![smithsonianmag:
Quite Likely the Worst Job Ever
Among [Henry] Mayhew’s more memorable meetings were encounters with the “bone grubber,” the “Hindoo tract seller,” an eight-year-old girl watercress-seller and the “pure finder,” whose surprisingly sought-after job was picking up dog mess and selling it to tanners, who then used it to cure leather. None of his subjects, though, aroused more fascination—or greater disgust—among his readers than the men who made it their living by forcing entry into London’s sewers at low tide and wandering through them, sometimes for miles, searching out and collecting the miscellaneous scraps washed down from the streets above: bones, fragments of rope, miscellaneous bits of metal, silver cutlery and—if they were lucky—coins dropped in the streets above and swept into the gutters. - Continue reading at Smithsonian.com.
Photo: Public Domain
Ed note: The long and winding history of the Thames river.
Very interesting.](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m6lj1846pn1r7u6l5o1_1280.jpg)
Quite Likely the Worst Job Ever
Among [Henry] Mayhew’s more memorable meetings were encounters with the “bone grubber,” the “Hindoo tract seller,” an eight-year-old girl watercress-seller and the “pure finder,” whose surprisingly sought-after job was picking up dog mess and selling it to tanners, who then used it to cure leather. None of his subjects, though, aroused more fascination—or greater disgust—among his readers than the men who made it their living by forcing entry into London’s sewers at low tide and wandering through them, sometimes for miles, searching out and collecting the miscellaneous scraps washed down from the streets above: bones, fragments of rope, miscellaneous bits of metal, silver cutlery and—if they were lucky—coins dropped in the streets above and swept into the gutters. - Continue reading at Smithsonian.com.
Photo: Public Domain
Ed note: The long and winding history of the Thames river.
Very interesting.
