Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
general household purposes except drinking was taken from private or public wells
dug in the court-yards of buildings or at small squares to reach to the ground-water.
Private wells had to be maintained by the owner. In the case of public wells, we
frequently
nd some sort of collective responsibility: neighborhood residents who
used the well, had to take care of it. Once a year the well was emptied of all the
lth
which had accumulated in it and after this collective work a well party was cele-
brated.
17
For Vienna, we have records of 10,000 private wells still in existence by
1900 although public water supply from the mountains had been in operation for
several decades already by then.
18
With rapid population growth in the 18th and
early 19th century this system of water provision proved less and less adequate:
Fetching water from public fountains absorbed large parts of the working day of
servants and house-wives. A new profession emerged, in larger cities already in the
middle-ages, the water-carriers who collected drinking water from public fountains
or from springs or rivers outside the city in barrels and sold it from carts to private
house-holds ready to pay for water carried into their home. In Paris, when under the
prefect Haussmann a modern pressurized water provision system was introduced in
the 1850s, 20,000 water carriers lost their livelihood.
19
6.5 Feeding the City
For early phases of urbanization and in some places up to the 19th century it would
be mistaken to imagine cities as completely non-agrarian places. Sizeable portions of
urban residents still were farmers or, if their main occupation was non-agricultural,
they nevertheless cultivated gardens or small
elds within or at the periphery of
cities. Furthermore, animals abounded in medieval and early modern cities: it was
normal and acceptable, that a baker held ten pigs.
20
Apart from pigs, which also
acted as natural refuse cleaners, devouring any organic waste in streets and courts,
goats and sheep, geese and chicken were held in cities and daily driven for feeding
onto meadows and into woods close to the city. Cattle was less frequent, being
restricted to urban farmers or dairy farms on the fringes, but horses were present
where carting and transport was ubiquitous, such as around inns close to city gates.
Cats were held to keep mice and rats at bay, although frequently this was a losing
battle as the successive waves of plague in the late medieval and early modern era
demonstrate. Thus cities were not devoid of natural habitats; in many cities and
towns large private tracts were given to agriculture, viniculture or orchards. Public
green, however, was virtually unknown; we only rarely
nd trees on streets and
17
Schmid (
1998
) and Malamud and Sutter (
2008
).
18
Koblizek (
2005
).
19
On water carriers in Paris and London in 12th century (Keene
2001
); on the replacement of
water carriers in Paris of 19th century (Hall
1998
).
20
Schubert (
2012
).
