Think the amount of dog waste on city streets is getting out of control? Certainly, the State Legislature does, passing a new “pooper scooper” law that will more than double the maximum fine, to $250 from $100, for failing to pick up after your dog.

But the dog waste problem is nothing compared with the horse manure problem of the 19th century.

Back then, 100,000 to 200,000 horses lived in the city. A typical horse produced from 15 to 30 pounds of manure (with the average output about 22 pounds) and about a quart of urine a day, usually distributed along the course of its route or deposited in the stable, as “The Centrality of the Horse to the Nineteenth-Century American City,” an article by Joel Tarr and Clay McShane, explains.

In 1818, in an attempt to control the manure nuisance, the New York City Council required that those who gathered and hauled manure, so-called “dirt carting,” to be licensed.



This 1880 New York Times article [pdf] on the challenges facing the Sanitation Department singles out a manure pile on East 92nd Street which was supposed to be cleared once a year before May 1, but had been left in place.

The manure piles attracted huge numbers of flies, and one journalist writing in Appleton Magazine in 1908, charged that each year 20,000 New Yorkers died from “maladies that fly in the dust, created mainly by horse manure.”

The horses posed another sanitation problem when they dropped dead — sometimes from overwork, sometimes from disease (like horse distemper and other maladies that caused horses to swell overnight). In 1880, New York City removed 15,000 dead horses from its streets. But sometimes a big carcass would simply be left to rot until it had disintegrated enough for someone to pick up the pieces.

Of course, horses weren’t the only animals causing sanitation headaches. Animals were a standard part of life in 19th century New York. Pigs, sheep and cattle were also part of everyday city life. Pigs regularly roamed through the city in herds.

What eventually helped the city with the problem?

The arrival of the automobile — which was readily accepted, in part, because it did not pose sanitation problems. (The trade off, of course, was more people killed and injured by cars).

Alas, dog lovers are not likely to accept an electronic replacement for their pets any time soon. After all, Sony’s robotic dog, the Aibo, was put to sleep a few years ago.