History : The Great Horse Manure Crisis of 1894

The Great Horse Manure Crisis of 1894

By the late 1800s, large cities all around the world were “drowning in horse manure”. In order for these cities to function, they were dependent on thousands of horses for the transport of both people and goods.

In 1900, there were over 11,000 hansom cabs on the streets of London alone. There were also several thousand horse-drawn buses, each needing 12 horses per day, making a staggering total of over 50,000 horses transporting people around the city each day.

To add to this, there were yet more horse-drawn carts and drays delivering goods around what was then the largest city in the world.

This huge number of horses created major problems. The main concern was the large amount of manure left behind on the streets. On average a horse will produce between 15 and 35 pounds of manure per day, so you can imagine the sheer scale of the problem. The manure on London’s streets also attracted huge numbers of flies which then spread typhoid fever and other diseases.

Each horse also produced around 2 pints of urine per day and to make things worse, the average life expectancy for a working horse was only around 3 years. Horse carcasses therefore also had to be removed from the streets. The bodies were often left to putrefy so the corpses could be more easily sawn into pieces for removal.

The streets of London were beginning to poison its people.

But this wasn’t just a British crisis: New York had a population of 100,000 horses producing around 2.5m pounds of manure a day.

This problem came to a head when in 1894, The Times newspaper predicted… “In 50 years, every street in London will be buried under nine feet of manure.”

This became known as the ‘Great Horse Manure Crisis of 1894’.

The terrible situation was debated in 1898 at the world’s first international urban planning conference in New York, but no solution could be found. It seemed urban civilisation was doomed.

However, necessity is the mother of invention, and the invention in this case was that of motor transport. Henry Ford came up with a process of building motor cars at affordable prices. Electric trams and motor buses appeared on the streets, replacing the horse-drawn buses.

By 1912, this seemingly insurmountable problem had been resolved; in cities all around the globe, horses had been replaced and now motorised vehicles were the main source of transport and carriage.

Even today, in the face of a problem with no apparent solution, people often quote ‘The Great Horse Manure Crisis of 1894’, urging people not to despair, something will turn up!

https://www.historic-uk.com/HistoryUK/HistoryofBritain/Great-Horse-Manure-Crisis-of-1894/

I'm currently doing a deep dive into some old horse manure pics to find the best ones to post.

In the meantime, here's a pic (NYC, not London) from the early 1900s, showing kids in the street next to a dead horse - I'll cover it with spoiler tags in case this is too sensitive for some readers:

Re: The Great Horse Manure Crisis of 1894

Some interesting comments on the picture:

A sad photograph, but an interesting one that shows something about history that we don't ordinarily think about much. That's what I like about this site: old photographs show us the forgotten details.

For me the most telling thing is that the kids are more interested in the camera than they are in the horse. It's not that the kids are particularly inhumane, but for them a dead horse isn't all that unusual. A camera is. And is that so bad, for children to focus on the new? I'm sad for the horse, but let's not forget the kids. They're vibrant, alive, interested in new things around them and in each other, even in the face of death and their own poverty. There's hope here.
The fate of horses worked to death, and elimination of their droppings from the street, were big reasons why automobiles were looked on as a great advancement. By comparison, automotive smoke and oil drips seem minor.
These kids had such old looking faces…this was the most depressing photo yet…interesting, but depressing!
I agree that this is a sad picture, but alas, it is real life. The horse does not look that well fed, but perhaps it is because it was ill, not starved. What I really find interesting is how many kids are just sort of running around on their own - no supervision, no shoes, and that one little guy on the sidewalk by himself looks no more than 3 or 4.

Re: The Great Horse Manure Crisis of 1894

I'm currently doing a deep dive into some old horse manure


My password is password

Re: The Great Horse Manure Crisis of 1894

lol, I did that on purpose.

Where are all the history buffs?!?

Re: The Great Horse Manure Crisis of 1894

🤣 🤣 🤣

😺 Schrodinger's Cat walks into a bar, and doesn't. 🤨 Let's go, Brandon! 🤨 Try that in a small town.

Re: The Great Horse Manure Crisis of 1894

That is a LOT of 💩!



😺 Schrodinger's Cat walks into a bar, and doesn't. 🤨 Let's go, Brandon! 🤨 Try that in a small town.

Re: The Great Horse Manure Crisis of 1894

😂

That pic is from the early 1900s, so everyone in the pic is like 125 years old now.

Re: The Great Horse Manure Crisis of 1894

Actually, they're all dead. And I do realize you were being facetious.



😺 Schrodinger's Cat walks into a bar, and doesn't. 🤨 Let's go, Brandon! 🤨 Try that in a small town.

Re: The Great Horse Manure Crisis of 1894

I was being an optimist!

Re: The Great Horse Manure Crisis of 1894

An extreme optimist!



😺 Schrodinger's Cat walks into a bar, and doesn't. 🤨 Let's go, Brandon! 🤨 Try that in a small town.

Re: The Great Horse Manure Crisis of 1894

Signs like this were posted about, though I don't think they did much good:

Re: The Great Horse Manure Crisis of 1894

lol. On one of the sites about the manure crisis, there was a vintage ad for a "manure spreader" that farmers could buy. There are some posters who provide that service for free.

Re: The Great Horse Manure Crisis of 1894



It must've stunk something awful in those big cities during a summer heat wave: piles of horse manure, horse urine, decaying horse carcasses……

The flip-side of all this is that farming areas outside the cities were provided with a ready supply of excellent organic fertilizer - unlike today, when everything seems to have shifted to chemical fertilizers.
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