A dust cart with a refuse collector (dustman) ringing a bell to collect household rubbish. Coloured aquatint by W.H. Pyne, 1805.

In his accompanying text, Pyne describes the material being collected as sea-coal cinders (used for making bricks and manure), rags (used to make paper), rope (used to make coarser paper), bones (used to make ivory-black, a pigment), and the residue (used for manure, for mending the roads etc.). He further describes it as "rubbish and filth, the former pests of the city", "dirt, ashes or soil of the houses", and says that the men depicted "collect from door to door such waste materials as composed the dunghills, for the purpose of preventing the noisome vapours that were used to accumulate in the areas or yards of every house"

"Dustmen [in the early 1800s] began their rounds early morning ... announcing their presence with the loud toll of a handbell or a hearty shout of "dust ho!'" --Jackson, op. cit., p. 7

[London] (Albemarle Street) : William Miller, 1 January 1805.

1 print : aquatint, with watercolour and etching ; image 24.8 x 36 cm

Bears number bottom right : No. 28.

Lee Jackson, Dirty old London, New Haven 2014

Wellcome Collection 36928i