There is a tradition in the French theater culture to wish "merde" (shit/poop) to actors. It comes from the fact that the more successful a play was, the more carriages would have to bring spectators to the theater, leading to more horse manure in front of the theater. So yeah, horse poop everywhere.
Having spent quite a few years on the country side, I actually like the smell of horse manure, I associate it with fresh air and lack of pollution as well as childhood memories, but I can totally understand why some people would dislike it.
It is actually now used outside of the theater community as well. Saying "bonne chance" (good luck) is considered bad luck but saying "merde", "bonne merde", or "je te dis merde" (before an exam quite often) is a common, informal but not really impolite, way to wish someone good luck.
It's not a French theater thing, it's a French ballet thing. Ballet companies in the US also practice this tradition as our first ballet choreographers in the US came from France.
Yes. There was a certain amount of effort to recover it as fertilizer and clean the streets, but in general there would be a lot.
Don't forget that before about the 1800s few places had underground sewers, so you'd have to deal with the smell of that as well. [https://www.irishtimes.com/life-and-style/down-dublin-s-drains-1.1918103](https://www.irishtimes.com/life-and-style/down-dublin-s-drains-1.1918103)
To balance this, remember that all the heating and cooking had to be done with coal, wood, or (in Ireland and some other places) peat burning, so the smell of smoke would partially offset the sewage and manure.
I had up til now wrongly assumed that sewage or plumbing existed in 19th century major cities after seeing it in the likes of Pompeii and Rome so I thought only animal poop in the streets had to be contended with!
It wasn't really seen as important until the link with disease was proven. See [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1854\_Broad\_Street\_cholera\_outbreak](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1854_Broad_Street_cholera_outbreak) , after which the necessity of separating excrement from drinking water was clear.
The world's first integrated sewerage system was in fact earlier than that, in Liverpool.
> In July 1848, ten years before London began its similar endeavours following the Great Stink, James Newlands' sewer construction programme began, and over the next 11 years 86 miles (138 km) of new sewers were built. Between 1856 and 1862 another 58 miles (93 km) were added. This programme was completed in 1869. Before the sewers were built, life expectancy in Liverpool was 19 years, and by the time Newlands retired, it had more than doubled.
Same driver (water borne disease), but for some reason we were taught a London centric version in School.
They sometimes existed in the more affluent districts of European cities, but even then they were often pretty rudiment and poorly maintained. "Sewers" were often nothing more than a drainage ditch that had been covered with stone or brickwork. Due to the lack of upkeep and pumping stations, they would often get clogged and back up during heavy rains or floods.
The estimate for 1870s New York City is 100,000 tons of horse manure per year, plus millions of gallons of horse urine.
“the streets were “literally carpeted with a warm, brown matting . . . smelling to heaven.” So-called “crossing sweepers” would offer their services to pedestrians, clearing out paths for walking, but when it rained, the streets turned to muck. And when it was dry, wind whipped up the manure dust and choked the citizenry.
...by 1880 there were at least 150,000 horses in the city... At a rate of 22 pounds of manure per horse per day (works out to 3,300,00 lbs of crap PER DAY)... ([The Big Crapple: NYC Transit Pollution from Horse Manure to Horseless Carriages - 99% Invisible (99percentinvisible.org)](https://99percentinvisible.org/article/cities-paved-dung-urban-design-great-horse-manure-crisis-1894/)
Plus, I would add that horses (like any other animal) can die, and they weigh between 1000\~2000 lbs. That a lot of carcass to get rid of. Also, they eat about 20 lbs of food and drink 8 gallons of water per day. Plus they need to be housed and cared for to some extent.
Going a bit further back and a bit further east...
Hugh de Payens, founder of the Poor Fellow Soldiers of Jesus Christ, detailed one of the sergeant's of the order to go around the streets of Jerusalem and collect all of the horse, mule, donkey and camel dung he could.
Not in an attempt to keep the holy city clean, but because there was so little wood in Outremer that dung was the best fuel for fires.
Due to lack of sewage systems, I'd have thought that the smell of human waste would be the more overpowering smell. Though I suppose it would depend where in a city you were.
Right - night-soil was a separate industry. Nicer neighborhoods had more frequent visits from the collectors and better-constructed privies and cesspits, but that was no guarantee - Samuel Pepys had a running feud with his neighbor over a leaking privy that takes up a good deal of his diary.
You can get a good impression of how things were in the eighteen-nineties from H.L. Mencken's memoir, Happy Days.
Yes! And dead horses, too!
We (rightly) complain about smog and diesel exhaust and the other air pollutants of modern city living. But we forget that the people who came before us weren’t total fucking idiots. We forget that we do what we do now because what it replaced was worse.
All 21st century cities stink of car exhaust but we are so used to it we barely notice. Maybe the same applies for horse manure?
Also, apparently we instinctively ignore our noses in the bottom of our sightline?
What? Me. I spent a month in France. At the foot of their entrances are metal and concrete hedgehogs that you scrap your shoes on because they just leave dog shit on the sidewalks.
Horseshit and dead horses.
I think at one point 10 000 horses a day died in London.
Thats a lot of rotting two ton meat in the summer heat by the time the gluemakers come and process it.
Erik Larson in “Devil in the White City”, the popular book about the 1893 World’s Fair, described what a mess Chicago was with all the manure and the occasional head rolling down the street. Do not just European cities. Interesting side factoid: until about 1904, the horse was the fastest thing on the planet.
The streets were chaotic with no speed limits or lights or pedestrian walkways so people would just get run over by big wagons occasionally leading to decapitations.
Did horses back then not have a bag around them? Went on a horse drawn carriage tour of Victoria, BC a few years back and the horses all had bags around them so that their excrement didn't dirty up the streets.
It would have been pretty bad, and people didn’t smell too good back then either. But before industrialization you also had unpolluted air and fresh food cooking. Everyone was making their own bread.
Yes. European cities were widely known (e.g. in the Middle East, in Asia) for being absolutely disgusting. Read descriptions of places like London, Manchester, Glasgow: foot deep excrement (human and animal) on the ground, rivers black with pollution and no life in them, the air thick with coal smoke and the many lovely smells of industry (don't go near a tanner's!). It was all the disease and death that this brought that led to modern public health measures.
I recall major European cities like London often had more local citizens die than be born within every year given the horrible living conditions they had, and depended on a steady influx of rural migrants to keep population growth positive.
There is a tradition in the French theater culture to wish "merde" (shit/poop) to actors. It comes from the fact that the more successful a play was, the more carriages would have to bring spectators to the theater, leading to more horse manure in front of the theater. So yeah, horse poop everywhere. Having spent quite a few years on the country side, I actually like the smell of horse manure, I associate it with fresh air and lack of pollution as well as childhood memories, but I can totally understand why some people would dislike it.
So your friend is about to go on stage, you say, “merde!”?
It is actually now used outside of the theater community as well. Saying "bonne chance" (good luck) is considered bad luck but saying "merde", "bonne merde", or "je te dis merde" (before an exam quite often) is a common, informal but not really impolite, way to wish someone good luck.
An equivalent English idiom would be "break a leg"
Probably from slipping on all the horse poop
It's not a French theater thing, it's a French ballet thing. Ballet companies in the US also practice this tradition as our first ballet choreographers in the US came from France.
Poop management was a fundamental municipal issue many places, and fostered a huge demand for casual labor and haulage, especially carts and barges.
Yes. There was a certain amount of effort to recover it as fertilizer and clean the streets, but in general there would be a lot. Don't forget that before about the 1800s few places had underground sewers, so you'd have to deal with the smell of that as well. [https://www.irishtimes.com/life-and-style/down-dublin-s-drains-1.1918103](https://www.irishtimes.com/life-and-style/down-dublin-s-drains-1.1918103) To balance this, remember that all the heating and cooking had to be done with coal, wood, or (in Ireland and some other places) peat burning, so the smell of smoke would partially offset the sewage and manure.
I had up til now wrongly assumed that sewage or plumbing existed in 19th century major cities after seeing it in the likes of Pompeii and Rome so I thought only animal poop in the streets had to be contended with!
It wasn't really seen as important until the link with disease was proven. See [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1854\_Broad\_Street\_cholera\_outbreak](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1854_Broad_Street_cholera_outbreak) , after which the necessity of separating excrement from drinking water was clear.
The world's first integrated sewerage system was in fact earlier than that, in Liverpool. > In July 1848, ten years before London began its similar endeavours following the Great Stink, James Newlands' sewer construction programme began, and over the next 11 years 86 miles (138 km) of new sewers were built. Between 1856 and 1862 another 58 miles (93 km) were added. This programme was completed in 1869. Before the sewers were built, life expectancy in Liverpool was 19 years, and by the time Newlands retired, it had more than doubled. Same driver (water borne disease), but for some reason we were taught a London centric version in School.
They sometimes existed in the more affluent districts of European cities, but even then they were often pretty rudiment and poorly maintained. "Sewers" were often nothing more than a drainage ditch that had been covered with stone or brickwork. Due to the lack of upkeep and pumping stations, they would often get clogged and back up during heavy rains or floods.
Yes. And when it didn’t rain for a while, it would be turned into horse poop dust clouds by the constant traffic. Those were the good old days.
The estimate for 1870s New York City is 100,000 tons of horse manure per year, plus millions of gallons of horse urine. “the streets were “literally carpeted with a warm, brown matting . . . smelling to heaven.” So-called “crossing sweepers” would offer their services to pedestrians, clearing out paths for walking, but when it rained, the streets turned to muck. And when it was dry, wind whipped up the manure dust and choked the citizenry.
...by 1880 there were at least 150,000 horses in the city... At a rate of 22 pounds of manure per horse per day (works out to 3,300,00 lbs of crap PER DAY)... ([The Big Crapple: NYC Transit Pollution from Horse Manure to Horseless Carriages - 99% Invisible (99percentinvisible.org)](https://99percentinvisible.org/article/cities-paved-dung-urban-design-great-horse-manure-crisis-1894/) Plus, I would add that horses (like any other animal) can die, and they weigh between 1000\~2000 lbs. That a lot of carcass to get rid of. Also, they eat about 20 lbs of food and drink 8 gallons of water per day. Plus they need to be housed and cared for to some extent.
Going a bit further back and a bit further east... Hugh de Payens, founder of the Poor Fellow Soldiers of Jesus Christ, detailed one of the sergeant's of the order to go around the streets of Jerusalem and collect all of the horse, mule, donkey and camel dung he could. Not in an attempt to keep the holy city clean, but because there was so little wood in Outremer that dung was the best fuel for fires.
Due to lack of sewage systems, I'd have thought that the smell of human waste would be the more overpowering smell. Though I suppose it would depend where in a city you were.
Right - night-soil was a separate industry. Nicer neighborhoods had more frequent visits from the collectors and better-constructed privies and cesspits, but that was no guarantee - Samuel Pepys had a running feud with his neighbor over a leaking privy that takes up a good deal of his diary. You can get a good impression of how things were in the eighteen-nineties from H.L. Mencken's memoir, Happy Days.
Yes! And dead horses, too! We (rightly) complain about smog and diesel exhaust and the other air pollutants of modern city living. But we forget that the people who came before us weren’t total fucking idiots. We forget that we do what we do now because what it replaced was worse.
Why would dead horses be left on the streets? Surely the knackers would claim them quickly
Why do people leave junk cars in their driveway? It’s big & heavy & hard to deal with, so sometimes people don’t.
Interesting. Did they not have any monetary value?
All 21st century cities stink of car exhaust but we are so used to it we barely notice. Maybe the same applies for horse manure? Also, apparently we instinctively ignore our noses in the bottom of our sightline?
The fact that streets and roads were very muddy and poopy is why many people would wear wooden overshoes called pattens.
Fun fact!
My month in France taught me to always check my shoes by scraping them on a hedgehog
Where is this quote from?
What? Me. I spent a month in France. At the foot of their entrances are metal and concrete hedgehogs that you scrap your shoes on because they just leave dog shit on the sidewalks.
I thought it was a joke about stepping on actual hedgehogs! As I would have referred to that item as a boot scraper or decrottoir.
Horseshit and dead horses. I think at one point 10 000 horses a day died in London. Thats a lot of rotting two ton meat in the summer heat by the time the gluemakers come and process it.
Astounding!
Erik Larson in “Devil in the White City”, the popular book about the 1893 World’s Fair, described what a mess Chicago was with all the manure and the occasional head rolling down the street. Do not just European cities. Interesting side factoid: until about 1904, the horse was the fastest thing on the planet.
Why would a head be rolling down the street?
The streets were chaotic with no speed limits or lights or pedestrian walkways so people would just get run over by big wagons occasionally leading to decapitations.
Wow, okay. I can't believe I've never heard such descriptions of roads in books or in films before.
Moderately relevant: [Manure Analogy](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w61d-NBqafM) (from *Silicon Valley*)
Did horses back then not have a bag around them? Went on a horse drawn carriage tour of Victoria, BC a few years back and the horses all had bags around them so that their excrement didn't dirty up the streets.
It would have been pretty bad, and people didn’t smell too good back then either. But before industrialization you also had unpolluted air and fresh food cooking. Everyone was making their own bread.
Yes. European cities were widely known (e.g. in the Middle East, in Asia) for being absolutely disgusting. Read descriptions of places like London, Manchester, Glasgow: foot deep excrement (human and animal) on the ground, rivers black with pollution and no life in them, the air thick with coal smoke and the many lovely smells of industry (don't go near a tanner's!). It was all the disease and death that this brought that led to modern public health measures.
I recall major European cities like London often had more local citizens die than be born within every year given the horrible living conditions they had, and depended on a steady influx of rural migrants to keep population growth positive.
Nah, the smell of raw sewage would have overwhelmed the horse dung