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Town wastes, agricultural sustainability and Victorian sewage

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 February 2009

John Sheail
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Abstract

In analysing the practicability of Victorian proposals to dispose of urban wastes, valuable insights may be gained from the commentaries of agriculturalists and their scientific advisers. The paper reconstructs the debate as to how the sewage of towns and cities might be transferred to farmland, the developing concepts of sewage farming and the ‘sewage farm’, the increasing disillusionment of farmers with sewage irrigation and, finally, the acknowledgement by the turn of the century that the recycling of such wastes was irrelevant to the needs of town and country alike.

Type
Research Article
Information
Urban History , Volume 23 , Issue 2 , August 1996 , pp. 189 - 210
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1996

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