Before Sewers: How Toshers Had One of Victorian Britain's Most Disgusting Jobs

SPEAKER_00 0:00 Toshers had one of the most disgusting jobs of Victorian Britain. They risked their health and their freedom for their work, but no one was actually employing them to do it. So why were these people choosing to spend every night surrounded by human sewage if they weren't being forced to? That's what we're getting into in today's episode of What We Did Before. I'm Ollie. And I'm Matt.

SPEAKER_01 0:24 Now, Toshers, not to be mistaken for tossers, were a self-employed worker of Victorian London. Without waterproof clothing or rubber gloves, they would wade through human excrement with just a candle, a rake, and the belief that the sewer itself might make them rich.

SPEAKER_00 0:45 Yeah, because um hidden beneath the the city's streets, what was potentially a fortune waiting to be found. Um because Victorian London, it was enormous, and by the middle of the 1800s, it was the largest city on earth, with well over two million people packed into its streets.

SPEAKER_01 1:03 And with two million people, that comes two million people's worth of waste. Most of it eventually found its way into London's drains and sewers. And today we imagine sewers as narrow pipes where waste simply disappears. But back then, a lot of older sewers were surprisingly large. Some were big enough to walk through, while others were enormous brick tunnels that stretched for miles beneath the city.

SPEAKER_00 1:33 Yeah, and I think the word sewers sort of undersells it in a way, or maybe it oversells it. Like these weren't the sewers that we imagine today. So in Victorian London, most homes used cesspits buried beneath gardens or courtyards to store human waste, and other people just emptied it into open drains in the street or just directly into the Thames where the drinking water came from.

SPEAKER_01 1:57 Yeah, yeah. And um, while London already had sewers, they were a patchwork built up since the medieval times. They were originally intended mainly to drain rain water, but they gradually became the city's underground waste system as more and more people connected their homes to them, becoming full of human waste and other treasures. Treasures, yeah. These these dark brick tunnels were they were kind of the forerunners of the modern sewer network beneath London, and they were the dangerous maze that the Toshers called their workplace.

SPEAKER_00 2:35 Yeah, so let's go to the Toshers then. What would happen basically is every day valuable objects slipped through drain grates or were washed into the sewers. So, you know, maybe coins fell through, people lost sort of just valuables, maybe they kind of rattled off of their horse-drawn cart, uh, and like workshops maybe accidentally washed some metal away. Uh, and you'd get this sort of build-up of valuable goods just sort of being washed beneath the underground of London. Even, you know, wealthy households, they they would have dumped ash and rubbish that could have still contained some valuable scraps. Um, and then you know, it kind of all just trickled down underneath the city.

SPEAKER_01 3:21 Yeah, so basically the the Toshers were almost mining the waste in a way. Yeah, basically. Uh and finding, you know, anything that that had value, you know, anything made of metal, for example, buttons, cutlery, lead, copper, they may have been sort of rubbish to everyone else, but Toshers, they would kind of find anything that might be valuable and could lead to income. While your everyday Londoner kind of slept, the Toshers would come out and they would be armed with long poles tipped with rakes, lanterns, and sacks. And unlike most Victorian jobs, there was no boss and no wage, they were just doing this and whatever they found belonged to them. They were sort of freelance treasure hunters.

SPEAKER_00 4:12 Yeah, and and I, you know, you can imagine in Victorian London that's quite rare, really. Like the boss, you know, having uh a boss preside over you really was the way of life. Uh, and it was probably quite a tough way of life for for for Victorian workers as well, as a result. So, you know, this all sounds quite grim, but in a way, being the master of your own destiny was probably quite freeing in in a sense.

SPEAKER_01 4:36 Yeah, I imagine, I imagine that that kind of in some way, maybe not entirely, made up for the actual content of their job. I feel like I would kind of have this dignity about it, like, yeah, but I'm I might be going into the sewer, but at least, you know, I'm the master of my own destiny, like you said. You know, at least I don't have a boss, I can just go when I want into the sewer and do my thing. Um but you know, these Toshers they became very skillful at their jobs. They knew which drains served wealthy neighborhoods, also like which junctions in sewers would trap the the heavier objects if they were kind of in a certain place or just kind of structurally how it might work, or and also like where the rainstorms would wash the debris more more frequently. And some of them even memorized like the huge underground networks in complete darkness most of the time.

SPEAKER_00 5:36 Yeah, it's quite incredible, really, what they were able to do, given that this wasn't a profession. It really I mean, you it was our hobby in some ways. Um, though obviously, despite all of this, there was a a small problem, and that was that everything was covered in sewage, and the smell must have been unimaginable.

SPEAKER_01 5:56 Yes, I yeah, yeah, I can imagine. And you know, I've heard stories about sort of Victorian era Britain anyway, and that was above the sewers, not in the sewers.

SPEAKER_00 6:10 Victorian London was a very stinky city, yeah for sure. And so if you imagine the smell was almost unbearable on the surface, yeah, kind of beneath there. I don't know what they were, they were in clips on their noses, I'm not sure, but man, that must have been horrendous.

SPEAKER_01 6:26 Yeah, yeah. Also, just without any modern sort of equipment to protect them or to at least, I don't know, have like gas masks or things like that. You know, many of the Toshers even worked barefoot, which it just makes me cringe. But this had a reason it stopped their boots from sort of getting pulled off in the in the thick mud and sludge, while others actually sort of tied ropes around their waists so that people other people, other Toshers could pull them free if they became trapped in there. Because, you know, if you slipped, you could get just plunged into waste-filled water. It's disgusting.

SPEAKER_00 7:10 Yeah, that reminds me of the time um I was at Reading Music Festival, and um I just I looked down into the massive cesspit which is beneath all of the portable toilets, and there was somebody in there amongst yeah, I I I think they were wearing a wetsuit and a snorkel, if I recall, and they were inside all this human waste like roaming around. I I've no idea why. Maybe they were a modern-day Tosher, um but that was just vile, and like I I couldn't shake the thought of that for for days.

SPEAKER_01 7:46 Um Yeah, we look back at the Toshes with some amazement, but it turns out that people just do it for fun.

SPEAKER_00 7:54 So yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah, and and it wasn't just disgusting, right? Like there were real dangers as well beneath the sewers beneath London. So many of the sewers empty directly into the Thames, so the tides of the Thames could suddenly flood the tunnels, and then you had poisonous gases from all the human sewage and waste, which could, well, it could knock you unconscious, uh at least you know, just being quite unpleasant. And the methane um from those gases, it could ignite the candle that you you know, they didn't have sort of like torches with them, they were lighting their way with candle, that could explode. And then the centuries-old brickwork you mentioned at the start of the medieval sort of patchwork that created these sewers. Well, it was it was old, so it could collapse without warning. You know, maybe a whole tunnel wouldn't collapse, but maybe a brick would fall off and bam on the head. There's a lot of dangers, and then otherwise you could just get lost beneath London. Imagine that. And you know, if you get lost and you're not with your Tosha friends and they've gone off in a different direction, well, largely nobody knows you're down there, so no one's coming to rescue you.

SPEAKER_01 9:04 Yeah. Yeah, I've heard of um some modern-day examples of this in the catacombs in in Paris because those are absolutely enormous, and most of the entrances and exits are not known or mapped to this day, or you know, some people's basements go like just behind a wall or just behind a door, you're just in the catacombs. So um people explore those and get lost all the time. Um, I think you're not really allowed to. So, yeah, you can totally imagine back then they didn't have maps of the sewers. They, like we mentioned, they tried to map them themselves. But if your candle goes out or you get, you know, separated from the others, what are you gonna do?

SPEAKER_00 9:49 Yeah, and although like much of what we know about the Toshes is thanks to the Victorian journalist Henry Mayhew, and he wrote a book called London Labour and the London Poor, and he recorded the stories that people told about these sewer hunters. Um, and some of the tales were of men who lost their way in the maze beneath the city and wandering until they collapsed and died. So you maybe, maybe that is what happened. Uh, a lot of the stories um that Mayhu sort of uh recounts in the book were shared with him, so they weren't direct observations. So it is possible that some of the stories aren't true or embellished, you know, it's impossible to know. But generally speaking, you know, the public must have recognised the dangers and this as a real danger if they were spreading stories like this.

SPEAKER_01 10:35 Yeah, and yet people kept doing it. Yeah. And and and why? Well, because the money could be surprisingly good. You wouldn't do this for free, although that guy at Redding did. Uh you know, a lucky knight's hall might contain enough metal that had the value to feed a family for days. They were they were kind of rich among the working class, apparently.

SPEAKER_00 11:02 Yeah, yeah. They they actually earned quite a lot of money. And you know, if you think about lot London's poorest residents, especially back then in Victorian times, that chance was probably just worth the risk, right? Uh I mean it's easy for us to think, oh, why didn't they just go and get another job? Um, but many simply couldn't. Back in Victorian London, there was no welfare state, there was no unemployment benefits, no guaranteed safety net. So if you didn't earn money, you you just didn't eat. Yeah. So actually, you know, on that basis, you can kind of see how climbing into a s sewer doesn't quite seem uh so irrational.

SPEAKER_01 11:41 Yep, absolutely. It's easy for us in middle class kind of modern world to maybe not not understand it. But if you're desperate enough, I guarantee you you'd be in the sewer as well. Um that said, Henry Mayhew estimated that actually there were only around 200 full-time Toshes in London. So it's not like this was like half of London were doing this. No. Um and almost all of them were known by some pretty kind of East End sounding nicknames, like Lanky Bill, Long Tom. There was one-eyed George and short-armed Jack. Uh amazing. And um Meiji also notes that they often worked in in gangs of three or four, and they were usually led by an older veteran, sometimes someone between sort of sixty and eighty years old, who just knew the underground better than anyone else. Imagine doing that into your 60s, 70s, or 80s. Yeah, they were built different.

SPEAKER_00 12:48 Um Yeah, I wonder what retirement looked like. Uh, and maybe maybe it didn't look like anything, and that's why they needed to continue toshing.

SPEAKER_01 12:56 Yeah, potentially. And um, the other thing is I guess that these people were just very valuable because their knowledge was incredibly valuable. It kept people alive by having had that experience.

SPEAKER_00 13:09 But by the 1840s, authorities had become pretty fed up with people entering the sewers. So they built iron flap doors at many sewer entrances, and then, you know, after that kind of increasingly restricted access. So eventually entering the sewers without permission was illegal, and authorities even offered a five-pound reward to anyone who informed on trespassers.

SPEAKER_01 13:33 Yeah, they they claimed that they were worried about the danger it posed to the sewer hunters, but this killed their income. This was the way that these people were, you know, making money to to live, and and the sewer hunters complained that they obviously didn't w worry if they starved, you know, they were more worried about the fact that they were in the sewer, but anyway. Yeah, exactly. And I get that as well. And and you know, it must be so frustrating to know that there's maybe not literally, but figuratively, and and in some cases literally, gold in there that you you're being restricted from and it's l literally just getting thrown away. Either way, the Toshes still found their way in. They became experts at opening sewer entrances. Some would use these specially made hooks, others reportedly acquired or copied keys used for sewer access. And once they were underground, they became pretty careful about staying hidden as well. But anyway, that there are some interesting bits of folklore that Henry Mayhew mentions in his work about Toshes as well, and one is the existence of a queen rat. Yeah. The queen rat is amazing. Yeah, um, this was a supernatural rat that would follow the Toshes around invisibly as they worked. If she spotted one that she fancied, she'd turn into a quote sexy looking woman and accost him. Basically, if he gave her a good time, he'd get good luck and find more money and valuables in the sewer. But if he realized she was the queen rat and not actually a woman, his luck would change and he might drown or meet a horrible accident. Yeah, how would he um like realise that it wasn't a normal woman though? Well, her her transformation into a woman apparently wasn't perfect. She retained eyes that reflected light, like an animal's, and she had claws on her toes. So uh but the hope was that the Tosha wouldn't notice that in the dark.

SPEAKER_00 15:45 Yeah, I think uh unless you've got a foot fetish, you might be okay and you you just get a nice nice night with the uh with the queen rat in some dark alley while your Tosha friends are looking for treasures. Um it doesn't sound all bad. Yeah. Um I'm not sure how to react to that. So I'm gonna move right on to the fact that the job did disappear, of course, eventually. So basically what happened was in the late 1850s, London suffered what became known as the Great Stink. And so the River Thames became so polluted that the smell overwhelmed the city and it even forced Parliament to suspend sessions because MPs couldn't bear the smell, and it finally convinced the government that London's sewage system had to change.

SPEAKER_01 16:34 Yeah, we've spoken about the Great Stink on a previous episode. The the problem was that London's population exploded during the Industrial Revolution, and by 1800 it was around a million people, but by the 1850s it had already more than doubled. So the medieval sewers were just never designed to carry the amount of human waste that they eventually had to cope with, and the system became overwhelmed. So engineer Joseph Basilgett designed a vast new network of modern sewers. The new tunnels carried waste away just far more efficiently, and it completely transformed sanitation in London. But access became more restricted and the opportunities for freelance treasure hunting gradually vanished. The age of the Tosha came to an end. Thank you very much for listening. This is what we did before. I'm Ollie. And I'm Matt. If you enjoyed this journey into one of history's filthiest professions, let us know. Please like, subscribe, and comment, and tell us what profession we should tackle next. Bye for now. Bye bye.