M 1/2/2 Montrose PCM, 20 Jan. 1840; ECA, Edinburgh PCM, vol. 11, general commissioners’ minutes, 2 Jan. 1849.

27 SBA/139/1/1, Selkirk PCM, 10 Jan. 1876.

28 Burgh Police Act 1850, cl. 147.

29 Bennett, Tonyet al., ‘Habit and habituation: governance and the social’, Body and Society, 19 (2013), 3–29CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

30 Midlothian Council Archives (MCA), MBC 5/5, Dalkeith town trustees’ minutes (TTM), 12 Jun. 1842.

31 Burgh Police Act 1850, cl. 147. The same penalty was levied under ‘An act to consolidate and amend the acts relating to the police and statute labour of the city of Glasgow’, 25 & 26 Vict., c. cciv, cl. 357.

32 SBA, BK/1/2, Kelso PCM, 11 Feb. 1839; ACAA, CA/9/1/8, Aberdeen PCM, 11 Mar. 1844.

33 Scotsman, 10 Jan. 1829.

34 SBA, 139/1/2, Selkirk PCM, 8 Jul. 1878.

35 Dundee Courier, 27 Jun. 1864.

36 Scotsman 24 Aug. 1828, 24 Dec. 1828; NAS B52/6/1, Musselburgh PCM, 25 Feb. 1873.

37 CAC, BW 1/6, Wick TCM, 27 Feb. 1841; Perth and Kinross Council Archive (PKCA), PE 1/3/2, Perth PCM, 30 May 1866; AA, M1/2/2, Montrose PCM, 10 Jan. 1848; NAS, B 76/2/1, Prestonpans PCM, 6 Mar. 1871, 19 Jun. 1877; NAS, B 48/10/1, Linlithgow PCM, 10 May 1870.

38 ACAA, AS/Aphd/2/3, Peterhead PCM, 11 Nov. 1862.

39 Scotsman, 24 Dec. 1828, 10 Jan. 1829, 28 Jan. 1829; Caledonian Mercury, 20 Dec. 1828, 31 Jan. 1829.

40 Aberdeen Journal, 7 Mar 1882; Caledonian Mercury, 14 Jan. 1847.

41 The Edinburgh commissioners mounted nine successful prosecutions between late August and early October 1866. Caledonian Mercury, 23 Aug. 1866, 29 Aug. 1866, 30 Aug. 1866, 16 Sep. 1866, 26 Sep. 1866, 1 Oct. 1866.

42 The newspapers searched were Aberdeen Journal, Caledonian Mercury, Dundee Courier and Glasgow Herald. In addition to the 177 individuals, other cases involved the prosecution of ‘several’ people.

43 See, for example, Glasgow Herald, 6 Aug. 1849, 16 Nov. 1849; Caledonian Mercury, 23 Jul. 1849, 10 Oct. 1866.

44 Caledonian Mercury, 26 Sep. 1866; Aberdeen Journal, 14 Dec. 1878.

45 Aberdeen Journal, 2 Feb. 1870, 3 Sep. 1873.

46 Dundee Courier, 22 Jul. 1861, 23 Oct. 1866, 25 May 1867, 10 Oct. 1872, 26 Nov. 1874, 13 Dec. 1877.

47 Aberdeen Journal, 2 Jun. 1881; Dundee Courier, 15 Mar. 1866.

48 Caledonian Mercury, 24 Nov. 1858, 29 Aug. 1866, Aberdeen Journal, 2 Feb. 1870.

49 Aberdeen Journal, 4 Jan. 1860, 2 Jan. 1867, 2 Feb. 1870, 3 Sep. 1873; Dundee Courier, 22 Jul. 1861, 13 Dec. 1877; Caledonian Mercury, 24 Nov. 1858, 30 Aug. 1866.

50 Caledonian Mercury, 24 Nov. 1858; Aberdeen Journal, 12 Feb. 1851, 6 Aug. 1856, 31 Aug. 1882.

51 Hamlin, C., ‘Providence and putrefaction: Victorian sanitarians and the natural theology of health and disease’, Victorian Studies, 28 (1985), 381–411Google ScholarPubMed; Sheail, J., ‘Town wastes, agricultural sustainability and Victorian sewage’, Urban History, 23 (1996), 189–210CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Cottrell, P.L., ‘Resolving the sewage question: Metropolis Sewage and Essex Reclamation Company, 1865–81’, in Colls, R. and Rodger, R. (eds.), Cities of Ideas. Civil Society and Urban Governance in Britain, 1800–2000 (Aldershot, 2004), 67–95Google Scholar; Atkins, Peter, ‘The “charmed circle”’, in Atkins, Peter (ed.), Animal Cities. Beastly Urban Histories (Farnham, 2012), 53–76Google Scholar.

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54 Ibid., 124 n. 3.

55 Smout, T.C., ‘The improvers and the Scottish environment: soils, bogs and woods’, in Devine, T.M and Young, J.R. (eds.), Eighteenth-Century Scotland. New Perspectives (East Linton, 1999), 214–17Google Scholar; Devine, T.M., ‘The transformation of agriculture: cultivation and clearance’, in Devine, T.M., Lees, C.H. and Peden, G.C. (eds.), The Transformation of Scotland. The Economy since 1700 (Edinburgh, 2008), 71–98Google Scholar; Woodward, D., ‘“An essay on manures”: changing attitudes to fertilization in England, 1500–1800’, in Chartres, J. and Hey, D. (eds.), English Rural Society, 1500–1800 (Cambridge, 2005), 251–78Google Scholar; Woodward, D., ‘“Gooding the earth”’: manuring practices in Britain, 1500–1800’, in Foster, S. and Smout, T. C. (eds.), The History of Soils and Field Systems (Aberdeen, 1994), 102–8Google Scholar.

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57 Burgh Police Act 1850, cl. 142.

58 AA, M1/2/2, Montrose PCM, 17 May 1847.

59 See, for example, Aberdeen Journal, 24 Jan. 1827, 31 Jan. 1835, 8 Jan. 1845, 10 Dec. 1845; DGAC, CB 842/1/1/2, Moffat PCM, 7 Nov. 1866.

60 A. Fenton, ‘Shellfish as bait: the interface between domestic and commercial fishing’, in T.C. Smout (ed.), Scotland and the Sea (Edinburgh, 1992), 141, 151–2; SAUL, B 3/6/3, Anstruther PCM, 25 Jun. 1866.

61 ‘An act for altering and amending certain acts for regulating the police of the city of Edinburgh’, 2 Gul. IV, c. lxxxvii (hereafter Edinburgh Police Act 1832), cl. 43; ‘An act for the better paving, lighting, watching, and cleansing the burgh of Dundee’, 1 Vict., c. cix (hereafter Dundee Police Act 1837), cl. 112. Fulzie is an old Scots word meaning dirt or dung.

62 ‘An act for the better paving, cleansing, lighting watching and improving the streets, lanes and other public places and passages with the city of Aberdeen’, 10 Geo. IV, c. xli, cl. cxli.

63 Report by the Cleaning and Lighting Committee of the Town Council of Edinburgh, regarding the Cleaning Dept. of the Police Establishment (Edinburgh, [1859]), Appendix II, p. 11.

64 PKCA, PE 1/3/2, Perth PCM, 25 May 1866.

65 See, for example, CAC, NC 1/3/3, Thurso PCM, 12 Aug. 1850; NAS, B 56/7/7, North Berwick TCM, 31 Jan. 1857, 1 Dec. 1857; PKCA, PE 1/3/3, Perth PCM, 10 Dec. 1869; SAUL, B 3/6/1, Kilrenny PCM, 13 May 1851; AA, M 1/2/1, Montrose PCM, 30 Apr. 1838.

66 Dundee Courier, 15 Sep. 1852.

67 AA, M1/2/2, Montrose PCM, 17 May 1847.

68 DCA, Dundee PCM, 1824–32, 28 May 1832, ibid., 1851–61, 9 May 1853; PKCA, PE 1/3/3, Perth PCM, 13 Jul. 1868, PE 1/3/4, Perth PCM, 10 Jul. 1871, 8 Jul. 1872.

69 Aberdeen Journal, 12 Nov. 1846; Mitchell Library, Glasgow (ML), E 3.3.2, Abstract Statement of the Revenue and Expenditure of the Board of Police Glasgow, 1873–82.

70 Barrie, D.G. and Broomhall, S., ‘Public men, private interests: the origins, structure and practice of police courts in Scotland, c. 1800–1833’, Continuity and Change, 27 (2012), 83–123CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Barrie, Police in the Age of Improvement, 93–105.

71 AA, M 1/2/1, Montrose PCM, 26 Jan. 1835; DGAC, LN 1/1/10, Lochmaben PCM, 20 Dec. 1866; HA, R1.473, Stornoway PCM, 14 Jan. 1867.

72 Burgh Police Act 1850, cl. 156; see also AA, M 1/2/3, Montrose PCM, 9 Jan. 1854; MCA, MBC/5/5, Dalkeith TTM, 12 Jun. 1842

73 AA, K1/2/1, Kirriemuir PCM, 14 Dec. 1839; AA, M 1/2/1, Montrose PCM, 3 Mar. 1834, M 1/2/3, Montrose PCM, 9 Jan. 1854; NAS, B 48/10/1, Linlithgow PCM, 19 Feb. 1867; SAUL, B 65/13/3, St Andrews PCM, 9 Nov. 1849. The regulations in Kelso were neglected. See SBA BK/1/5 Kelso PCM, 10 Dec. 1866.

74 Burgh Police Act 1850, cl. 156, 158; Dundee Police Act 1837, cl. 113; Glasgow Police Act 1843, cl. 155; Edinburgh Police Act 1832, cl. 43; Edinburgh Police Act 1848, cl. 191.

75 Glasgow Police Act 1843, cl. 155; Edinburgh Police Act 1848, cl. 193.

76 CAC, NC 1/3/2, Thurso PCM, 22 May 1866.

77 SAUL, B 3/6/3, Anstruther PCM, 11 Aug. 1862; SAUL, B 65/13/2, St Andrews PCM, 9 May 1853; SAUL, B 3/6/1, Kilrenny PCM, 13 Jul. 1871, 10 Feb. 1873; HAC, BF 1/1/7, Fortrose PCM, 6 Mar. 1871; AA, K1/2/1 Kirriemuir PCM, 10 Jan. 1839.

78 Aberdeen Journal, 14 Dec. 1878; Glasgow Herald, 9 Oct. 1848, 4 Dec. 1872; Dundee Courier, 15 Aug. 1873.

79 Aberdeen Journal, 30 Aug. 1876, 4 Jun. 1881, 9 Aug. 1881; Dundee Courier, 30 Mar. 1869, 14 Jun. 1874; NAS 56/8/1 North Berwick PCM, 20 Aug. 1868.

80 Dundee Courier, 14 Jun. 1867; Aberdeen Journal, 11 Nov. 1880.

81 Caledonian Mercury, 8 Aug. 1866; Dundee Courier, 15 Aug. 1873.

82 Caledonian Mercury, 1 Aug. 1866, 23 Aug. 1866, 26 Sep. 1866, 3 Oct. 1866, 24 Oct. 1866; Aberdeen Journal, 14 Dec. 1878.

83 Caledonian Mercury, 9 Nov. 1848, Glasgow Herald, 9 Oct. 1848, 12 Jan. 1849, 14 Dec. 1872; Aberdeen Journal, 14 Dec. 1878, 13 Aug. 1884; ‘An act to make better provision for the removal of nuisances, regulation of lodging houses, and the health of towns in Scotland’, 19 & 20 Vict., c. ciii; C. Hamlin, ‘Public sphere to public health: the transformation of “nuisance”’, in Sturdy (ed.), Medicine, Health and the Public Sphere, 189–204, discusses the treatment of nuisances under similar legislation in England and Wales.

84 Glasgow Herald, 4 Dec. 1872.

85 Dundee Courier, 20 Feb. 1874, 4 Mar. 1874, 9 Mar. 1874.

86 DGAC, CB 842 1/1/2, Moffat PCM, 27 Sep. 1865, 7 Nov. 1866; AA, K1/2/1, Kirriemuir PCM, 19 Aug. 1838; AA, M 1/2/1, Montrose PCM, 9 Mar. 1835, 6 Apr. 1835; AA, M1/2/3, Montrose PCM, 9 Oct. 1854; ACAA, AS/Aphd/2/3, Peterhead PCM, 23 Oct., 1848; ACAA, CA 9/1/7, Aberdeen PCM, 6 Jun. 1842; ML, E 1/15/1, Glasgow PCM, nuisance removal committee, 20 May 1859, 29 Jul. 1859; CAC, NC 1/3/1, Thurso PCM, 13 May 1850; HAC, IB 1/4/1, Inverness PCM, 9 Jan. 1851; ECA, SL 80/4/11, Leith PCM, committee minutes, 3 May 1850; ECA, SL 80/4/15, Leith PCM, 1 Jun. 1866; SAUL, B 65/13/3, St Andrews PCM, 18 Feb. 1853.

87 Dundee Courier, 15 Mar. 1870.

88 MCA, MBC/5/5, Dalkeith TTM, 28 Mar. 1842; AA, K 1/2/1, Kirriemuir PCM, 13 Feb. 1837; AA, M 1/2/2, Montrose PCM, 8 Feb. 1847, M1/2/ 5, Montrose PCM, 10 Feb. 1868; ACAA, AS/Aphd/2/2, Peterhead PCM, 18 Oct. 1848.

89 ACAA, AS/Aphd/2/3, Peterhead PCM, 8 Jul. 1867.

90 Crook, ‘Sanitary inspection’, 384–9.