Sewers/toilets in middle earth?

[davem]

Its interesting to consider the reality of sanitation in the Medieval world. There's an account of one individual, a Roger the Raker, given in 'Life on the Middle Ages' by Martyn Whitock.

Faced with the need to remove household toilet waste, some turned to piping it into the unused cellars of unwary neighbours.....More often householders dug cesspools in their yards & constructed latrines over them. One such enterprising Londoner was Roger 'the Raker'. Unfortunately, over the years this pit filled to capacity & rotted the floorboards. When Roger eventually plunged through these floorboards & drowned in his own accumulated excrement, it raised questions not only about the quality of London carpentry but also about the way in which health & well-being in the Middle-ages were affected by the sanitation of the time.

[Tuor in Gondolin]

Given Roman sophisticaton with plumbing and delivery of fresh water,
I don't see the problem of Numenorean citties handling this problem.
And there is the placing of most Middle-earth cities by rivers and/or
oceans. Gondor, Rivendell, Esgaroth, etc.
And there's the spreadout nature of less urban polities, like
Rohan and the Shire.

Now with ents I don't think disposal isues are an especial problem.
Reuse and recycle.

[Mithalwen]

The book I am reading is called the Time Traveller's Guide to medieaval england with lots of stuff about Gongfermours, privies communal latrines and the like but also the gen the King of the day had hot and cold running water - so I don't see that it is impossible that Elrond had plumbing!

Minas Tirith was surrounded by the Pelennor Fields which was farm land when it wasn't a battle field. Fertiliser one obvious use as well as use in cloth fulling and leather tanning. As well as the likes of Earth closets, they may have ha.d a reed bed system (bet the Lorien and Mirkwood elves could have them) which is superbly efficient and transforms raw waste into pure water.

There is a splendid Garderobe in the Constable's house in Christchurch near the Priory. It overhangs the mill stream.

[Lalwendë]

Just had a quick look at the entry on Tanning on Wikipedia and both urine and dung were used in the process of tanning leather.

Once the hair was removed, the tanners would bate the material by pounding dung into the skin or soaking the skin in a solution of animal brains. Among the kinds of dung commonly used were that of dogs or pigeons. Sometimes the dung was mixed with water in a large vat, and the prepared skins were kneaded in the dung water until they became supple, but not too soft. The ancient tanner might use his bare feet to knead the skins in the dung water, and the kneading could last two or three hours.

It was this combination of urine, animal feces and decaying flesh that made ancient tanneries so odiferous.[citation needed]

Children employed as dung gatherers were a common sight in ancient cities. Also common were "****-pots" located on street corners, where human urine could be collected for use in tanneries or by washerwomen. In some variations of the process, cedar oil, alum or tannin were applied to the skin as a tanning agent. As the skin was stretched, it would lose moisture and absorb the agent.

Ew.

Given that leather must have been a product in very high demand in Middle-earth ( for clothing, shoes, saddlery and of course armour), there must have been lots of tanneries (and lots of cows and meat) so it makes you wonder were there urine collectors in Minas Tirith etc.

Elves used lots of leather, too. It alters your image of them somewhat to imagine them collecting urine and dung and them stomping around in vats of it for hours on end.

[Mumriken]

Elves used lots of leather, too. It alters your image of them somewhat to imagine them collecting urine and dung and them stomping around in vats of it for hours on end.

Hahaha, yeah also I don't know but I don't think elves had that many farm animals in their forests. Many of them were probably vegetarians or survived on herbs and different plants. (Farmers of the forests) So they probably used their own dung for tanning fancy elven leatherwear. So there must have been some elf that had to stomp around in dung all day, bet he would find that boring after 500 or so years. xD

[Mithalwen]

I wonder if the Elvish "teflon" still worked .. or if they had anyone like the Reddleman in The Return of hte Natives to frighten the elflings with.

[Alcidas]

For the elves who lived in the woods, there would have been little or no problems with sanitation. There still are tribes that live in the rainforest today and activities like defecation and urination can be carried out in a forest leaving little or no trace.

With regards to the cities, it would be wrong to extrapolate from what we know about medieval Europe to a fantasy/medieval setting. In the medieval Islamic world, cities were supposed to have had "intricate systems of sanitation, public baths and fresh-water supplies"

http://www.laphamsquarterly.org/essa...e.php?page=all

I suppose we could assume that cities like Minas Tirith may have had similar systems of sanitation? Of course they would not have been as clean as our own modern cities, but maybe not as bad as the European cities that were devastated by the plague...

[MCRmyGirl4eva]

Latrines. It has ALWAYS, since ancient Egypt, been a popular punishment to have criminals dig latrines during their incarcerations. They were usually public, and after the latrine was full, they would benefit from the fact that human waste contains nutrients by topping it off with soil, and, come spring, use the nutrients to grow food. Gross? Yes. True? yes.

Likely the solution? Yes.

[Rumil]

If you'll indulge me, I'd like to copy a rather old post of mine here from this threadhttp://forum.barrowdowns.com/showthr...ghlight=toilet . Ignore the last sentence, was referring to Downsian controversies of the time,

Khazad Khazi

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Ah, at last a thread that gets down to the nitty gritty, the real experience of Middle Earth living, no more shall Downers blithely cry 'I would love to move to Rivendell' without a caveat regarding Elrond's plumbing arrangements.

As Farrar rightly points out, little attention has been given by Tolkien or his commentators to such an important aspect of everyday Middle Earth life. Few mentions occur in the legendarium, and those are ambiguous or tangential, but it must be here that we begin our fundamental examination. We must also draw on the records of historically analagous civilizations for much of our investigation, but must be wary of pitfalls. Assumptions regarding flushing mechanisms, ballcocks and U-bends may land us in deep and dangerous water. Finally I would like to indulge in further speculation involving the origin of Gandalf's fireworks and the infamous blasting fires of Orthanc and highlight my admiration for Tolkien's 'unexplored vistas', which are as significant in this respect as in many others.

To begin, we have the canonical occurence of a 'bathroom' at Bag End, however, combined with historical usage and, of course, the bath incident at Crickhollow, doubt is cast upon the utility of such a term in our quest. It is Crickhollow that provides the clue, who indeed can forget the cry of

Quote:



Sing Hey! for a bath at the end of the day

which immediately brings visions of the three baths and the room swimming with 'water hot' following Pippin's antics. This, we must conclude, is what is meant by 'bathroom' in Shire terms, merely a room containing one or more baths. To this day it is unusual for older houses in Britain to have a toilet in the same room as the bath, as such a practice was considered both unseemly and unhealthy in early Victorian times, at least until the great strides forward made by that giant of the porcelain facility, Thomas Crapper, whose name will undoubtedly resonate down the years.

Therefore we must look to history for information, lest our search bog down completely. The Shire was primarily a rural area, without the population density and concomitant pressures associated with city life. In many rural areas sanitation consisted of a hole in the ground, within an associated outhouse, often brick-built, located at some distance from the main dwelling. We know that hobbits, although preferring to live in holes or 'smials', were anciently accustomed to constructing free-standing sheds and workshops, so this seems the most likely solution for the Shire. There is a problem with the lack of convenience of this system at night, during inclement weather, or illness, and traditionally the gozunder, or po, was the answer to such difficulties.

It is with towns and cities that the stickier problem is faced. One can debate the relative technological sophistication of Minas Tirth or Edoras, so it becomes unclear exactly what sort of systems were in use. In the most unsophisticated towns of the past waste was simply dumped into the street and disposed of via street cleaners or open sewers. This was option much used in medieval and indeed renaissance times, especially in castles where the effluvium discharged into the moat from rooms equipped with garderobes, where the clothes of the nobility were kept such that the attendant ammoniacal vapour deterred moths. While such practices continued late into European history, witness, for example the lucky escape from the defenestration of Prague, it is, however, difficult to tally such practices with the conventional gleaming white image of Minas Tirith.

A better solution was the use of privies, as in the countryside, but with the addition of a night-soil service, an unfortunate person paid to clean and empty the privy or septic tank. Finally we have the running water option, toilets have been with us since at least 2500 BC, notably in the cities of ancient India, China, Egypt and Persia. These generally consisted of a seat of ease above a continually-flowing open water channel, and could even be communal as is shown by extant Roman military installations at Hadrian's Wall and many other locations. We may have a hint that Edoras reached this level of hygenic sophistication -

Quote:



Beside the way in a stone channel a stream of clear water flowed, sparkling and chattering.

It could well have provided, via side channels, the necessary flow. In that case one would imagine that Minas Tirth had superior facilities, probably encompassing an entirely piped water supply, though it would be fruitless to speculate on the possible use of porcelain thrones, U-bends and the like.

The varied cultures of Middle Earth also must show different levels of toiletry sophistication. The Lakemen were uniquely situated above a suitable medium for diluting their effluvia. The dwarves could no doubt make use of long drops and crevasses should they need, but a clue is given in Gloin's desciption of the progress made at Erebor in the provision of underground canals, probably suitable for quite sophisticated arrangements. The dark side of toiletry behaviour also rears its ugly head, orcs often refer to their enemies, and each other, as 'filth'. Tolkien admitted to toning down orcish expletives, but the meaning permeates through nonetheless. Shelob is a case of the dreadful depths to which Sauron's servants and allies could fall. Her abode was noisome and reeking from the accumulated filth of her age-long occupation, clearly hygiene was not an issue for such a depraved creature.

Having surveyed the likely facilities, some further strand of enquiry suggests itself. Gunpowder was originally made form charcoal, sulphur and saltpetre, saltpetre of course being rich in the nitrates necessary to accelerate the explosion and being mostly derived from human and animal wastes. In the days of black powder the job of night soil man became profitable with supply of saltpetre to the armaments industry, truly a case of 'where there's muck there's brass'. Was this how Gandalf and Saruman found the ingredients for their rockets and blasting charges?

In the end, of course Tolkien teases our thirst for further detail but leaves the specifics vague. Middle Earth hygiene, like the Blue Wizards and Balrog wings must therefore belong to the realm of supposition and speculation. Who indeed can envisage the facilities of wondrous Gondolin or those employed by fair lady Galadriel? The author does, however, wonder if there is any further information in the Letters or indeed if there is any relevant Biblical applicabilty, even allegory, pertaining to this problem but leaves such undertakings, and the attendant problems of canonicity, to the pens of those more expert than he.