Sanitation in Urban Britain, 1560-1700 Perspectives in Economic and Social History Series
Auteur : Skelton Leona J.
Popular belief holds that throwing the contents of a chamber pot into the street was a common occurrence during the early modern period. This book challenges this deeply entrenched stereotypical image as the majority of urban inhabitants and their local governors alike valued clean outdoor public spaces, vesting interest in keeping the areas in which they lived and worked clean.
Taking an extensive tour of over thirty towns and cities across early modern Britain, focusing on Edinburgh and York as in-depth case studies, this book sheds light on the complex relationship between how governors organised street cleaning, managed waste disposal and regulated the cleanliness of the outdoor environment, top-down, and how typical urban inhabitants self-regulated their neighbourhoods, bottom-up. The urban-rural manure trade, sanitation infrastructure, waste-disposal technology, plague epidemics, contemporary understandings of malodours and miasmatic disease transmission and urban agriculture are also analysed.
This book will enable undergraduates, postgraduates and established academics to deepen their understanding of daily life and sensory experiences in the early modern British town. This innovative work will appeal to social, cultural and legal historians as well as researchers of history of medicine and public health.
Introduction Chapter 1: The Character of the Environmental Challenge Chapter 2: York’s and Edinburgh’s Sanitation in National, Demographic, Legal and Governmental Context Chapter 3: Civic-Funded Sanitation Services: Street Cleaning, Waste Disposal and Drainage Chapter 4: Regulating Insanitary Nuisances Conclusion
Leona J. Skelton is Post-Doctoral Research Assistant in the History Department at University of Bristol, UK.
Date de parution : 09-2020
15.6x23.4 cm
Date de parution : 12-2015
15.6x23.4 cm
Thèmes de Sanitation in Urban Britain, 1560-1700 :
Mots-clés :
Sanitation; water supply; the urban-rural manure trade; environmental regulation; the urban landscape; the early modern British town; the Dean of Guild Court; local courts; Nuisance Law; economics; Guild Court; social history; Edinburgh Council; Court Leets; Early Modern British Town; York Corporation; Dirty Trades; Liquid Waste Disposal; Burgh Council; Micro-scale Environment; Street Cleaning; Edinburgh's Inhabitants; Outdoor Public Spaces; Outdoor Urban Environment; Solid Waste Disposal; Private Nuisance; House Minutes; Public Privies; King’s Bench; Urban Agricultural Activity; Scotland’s Capital City; Waste Disposal Problems; Plague Epidemics; West Bow; Close Stools; Early Modern Urban Society