The problem with poo: a millennium of manure

Summary

---

History Extra Podcast – “The problem with poo: a millennium of manure”

Host: David Musgrove
Guest: Dr. Richard Jones, Associate Professor of Landscape History, University of Leicester
Date: November 19, 2025

---

Overview

This lively episode dives into the thousand-year history of manure, exploring its critical economic, social, and environmental role from the medieval era to today. Host David Musgrove and guest Dr. Richard Jones discuss the practicalities, perceptions, and changing attitudes toward manure and human waste, how societies have managed manure, and what lessons history might offer for today’s environmental challenges.

---

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Manure’s Central Role in Pre-Modern Agrarian Society

[04:05] – [05:59]

• Manure was "utterly essential" in the medieval economy, vital for keeping soil fertile in a time before artificial fertilizers.
• Dr. Jones emphasizes:

  “One could say, I think, that manure kind of underpins the medieval economy.” – Dr. Richard Jones [04:26]

• Primary sources from the Middle Ages reveal a deep concern for soil health and yields, with written agricultural treatises and manorial records illustrating manure’s importance.

2. Sources and Evidence of Manure Usage

[05:59] – [08:25]

• Medieval manure included animal and, to a lesser extent, human waste, plus green manures (plant material).
• Dr. Jones notes the continuity from Roman agricultural practices through to the 18th century, illustrating a long-standing awareness of manure’s value.
• The presence of pottery sherds on fields, established through archaeology, often marks historic manuring activity.

3. Manure as an Economic Asset and Social Indicator

[08:25] – [13:37]

• Manure was valuable—so much so that thefts occurred, and ownership was significant, especially between lords and peasants.

• Large, visible dunghills were prominent in the landscape and even used as boundary markers in Anglo-Saxon charters.

• On rural homesteads, each household would curate its own midden (heap). The more manure, the wealthier the household:

  “If you’re looking for a husband, look at the size of his dunghill.” – Dr. Richard Jones [13:25]

• Negative connotations persisted, but manure also registered as a marker of affluence among agricultural families.

4. Changing Perceptions: Urban vs. Rural & the Advent of Urbanization

[13:37] – [15:48]

• With urban growth, “night soil” (human waste) was systematically collected and sent to country fields, creating a symbiotic rural-urban nutrient cycle.
• This cycle broke down as authorities prioritized “cleanliness” and saw excrement as nuisance, not asset, particularly from the mid-19th century:

  “…we start to see that cycle being broken—that urban authorities are keen to cleanse their towns... seeing... rivers as an opportunity… to flush away what they see as a problem.” – Dr. Richard Jones [14:51]

5. Victorian Infrastructure: Innovation and Environmental Crisis

[15:48] – [23:43]

• By the mid-1800s, large sewer systems emerged (notably Joseph Bazalgette's work in London), shifting from recycling nutrients back to land toward disposal via water.
• Animal and human waste in towns was a major issue—authorities were active in insuring cleanliness for both health and civic pride, contrary to some modern perceptions about ‘filthy’ medieval and early modern towns.
• The “sewage question” emerged: how to manage increasing volumes of waste without creating new pollutants (notably river pollution).
• Sewage farming was developed—using urban effluent directly on agricultural land, proven both effective and economically viable:

  “Sewage farming was remarkably efficient... analyses of the effluent waters that are leaving farms after being applied to fields... that natural percolation through the soil has certainly clarified the sewage, if not purified it.” – Dr. Richard Jones [25:15]

6. Alternative Technologies & The Pneumatic Sewer

[26:18] – [29:27]

• Victorian inventors tried chemical treatments, dry closets (composting toilets), keeping water out of waste, and even pneumatic (vacuum) systems.
• The pneumatic system (proposed by a Dutchman, Lerner) saw popularity on the continent, but Bazalgette’s waterborne system dominated Britain.
• Paris pioneered converting sewage solids into “poudret” (a kind of dry fertilizer) for use in agriculture.

7. Modern Practices and Cultural Contrasts

[29:27] – [32:30]

• “Biosolids” (treated sewage sludge) are still applied to agricultural land today, strictly regulated, and less likely to be used on food crops directly consumed raw.
• There remains societal aversion, especially in the West, to using human waste as fertilizer. Dr. Jones contrasts this to practices in East Asia, where human excrement was (and sometimes still is) critical due to fewer large livestock:

  “It has been traditional in Asia, in particular, to make more use of human excrement than has been the case in Europe... Is this a cultural choice or is it an economic choice? I suspect it is a bit of both.” – Dr. Richard Jones [31:25]

8. Lessons for Today: Waste Management and Future Possibilities

[32:30] – [34:48]

• Modern waste contains new pollutants (microplastics, heavy metals) absent in the past, complicating its reuse.
• There may still be lessons to draw from pre-industrial approaches, such as using waste for non-food crops (e.g., biofuels).
• Dr. Jones reflects:

  “An interest in medieval manure has one eye, of course, on the growth in organic farming. And I think that there is wisdom to be found in the practices of medieval peasants that could be usefully applied in 21st century organic farming.” – Dr. Richard Jones [33:05]

• Infrastructure designed in the Victorian era still shapes present-day waste management—a challenge and a limit, but also an opportunity for new approaches.

---

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “Manure kind of underpins the medieval economy.” — Dr. Richard Jones [04:26]
• “The theft of manure, for example. We could even turn to coroner's records and discover that people are dying on dunghills...” — Dr. Richard Jones [07:22]
• “If you’re looking for a husband, look at the size of his dunghill.” — Dr. Richard Jones [13:25]
• "I guess you could call river pollution the first great environmental crisis of the industrial age." — Dr. Richard Jones [22:55]
• “The pneumatic system was tried out in Germany and the Low Countries, but it really didn’t catch on in Britain.” — Dr. Richard Jones [28:57]
• “The dunghill—that feature of the medieval landscape—is also a feature of the 21st-century countryside, too.” — Dr. Richard Jones [30:55]

---

Important Timestamps

• [04:05] – Manure’s vital role in the medieval economy
• [07:22] – Sources: manorial records, theft, and deaths on dunghills
• [13:25] – Dunghills as social status (“look at the size of his dunghill”)
• [14:51] – Breakdown of the rural-urban nutrient cycle
• [22:55] – “River pollution...the first great environmental crisis of the industrial age”
• [25:15] – Efficacy and economics of sewage farming
• [28:57] – Pneumatic sewage systems and their limited adoption
• [30:55] – Continuity of dunghills from past to present
• [33:05] – Wisdom from the past for organic farming today

---

Tone and Style

The conversation is energetic, humorous, and grounded in historical detail—balancing academic rigor with an engaging, down-to-earth narrative. Dr. Jones brings both expertise and wit, making the history of manure surprisingly fascinating and relevant to contemporary conversations about sustainability and environmental management.

---

Conclusion

The episode reveals manure as a linchpin of agricultural history and a lens for viewing both changing human attitudes and the transformation of economic and environmental systems over the last millennium. From medieval dunghills to Bazalgette’s sewers and today’s biosolids, the journey of poo is, as Dr. Jones demonstrates, a surprisingly rich story with lessons for our own age.

---

Transcript

[A]

It's that time of year again. Everyone knows that the holidays can become overwhelming quickly, so the sooner you get things done, the better for both shoppers and businesses. The best time to score great deals during the holidays is Black Friday Cyber Monday weekend. Shopify is the commerce platform behind millions of businesses around the world, from household names to entrepreneurs who are participating in their first Black Friday Cyber Monday this year. This Black Friday join thousands of new entrepreneurs hearing for the first time with Shopify Celebrity. Sign up for your free trial [e-mail] promo. That's shopify.com promo go to shopify.com promo and make this Black Friday one to.

[B]

Remember, Black Friday Savings are here at the Home Depot, which means it's time to add new cordless power to your collection. Right now, when you buy a select battery kit from one of our top brands like Ryobi or Milwaukee, you'll get a select tool from that same brand for free. Click into one of our best deals of the season and stock up on tools for all your upcoming projects. Get Black Friday Savings happening now at the Home Depot. Limit one per transaction exclusion supply full eligible tool list in store and online. This episode is brought to you by Disney. This Thanksgiving, Judy Hopps and Nick Wilde are back on the big screen, so grab your family and friends as Disney invites you to return to Zootopia for the Fur Nominal movie event of the holiday season. See all your favorite Zootopia characters, plus new favorites in the most paw eomet movie of the year. Don't miss Disney Zootopia 2 when it hits theaters everywhere November 26th. Get your tickets now.

[C]

This episode is brought to you by Netflix from the creator of Homeland. Claire Danes and Matthew Rhys star in the new Netflix series the Beast and Me as ruthless rivals whose shared darkness will set them on a collision course with fatal consequences. The Beast in Me is a riveting psychological cat and mouse story about guilt, justice and doubt. You will not want to miss this. The Beast in Me is now playing only on Netflix.

[B]

Welcome to the History Extra Podcast. Fascinating historical conversations from the makers of BBC History Magazine. When did poo become a problem? Why was manure so important in the medieval economy? And why don't we have vacuum powered sewers? All these questions and more are answered in this brief history of both animal and human manure, in which David Musgrove puts the questions to the University of Leicester's Dr. Richard Jones. Before we start though, I just wanted to mark your cards that if you're interested in the history of toilets and the social and cultural stories that go with them. We have an entire podcast series to Toilets Through Time waiting for you. If you're a History Extra member, you can access the whole series and we've just dropped three brand new episodes on Prehistoric, Viking and Anglo, Saxon and Early Modern toilets. Subscribe to History Extra plus or head to the History Extra app to access all these episodes, including existing instalments on Roman, Medieval, Tudor and Victorian Lews. For now, though, it's over to David and Richard for that conversation about manure.

[D]

I am delighted to be joined on the podcast by Dr. Richard Jones, who is a landscape historian and an expert in a very interesting topic, manure. We are going to try and do a short history of manure. So, Richard, welcome to the podcast. How are you today?

[A]

I'm great. Thanks ever so much for inviting me on.

[D]

It's a pleasure to have you. So, manure. Now, on the surface, that seems like a somewhat odd topic to want to have a conversation about, but I think it's very important and it's got lots of things that sort of feed into social, cultural, environmental history. Lots of strands we can explore. Let's kick off in the Medieval period. How important was manure in the medieval economy?

[A]

Well, I don't think it's possible to overestimate the significance of manure in the Middle Ages. We are dealing here with a predominantly agrarian society, pre industrial society, an economy therefore, based on growing crops and raising livestock. And for any farmer, the need to keep their soil in good heart to ensure that they get good yields is an absolute imperative. So one could say, I think that manure kind of underpins the medieval economy.

[D]

Yeah, absolutely. And when we're talking about manure, maybe we should just define what we mean and define how medieval people saw it. Did they make a clear distinction between animal and human manure, for instance?

[A]

Yeah, that's a really good question, because manure can cover a whole variety of different organic materials. We're dealing, of course, here with not artificial fertilisers, but organic waste. And that could include green manures. So plowing back plant matter into the soil to give it good humic content. But really we are dealing with the excrement of animals and of humans, potentially. Although I have to say that when you start to look for evidence of the use of human waste, it's actually quite difficult to find. I suspect that they are drawing on that resource. Why wouldn't they? Farmers looked for this kind of fertilizing material wherever they could find it, and they drew on all sorts of different kinds of local resource. Those who worked land near the coast, for example, would use sea sand and would use seaweed alongside their farmyard manures. But really, I guess, the most significant contributor to the manure stock, if you like, were domestic animals.

[D]

And what do we know about manure? How can we understand it? Did they write about it a lot in sources, or were we relying solely on sort of archaeological evidence to understand the use of manure in the medieval economy?

[A]

Now we can turn to written sources that permit us a view onto the practice of manuring. We have agricultural treaties. The 13th century treatise known as Husbandry, written by Walter of Henley, for example, talks about manuring in broader context. And going beyond Britain, we have agricultural treaties that are being written on the continent right the way through the medieval period. Very often they're drawing upon the work of earlier agronomists, the Roman agronomists, particularly. You can think about cato or varro and columella. All of their instructions to farmers are being filtered down and picked up again in the medieval period. I think we have a continuity of practice, certainly from the Roman through to the 17th or 18th century in terms of what people are doing in order to keep their soils in good condition. The other types of source that we can draw upon, of course, are the manorial records. So manorial accounts tell us much about when people were manuring and other aspects of husbandry. Court rolls can tell us something about manure, too. The theft of manure, for example. We could even turn to coroner's records and discover that people are dying on dunghills, for example, which is a good indication that people are curating manure in certain places. So there are a range of historical sources that you can draw upon. They tend to be fragmentary, of course, and you have to reconstruct the broader picture from little tidbits, but we can do that. You're absolute geology is important, too. So some of the inorganic materials that were integrated into the dunghill on the farmstead were carried out with that manure onto the fields. And I suspect listeners will be familiar with the archaeological technique of field walking and picking up sherds of pottery from the surface of modern fields that give an indication of whether a field has been manured in the past. And, of course, because we can date the pottery when that activity was taking place. So we can combine history and archaeology to get this broader picture of manuring.

[D]

You just offered a fascinating little tidbit of information there, that there's records that speak of theft of manure. So that invites the question, who Owns the poo in the Middle Ages. How was that established? And was this stuff valuable?

[A]

It is certainly valuable. The lord ensures that he has best access to the manure stock. So it was a fairly commonplace practice for peasant animals, sheep in particular, to be folded or fallowed on the lord's demesne fields, enabling him to capture the fertilizing power of the community's herds and flocks. But the peasants themselves, of course, are holding a few head of animals, and they will be assiduous in gathering the manure from their own animals.

[D]

So what's the picture in a medieval village in terms of manure, then? So you've talked about dunghills and people dying on dunghills, which perhaps we might explore as to why that would be the case in a second. But so are we imagining big piles of steaming manure around a village that would be utilised at certain points in the year? And it sounds like there were specific instructions and treaties that advised people as to the best way to utilise it.

[A]

Yeah. So if you think about how waste is treated, I think there is a difference that we can Dr. The urban context and the rural cesspits are predominantly an urban phenomenon, whereas in the rural setting, this kind of waste would have been middened. So we're dealing with surface middens, we're dealing with dunghills, some of which can be quite large and quite prominent. I'm thinking about the references, for example, to dunghills in Anglo Saxon charters. You know, the descriptions that we have of the boundaries of estates that are being transferred. These descriptions provide us a really kind of rich sense of what the landscape looked like. And on a number of these charters, in a number of these charters, we find that dunghills are being used as a marker to identify the boundary of an estate. Now, one does that if the feature itself is sufficiently prominent and characteristic so one can see it. But one can also think of it as a semi permanent feature of the landscape. I've mused about what this actually means. It probably means that the community was oversupplied with dung, that they weren't using all of their stock and they were creating this large midden at the edge of their estates. But yes, the dung hill will have been a prominent feature of the medieval village landscape. Each homestead, I suspect, would have been curating its own midden.

[D]

And have you got any context on why somebody might die on a dunghill? As you mentioned, these court rolls say, was there, like, crimes committed on dunghills, or was this just people falling into Heaps of manure.

[A]

Well, I think there are people who fall into cesspits and we do have evidence of people drowning in cess. But the dunghill also provided a fantastic place to bury and hide bodies. So it may well be that in some of these cases, the dunghill itself wasn't an active participant in whatever nefarious crime had been taking, but was a convenient place to hide the evidence.

[D]

Right, okay, that makes sense. Yeah. A very nasty way to go, falling into a cesspit. It's always struck me as a particularly unpleasant way to meet your end. So we've just talked about the fact that this was important stuff, an important part of the economy, and valuable in many respects. Do we know how people felt about it? We have an aversion. Well, certainly to human poo. There's a disgust to it, isn't there? Certainly, when we smell excrement today, do we know what sort of attitude they had to it in the past? Were they much more comfortable with it because it was just a fact of life?

[A]

No, I think that they shared the same kinds of disgust that we have for this material today that I don't think has changed. It's certainly true that they will have been living in closer proximity to dung. But all of the kind of literary references to dunghills tend to be negative. There are negative connotations that are associated with it. Manure is a material that is very much associated with the lower orders. It's material that you don't want to get your hands dirty with, if you can help it. So, of course, that is coming through the lens of kind of erudite literature. So we are getting perhaps attitudes there that are being expressed by the upper echelons of society. I suspect that for peasant communities there was much less disgust for the material. Indeed, it was seen as essential. And that's certainly true cross culturally. If you look at other parts of the world at other times, access to manure is hugely important. You know, the size of your dunghill is an indicator of your affluence. The more animals you have, the larger your dunghill. You know, if you're looking for a husband, look at the size of his dunghill to know whether you're marrying into a family that is well off.

[D]

I mean, that seems like sound advice to me. Now, you mentioned earlier the relationship between sort of the urban and rural environments and perhaps the different attitudes to manure that existed in those places. As we move forwards in time and urbanism takes root much more fully across Britain, does that relationship start to change, do we start to see the dynamic between urban and rural societies alter? And do we start to see any differences in the way that manure is moved between those different environments?

[A]

Yeah. So certainly by the early modern period, we know that night soil, which is the euphemism being used for this material, is being collected in urban centres and is being recycled out in the surrounding fields. So there is this kind of mutual relationship between town and country. And if you like, there's this virtuous cycle of return that the products from the countryside consumed by the town and turned into waste, are sent back to the fish fields. So there is that cycle and there is that kind of unbroken link between town and country. And it's only much later that we start to see that cycle being broken, that urban authorities are keen to cleanse their towns and are looking for more efficient ways of ridding their streets with nuisances and dung and seeing potentially rivers, for example, as an opportunity to. Or a space that they can use in order to flush away what they see as a problem. So we see they're developing a break in a very long tradition which recognized the importance of returning nutrients, the soil, towards an attitude of seeing the material as a problem rather than as a. An asset. And that's a hugely important attitudinal change. And the consequences of that, of course, we still live with.

[D]

And if I was to try to pin you down on a date when that attitudinal change happened, roughly what's the period in which we start to see that shift?

[A]

It's a difficult one to pin down, but we are certainly seeing its full development by the middle of the 19th century. And I guess the best example of that are the great works of Joseph Bazalgette and the introduction of sewage systems into London that are all designed to use water to carry potential manure away to the River Thames.

[D]

So we'll come back to that in just a second. But it's really interesting, isn't it, this idea that manure excrement of animals and humans moves from being like a valuable resource to being something to be got rid of. And I think it's worth talking a little bit about the fact that in urban environments, for a long time there were a lot of animals. Like, you know, you go to London today and you don't see cows walking down Oxford street. But for a long time there were a lot of animals in urban context, weren't there, producing manure?

[A]

Yeah, an awful lot of animals and an awful lot of manure that was being produced Alongside all of the waste of all sorts of crafts and industries. Butchers and fishmongers, of course, are contributing to this waste stock. We have some really, really rich records from London in particular, but from other towns across the country that give us a really clear sense of the environmental problems that waste were causing. I'm thinking here of the sizes of nuisance in London, which give a very, very vivid picture of the amount of detritus that urban authorities were having to deal with. And I think too about my own hometown, Nottingham, in the 15th century, early 15th century, the town authorities were perambulating through the streets and identifying miscreants who had left dung in the streets to the nuisance of others and ensuring that their towns and their streets were cleansed. So it was a huge issue, the volumes of organic waste that were being produced, significantly greater than, of course, modern society now produces.

[D]

And am I right in thinking that these urban authorities, certainly in the medieval and early modern periods, were assiduous in trying to clean that up? They were keen on getting it moved out of the city using these nights, or men using carts moving around the city to move it away so that it could be used profitably. Is that the right way of looking at it?

[A]

It is. And you know, I know that there is perhaps a tendency to characterize the Middle Ages as a kind of filthy period of history, and dear old Monty Python hasn't helped that image of this particular period. But no, the importance of cleansing, the importance of ensuring public health. The great problem with dung is that it was thought potentially to corrupt the air with the idea of miasma theory and the fact that disease was airborne. All of this plays on the mind of authorities. And so, to a degree of civic pride, urban authorities are keen for their towns and cities to look good and to look as though they are being looked after and administered well. So all of that, of course, encourages authorities to deal with this kind of nuisance wherever they find it, and as soon as possible.

[C]

This episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Do you ever think about switching insurance companies just to see if you could save some cash? Well, Progressive makes it easy. Just drop in some details about yourself and see if you're eligible to save money. When you bundle your home and auto policy, the process only takes minutes and it could mean hundreds more in your pocket. Visit progressive.com after this episode to see if you could save Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates. Potential savings will vary. Not available in all states. This episode is brought to you by Rakuten. The holidays are here and that means it's the most wonderful time of the year. To Save with Rakuten Use Rakuten to stack cash back at your favorite stores on top of holiday sales. That's savings on savings. With Rakuten, you can get cash back on gifts for everyone on your list, from toys for the kids to kitchen gear for the person who loves to cook to electronics for everyone. You can even save on something for yourself. Cash back is automatically added to your account as you shop and you can get paid with gift cards, PayPal or check. Or eligible American Express card members can choose to earn Membership Rewards points, join for free today and get a new member bonus after minimum qualifying purchases. Just go to rakuten.com, download the the app or install the browser extension. Terms and conditions apply. This episode is brought to you by Nespresso Gift Magical Mornings with Nespresso Vertuo Pop Compact and stylish, Vertuo Pop is made to meet every morning coffee craving, from espresso to coffee, hot or iced at the click of a button and celebrate the season with Nespresso's limited edition coffee flavors sweet almond and hibiscus, cinnamon and candied tamarind and festive double espresso. Magic in the making. Shop the holiday gift collection [e-mail] now.

[D]

Going back to the point you're making about the introduction of waterborne sewerage systems, might it be reasonable to assume that before those systems were implemented, there wasn't a specific problem of pollution in most of Britain's waterways? Were they not having a lot of manure, excrement, animal and human going into them?

[A]

Yeah, I think that that is fair to assume. It's certainly true that the decision that was made, Bazalgette's decision, decision made on purely economic grounds to introduce what we call the combined sewer system. So that is, that's a single sewer that is capturing domestic and industrial sewage, but also stormwater's rainwater had a massive impact in the sense that the volumes of of tainted water were enormous and where that water went was a huge issue and a huge challenge. Had, you know, other decisions been made and separate sewage systems been introduced to towns and cities that kept that domestic and industrial sewage separate from surface water, groundwater, rainwater and the like, then the volumes of sewage water needing treatment would have been much reduced.

[D]

We'll talk about some of those alternatives in a second, if we can. So we're now talking specifically in the Victorian period, right in the middle of the Victorian period with Bazalgette, and we've got these Great sewers being introduced, and obviously that's aligned with the introduction of flushing toilets, and domestic residences have flushing mechanisms going on. Was there much of a conversation then about the inherent risks of having all this stuff flowing into rivers, or was it just deemed to be a good thing to just get rid of it and people didn't think it would become a problem?

[A]

Yeah. By the middle of the 19th century, the pollution of rivers was a really hot topic. And the question of what one was to do with ever growing volumes of sewage was a topic of much debate. It was called the sewage question. And for social reformers, for politicians, this really was a huge issue. And Royal commissions were established to look into the problem of sewage and particularly the problem of river pollution. And political legislation was enacted in order to try and find solutions too. I guess you could call river pollution the first great environmental crisis of the industrial age. And the answer that the Royal commissions and others were suggesting was that this sewage had to be turned away from the rivers and back to the land. And so we get, in the 19th century, we have the phenomenon of sewage farming developing, the municipal sewage farm, where millions and millions of gallons of sewage were put to agricultural use.

[D]

And this was kind of liquefied sewage, was it? How did that work? What was the idea?

[A]

Yes, this is liquefied manure. The idea was to capture the sewage, the totality of the sewage in the urban setting, and to transport that, preferably under gravitation, to lower ground. But if that was unavailable, to pump it up to very carefully engineered fields that were designed to receive all of this liquid waste and where it was applied to the soil, particularly to the kinds of crops that like a lot of water and a lot of nutrients. So fast growing grasses, for example, but also root crops in particular. The Mangel Wurzel was the favourite root crop of the sewage farmer because it ate up vast volumes of this sewage very, very happily. And the idea was for the sewage water to percolate naturally through the soils, so the effluent water, the water that was actually leaving these sewage farm farms, would have been purified and were able to be returned to natural watercourses without causing more pollution. Sewage farming was remarkably efficient. In actual fact, we have analyses of the crude sewage that is going on to sewage farms and analyses of the effluent waters that are leaving farms after being applied to fields. And you can see that that natural percolation through the soil has certainly clarified the sewage, if not purified it. Indeed, I would suggest that that form of treatment of waste was more efficient than any of the chemical treatments that were tried where designed to precipitate out all of the solid matter in sewage by the addition of chemical elements. It was also cheaper, and, of course, it had the derived benefits that you were getting a marketable crop from your sewage farm. So the economics of sewage farming were pretty good. There was some public resistance to sewage farms and their products. We have quite a few cases of people complaining about the smells that emanated from sewage farms, and we certainly have quite a vocal body of people who were suspicious about the quality of the foodstuffs that were coming off those farms. We have no examples of any proper public health scares that arise from this practice of farming with sewage.

[D]

Now, we've missed a crucial bit of the story here that I wanted to interrogate, which is, what were the other approaches to sewerage that proposed in the Victorian period? So what did people suggest they might utilise other than these waterborne sewerage systems?

[A]

Well, there wasn't very much option, certainly after 1876 and the rivers Pollution Prevention act, which precluded authorities from running their sewage into their rivers and watercourses. And you can, you know, there are vivid descriptions, for example, of the Irwell in Manchester, written by the great social reformer Edwin Chadwick, which gives you some sense of the pollution problem that was faced. The only other alternatives were chemical treatments. And there were hundreds and hundreds, literally hundreds and hundreds of patents that were taken out during the 19th century by individuals who were looking to find the perfect mix of chemicals in order to purify and to clarify the sewage. There were those who thought that the best solution was not to produce a highly diluted sewage load in the first instance. So there were advocates for dry closets rather than water closets. We would call them composting loos, where they were soil based and kept the solid waste and urine separate. That was relatively effective and would again have reduced the volumes of sewage that were produced. And indeed, there was an invention by a Dutch fellow called Lerner who wanted to introduce a pneumatic system of waste disposal so that your waste would be sucked from your house under vacuum. And again, a system that was all designed to ensure that water didn't get into the system in Paris, they were filtering out the solid elements of the sewage and they were converting that into something called poudret, which is a kind of dry guano, and applying that to fields. So the Victorian period, the 19th century, of course, is a hugely inventive one, and all the great mines were applying themselves to this Problem of how to not just dispose of human waste, but actually turn it into something that was valuable, had a secondary use and which was marketable.

[D]

I was reading about that pneumatic system and you mentioned it to me before we had the conversation and it was much discussed in the newspapers. People were very excited by the innovative approach that was being proposed there. But I guess that didn't take off just because it was too difficult and waterborne systems were just easier to get into play.

[A]

Yeah, I mean, the system was introduced onto the continent. The pneumatic system was tried out in Germany and in the Low Countries, but it really didn't catch on in Britain. I think that it was only introduced and partially in one location, a small town in Essex, if I remember correctly. I guess it was the success of Bazalgette's system that ultimately won the day. And of course that was then the model that was copied across the country in other, other large conurbations.

[D]

Right, where are we now with our attitude to manure, to excrement, both from humans and animals, and how are we drawing on the experience of the past, do you think?

[A]

That is an interesting question. People might be surprised to know that sewage is still being used in modern day agriculture. It just happens not to be in a liquid form, but again, the solid materials that are precipitated out at wastewater treatment plants. The so called sewage sludge, when treated and dried and turned into what is euphemistically now called biosolid, is still spread in significant tonnages across large areas of agricultural land today. This doesn't necessarily go down well with those who encounter these fields. And there are strong voices against the use and the application of this sewage sludge and its use in agriculture, but it's highly regulated. European laws dictate how much of this solid can be put on the field and when and what kind of crops. You can apply it to fruit trees, for example, but you can't apply it to salad crops, for example. So we are still using human waste in agriculture and of course we are still using animal manures, as any walk in the countryside in the autumn will show you the dunghill. That feature of the medieval landscape is also a feature of the 21st century countryside too.

[D]

And am I right in thinking that there's a sort of a Western aversion to human manure, certainly that didn't exist in the east for a long time and they had quite different attitudes certainly in China and Japan, to use of human excrement for manure?

[A]

Yeah, no, that's A very, very important point to make and a distinction to draw. It has been traditional in Asia, in particular, to make more use of human excrement than has been the case in Europe. Now, there are a number of reasons why that should be the case. The great global historian Alfred Crosby, known of course for his famous book on the Colombian exchange, argued that Europe came to economic dominance in the medieval period because the continent had a lot of large domestic animals and they provided power, they provided protein, but above all, they provided manure. So we have human manures in large quantities in Western Europe. By contrast, in Asia, where there is an absence of these kind of large ungulates, the significance or the importance then of capturing human excrement and using that in the fields is an economic imperative. Is this a cultural choice or is it an economic choice? I suspect it is a bit of both. But economics is certainly playing a large part in that.

[D]

That's very interesting to wrap up. You're an expert in the history of manure. You've just given a tour de force explanation of what we've done with manure in the last few centuries. So when we see these problems that we have today in terms of sewerage, going into watercourses, and all the problems that we hear about in the news, do you think to yourself, ah, I know the answer to this. What does history tell us that we ought to be doing to sort out the problems with our sewage today?

[A]

Well, I wish you the answer. That would be great. But I do think these kind of deep dives into history offer potential templates or certainly ideas that we could play with in order to address some of the environmental challenges of our own times. An interest in medieval manure has one eye, of course, on the growth in organic farming. And I think that there is wisdom to be found in the practices of medieval peasants that could be usefully applied in 21st century organic farming. In terms of our sewage problem, sometimes the water companies will argue that half the problem is that they're dealing with Victorian infrastructure. And that is certainly the case. We are tied into wastewater management through networks that were created in the Victorian period and designed for farming, rather than disposal of sewage. Whether we will see a return to sewage farm is a moot point. However, modern sewage is not the same as Victorian sewage. There are microplastics, there are heavy metals, there are all sorts of other nasties that lurk in modern sewage that we would have to be very careful about if we were to return it to the soil. Certainly, if one was thinking about growing commodities for consumption. I was thinking about this the other day and was looking at a field of biofuel, you know that kind of pampas grass that's now popping up around the country. It's a water loving plant. It grows really, really quickly. You bail it up and you send it to the power stations. It seems to me that there are possibilities there of perhaps taking a portion of our modern sewage, whether that is crude sewage or whether it's partially treated sewage, and using it to grow crops that are not going to be for human consumption but which actually are contributing to the economy in different ways.

[B]

That was Dr. Richard Jones, Associate professor of Landscape History at the University of Leicester, speaking to David Musgrove. Just a reminder that if you're interested in more toilet related content, you can subscribe to History Extra plus or head to the History Extra app where you can access the whole of David's Toilets Through Time series where he speaks to expert historians about the bogs and loos of old, from ancient latrines to medieval privies. We've even just dropped three more exclusive episodes and you can listen to the whole lot now. Now find the links to all of this in the description to this episode. And Doug, Here we have the Limu.

[A]

Emu in its natural habitat, helping people.

[B]

Customize their car insurance and save hundreds with Liberty Mutual.

[A]

Fascinating.

[D]

It's accompanied by his natural ally, Doug.

[B]

Uh, limu is that guy with the binoculars watching us?

[D]

Cut the camera. They see us.

[A]

Only pay for what you need@liberty mutual.com.

[C]

Liberty Liberty Liberty Liberty Savings Fairy Underwritten.

[A]

By Liberty Mutual Insurance Company and affiliates.

[C]

Excludes Massachusetts this holiday Discover meaningful gifts for everyone on your list at K. Not sure where to start? Our jewelry experts are here to help you find or create the perfect gift in store or online. Book your appointment today and unwrap love this season only at Catch Are you ready to smash your health goals and.

[B]

Finish 2025 feeling better than ever? Whether you want to eat more, veg.

[C]

Up your protein intake, gain weight or lose it, Nutricheck can help you get there.

[B]

Check the calories and nutrients in over.

[C]

Half a million UK foods on the Nutracheck app, including all your favourite restaurant.

[B]

Chains and more than 900 healthy and.

[C]

Delicious good food recipes. Download Nutracheck today and enjoy a free seven day trial. Rated excellent on trustpilot.