Sewers & Waste Disposal in Medieval Europe This

This paper will examine the sewers and waste disposal systems employed in Medieval European cities. Although all major towns and cities had provisions for drainage and waste disposal, the paper will focus primarily on London and Paris, two of the largest and most modern cities in Europe at that time. In particular, the paper will address each system separately and then discuss how the two systems became intertwined.

Sewers and the disposal of human waste were originally two separate systems. Sewers were originally intended to drain rain and flood water from towns and cities. In fact, some of the sewers in cities such as Paris and London may have originally been constructed by the Romans for just such a purpose, copying a system used in Rome itself. These sewers were nothing more than open canals which drained into streams and major rivers (the Seine in Paris and the Thames in London) (Buer 102).

The disposal of human and animal waste, although just as vital as the drainage of rain and flood water, was much more haphazard. Those persons fortunate enough to live in castles had access to tower chambers, or warderobes, which emptied into either cesspools (cesspits) or canals (or sewers) leading to the moat outside the castle walls. Rural peasants simply relieved themselves in the fields, burying their waste on the spot. Those who lived in the cities had to use other means and the waste had to be disposed of more thoroughly, lest the

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were often also in charge of the city's sewers and wells. In Paris, these professionals even organized themselves into a guild (Winston 107). Where this waste ended up after it was emptied from the pits depended upon the locale. In cities near large rivers or bodies or water, the waste was usually dumped into the water; in other cities and towns, the waste had to hauled out of the town limits on carts and buried somewhere in the countryside. Both methods were used in London since the Thames River did not have the carrying power to disperse all of the sewage produced by the city. As the cities expanded, new sites had to be found for sewage disposal, as the city limits often overtook the old sites (Rosen 57-58). Of course, most everyone recognized the convenience of disposing this waste into the street gutters and the sewers. Waste disposed of in this manner would be carried off by running water and no one would have to dig up the cesspits when they became full. Consequently, those persons with the necessary financial means often constructed their privies over sewers, while most persons who did not have a privy on their property simply dumped the contents of their chamberpots out onto the streets. All of these persons figured tha
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Approximate Word count = 2907
Approximate Pages = 12 (250 words per page)