Gong farmer

[6] Those employed at Hampton Court during the time of Queen Elizabeth I, for instance, were paid sixpence a day—a good living for the period—but the working life of a gong farmer was "spent up to his knees, waist, even neck in human ordure".

[7] They were only allowed to work at night, between 9:00 p.m. and 5:00 a.m.[nb 1] They were permitted to live only in specified areas, and were sometimes overcome by asphyxiation from the noxious fumes produced by human excrement.

Gong farmers usually employed a couple of young boys to lift the full buckets of ordure out of the pit and to work in confined spaces.

[7] As privies spread to the residences of ordinary citizens they were often built in backyards with rear access or alleyways, to avoid the need to carry barrels of waste through the house to the street.

[8] Much of the contents of London's cess pits was taken to dumps on the banks of the River Thames such as the appropriately named Dung Wharf—later the site of the Mermaid Theatre[9]—from which it was transported by barge to be used as fertiliser on fields or market gardens.

One notable incident occurred in 1326, when a gong-farmer named Richard the Raker fell into a cesspit whose ceiling had rotted, and drowned while collecting feces.

[14][15][page needed][16] From the early 17th century onwards the larger towns and cities began to employ scavengers, as they became known, to remove human waste from the streets.