English Freedom, Circa 1700

Via Arts & Letters Daily comes this lively Literary Review take by Christopher Hart on Hubbub: Filth, Noise and Stench in England, 1600-1770, by Emily Cockayne:

The personal liberty of every freeborn Englishman and woman to spit, dump and defecate meant considerable misery for everyone. In the streets of London you would stumble over ‘the disagreeable Objects of bleeding Heads, Entrails of Beasts, Offals, raw Hides, and the Kennels flowing with Blood and Nastiness'. I never knew that ‘Mount Pleasant', near Gray's Inn, was actually a bitterly ironic name for a huge man-made heap of the most nauseous offal and ordure. It is now, of course, home to the Guardian newspaper....

Our Health and Safety goons may be completely deranged with power, but back then, every potter had ‘sallow, pale skin due to lead poisoning', while painters had withered limbs and blackened teeth, if any. You may feel a certain nostalgia for the sheer street liveliness and ebullience of our past, so far removed from our own sterile and neurotically manicured townscapes, infested with surveillance cameras and ‘community support officers': the open prison that is contemporary England.

Read the whole stinking, and highly entertaining, mess here.

Comments

Jake Boone | April 11, 2007, 9:16am | #

It may just be me, but the link appears to be broken.

Cab | April 11, 2007, 9:29am | #

and blackened teeth, if any.

The more things change......

Nick Gillespie | April 11, 2007, 9:33am | #

Link is fixed.

Memnon | April 11, 2007, 9:36am | #

No it isn't!

R C Dean | April 11, 2007, 9:45am | #

Surely there is a middle ground somewhere between open sewers and the Total Surveillance State?

edna | April 11, 2007, 9:47am | #

surely there is a middle ground somewhere between links that work and links that don't. you need to find that middle ground.

VM | April 11, 2007, 9:58am | #

hier

THE BIG BOOK OF BRITISH SMILES!!!!!!!!!

(note: the doodz from the sports bar polled believed that it was a komnischt plot (cut 'em some slack - they had nearly three bud lights apiece!) to fluoridate our precious bodily fluids.)

We then had to answer to the coca cola company!

P Brooks | April 11, 2007, 10:11am | #

More proof libertarianism is a loony ideology. If you don't want the SWATters kicking down the door of your penny-ante poker night, you plainly want to claim the right to dump your chamber pot on the sidewalk.

rob | April 11, 2007, 10:16am | #

RC Dean - Nope. Obviously not. And it's our optimism about not needing the government to fulfill this function that keeps you and I drinking unflouridated water that makes our teeth rot in our heads, not to mention the lead poisoning, food poisoning, and exposure to life-threatening medicines that have been "insufficiently tested."

(Sorry, sarcasm is apparently a free service on pre-coffee mornings... Available for a limited time only!)

uncle sam | April 11, 2007, 11:03am | #

Sensibilities have evolved.
Humans have learned the benefits of modern sewerage handling. That's why people in even remote areas install systems for handling waste rather than hauling it out back.
It's not necessary to enforce what people prefer.

Big Lord Flaunteroy | April 11, 2007, 11:11am | #

Not at all. I want to claim the right to send my buxom, indentured Irish chambermaid out in the middle of the night to dump my chamber pot in your street.

Civ Addict | April 11, 2007, 11:14am | #

Don't you have to have a sewer system for your city to grow beyond 12 citizens?

Rhywun | April 11, 2007, 12:06pm | #

I've always been amused by people who romanticise the past.

Few people romanticize any past era lock, stock and barrel. Lots of people, however, romanticize certain aspects of the past in an attempt to highlight current deficiencies. There's nothing odd about that.

SugarFree | April 11, 2007, 1:13pm | #

I took a "Philosophy of Human Nature" course once and the professor kept trying out thought experiments in class about how we students would react if transported to certain time periods. Every time called on me, I pointed out I would be dead from a lack of insulin in a few days. He learned to stop calling on me.

SugarFree | April 11, 2007, 1:51pm | #

Albionite,

Like a Chinese restaurant menu, it's a little from Column A and a little from Column B. Some of our progress is from a stable form of government and some is from individualist achievement. The state should be an honest actor in the support of individual achievement. But too many people put the cart people the horse and worship the state, either from an impulse to control or from a willful blindness that the way things are is not the way things have to be in order for anything to work.

I think people who believe in an all-encompassing view of society (I'm not suggesting you are), where the definition of "civilized" is the entire web of our society and nothing else, are very dangerous to freedom. The idea that if you rock the boat at all, then it must capsize is very insidious and is a problem of both the left and the right. There a many people (a few on this board) that think if you enjoy any part of the state (roads, libraries, police for personal and property crimes) then you must embrace it all (the War on Drugs, Social Security, insanely high taxes.)

This is a bizarre notion to me, the idea that society is so delicately balanced that if SWAT teams don't kill gradmas in the middle of the night, then I don't get to have insulin.

Mike Laursen | April 11, 2007, 2:25pm | #

These conditions existed when the newcomers moved in; should they, now that they are the majority, have the right to demand that the stable be removed/subjected to new regulations?

Don't know if they should, but I'd bet a $1000 they will. In L.A., where I grew up, all it took was for the second wave of homeowners to move into the relatively cheap subdivisions adjacent to the pre-existing oil refineries.

SugarFree | April 11, 2007, 2:26pm | #

Albionite,

You couldn't possibly know, but my wife and I both have a Masters in Library Science. We're not so bad once you get to know us.

Actually, if you've never interacted with a university librarian or a public library bigwig then you've probably dealt with few people with library science degrees. The people out on the desk are usually divorced housewives or people who couldn't hack it as school teachers.

I won't defend most public library systems (we both work at a university) because they do waste tons of money occasionally, but if you use a public library you can get a fantastic return on your tax money, much more so than schools for kids I never plan to have. But then, the public library only works because so few people use it.

I'd probably pay more per year than I do in taxes for a private library or just a straight rental store like home video, but the public library is such a small fish in the overall tax scheme of things I don't get too worked up about it. But don't get me started on the fucking garbage men...

Mike Laursen | April 11, 2007, 2:29pm | #

As we all know, libraries are about to become extinct thanks to technology.

Maybe a bad example. Around here, at least, the public libraries are adapting quite well. Still lending books, plus videos and other assorted media. Internet access, study areas, children's story time, and generally taking on the role of community center.

Amnesiac | April 11, 2007, 2:39pm | #

Oh, for the days when people knew how to romanticize the past!

SugarFree | April 11, 2007, 2:49pm | #

Albionite,

I would like to gently suggest that you are wrong again. I finished my Masters three years ago. We didn't talk about books at all, much to my consternation. The degree is now about using information technology. We are becoming the user interface side of computer science. Illiteracy may be mostly dead, but computer illiteracy gallops rampant across the land.

I think there is a legitimate debate to have in libertarian circles about taxation and public libraries, but less and less of MLSs suckle at the public teat. It's not like we are education majors or something.

SugarFree | April 11, 2007, 3:03pm | #

"Horses in the blood" is so going to be on House next season.

Goldwater Conservative | April 11, 2007, 3:57pm | #

Why is that statists insist on bunk correlations. There is a difference in 18th century knowledge and knowledge now. It's interesting that they never use slavery when they are counting the blessings of erstwhile government.

Hell, you can take a look at America during the New Deal and Great Society and look what followed it.

Besides, I would think it was the fringe of the movement that would argue that sanitation couldn't be a valid function of government as long as the market isn't denied entry (private waste management, bottled watter, that sort of thing)

Rhywun | April 11, 2007, 4:40pm | #

Great. Now every time someone writes "libertarian" I see "librarian".

P Brooks | April 11, 2007, 5:14pm | #

Albionite-

I'm with you; in this part of the world, "Head Librarian" is apparently shorthand for"Self-Aggrandizing Commie Pyramid Architect."

VM | April 11, 2007, 5:23pm | #

SACPA.

nah. too hard to say.

davek | April 11, 2007, 6:01pm | #

"The Voluntary City" by Beito, Gordon, and Tabarrok gives a very good accounting of the various ways the private sector has and does provide infrastructure. The big lesson I came away with is that just because "I" can't imagine how something might be done on a large scale in modern times, that doesn't mean that a non-coercive, free market solution doesn't exist. Furthermore, I know government has a long history of pointing at progress and taking credit for it based on government regulations. On examination, progress from the time the regulations are implemented seldom exceeds or even matches progress prior to implementation.

R C Dean | April 11, 2007, 6:27pm | #

Now every time someone writes "libertarian" I see "librarian".

I'm so turned on by that.