Nineteenth-Century Recycling
Nicholas Goddard on the Victorians and the agricultural utilisation of sewage.
From the 1840s to the end of the nineteenth century difficulties posed by the efficient and sanitary disposal of sewage, together with the closely related question of its potential value for agricultural purposes, was never very far from public attention. The topic was widely reviewed in both academic and popular journals and frequently brought forward for debate at discussion meetings. Prince Albert wrote on sewage utilisation and Palmerston urged that the Royal Agricultural Society should investigate the matter. As the prominent agriculturist Herbert Little (in the 1880s he was agricultural correspondent to the Field ) observed in a survey of the 'Sewage Question' for the Royal in 1871:
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