Town dwellers do produce wonderful city culture - but also
mountains trash and excrement. It was crucial for Dutch health
and welfare of the town to work on sanitation and get rid of
these nasty matters. To the left a funny cartoon by Sweerts. In
the Delft municipal archive there are no ancient ordnances on
organising trash pickup, defecation, excrement collection and
transportation. Thus we cannot study the actual Delft situation
for dealing with these matters. A comparison with another Dutch
town is however possible, especially from the excellent book by
Cor Smit on 'Smelly Leyden through the ages' Leiden met een
luchtje, Straten, water, groen en afval in een Hollandse stad,
1200-2000. Up until 1455 the town of Leyden (and neither Delft
as well I gather) was hardly paved with stone of brick and the
streets were full of filth and excrement from numerous roaming
cows, horses, pigs, small cattle, and poultry, but also of human
beings who freely relieved themselves on the street. This
necessitated wooden platfo