The Ghost Map: The Story of London’s Most Terrifying Epidemic—and How It Changed Science, Cities, and the Modern World

This chapter sets up the origins of the 1854 London cholera epidemic by discussing the varieties of both waste and scavengers that existed in London at that time. It makes the point that recycling has existed for a long time, not only in cities but in the natural world and even in human bodies: “Waste production turns out to be a hallmark of almost all complex systems, whether the man-made systems of urban life, or the microscopic economies of the cell” (6).

The “night soil men” of the chapter’s title were the best-compensated of London’s many specialized scavengers. They were men who cleaned the city’s cesspools, and then sold the waste to farmers; therefore, they “played an indispensable role in the waste recycling system that helped London grow into a true metropolis” (8-9). However, the very increasing largeness of the city also drew the night soil men’s prices upward, which led in part to the origins of the epidemic; many citizens decided that it was not worth their while to pay them. London at that time was a city with a large population but with no infrastructure to support it: a city with flushing toilets—in some of its wealthier houses—but no sewers.