To what extent was the huge amount of horses in big cities considered a critical environmental issue in the late 1800s? And, as a side question: was "The Great Horse-Manure Crisis of 1894" real?

by enken90

I'm doing research for an article I'm writing about humans predicting "the end of modern civilization" in different eras, and I remembered that I heard somewhere that horses and horse manure were a big environmental concern in the late 1800s. I also remembered that someone made an extrapolation based on the then-current data and came to the conclusion that major cities would basically be buried in horse shit by the 1950s (which is what's called the great horse-manure crisis).

I tried googling a little to find more information about this, particularly the prediction part, but I didn't find much except this unsourced web page.

So was this really a huge concern for people at the time? Did The Times really make that god-awful prediction about the 9 feet of horse manure? And if so, did people believe in it?

sarasdad17

I've looked at this a lot and am convinced that the Crisis was invented by Stephen Davies in Sep 2004 to argue against industry regulation [1]. Yes, manure was an issue, but no crisis of 1894, no 1898 urban planning conference, and no Times prediction about manure in the streets.

In addition to the alleged Times quote, the article claims the worlds first international conference on urban planning was held in 1898, was scheduled for 10 days, but broke up after 3 due to being stymied by the problem of manure. Several red flags mostly regarding the conference. Conferences have names, dates, and most importantly proceedings, but Davies does not supply or cite any.

Multiple sources list America’s first urban planning conference as the First National Conference on City Planning, held May 21-22, 1909, in Washington, DC. [2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8]. Proceedings can be found online (URL: https://archive.org/details/proceedingsoffir00nati) [9]. The proceedings do not mention an 1898 conference, nor discuss manure as a problem.

Britain’s first urban planning conference was the Town Planning Conference, held October 10-15, 1910, in London [6, 7]. Transactions can be found online (URL: https://archive.org/details/transactions00town) [10]. The transactions do not mention an 1898 conference, nor do they discuss manure as a problem.

Searches with dates set prior to Sep 2004 result in no reference to the 1894 crisis or to the 1898 conference. (Note: there are some pages published prior to 2004 with comments added after Sep 2004). Similarly, no references to a Times quote about streets buried in manure can be found online prior to Sep 2004. The quote has no citation, no date, and no author. I doubt the quote was ever published in the Times or anywhere else.

If anyone can provide a credible reference to the conference name, dates, location, or proceedings please post and I would be happy to admit my error.

This story has been retold countless times, largely due to the attention it received from Eric Morris [12] and then Stephen D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner [13]. It has a life of its own. I've left comments at the HistoricUK link you listed, but that is actually a tourist site, not an historical site. There does not appear to be any way to contact the authors or editors.

The references at the fee.org article [1] and [11] below may have solid information of use to your writing.

References:

  1. Stephen Davies, “The Great Horse Manure Crisis of 1894,” 1 Sep 2004, https://fee.org/.../the-great-horse-manure-crisis-of-1894/
  2. Mel Scott, American City Planning Since 1890, University of California Press, 10 February 1972.
  3. John W. Reps, The Making of Urban America. A History of City Planning in the United States. Princeton University Press, 15 June 1992.
  4. Jon A. Peterson, The Birth of City Planning in the United States, 1840-1917 (Creating the North American Landscape). Johns Hopkins University Press, 6 August 2003.
  5. Susann S. Fainstein, “Urban Planning,” in Encyclopedia Britannica, https://www.britannica.com/.../The-era-of-industrialization
  6. http://urbanplanning.library.cornell.edu/BIB.../title123.htm
  7. Richard LeGates, Early Urban Planning V 9. Routledge, 11 November 2004.
  8. Jon A. Peterson, “The Birth of Organized City Planning in the United States, 1909-1910.” Journal of the American Planning Association, Vol. 75, No. 2, Spring 2009.
  9. Proceedings of the First National Conference on City Planning https://archive.org/details/proceedingsoffir00nati
  10. Town Planning Conference, October 10-15, 1910, Transactions https://archive.org/details/transactions00town
  11. https://enviroliteracy.org/.../the-horse-the-urban.../ or http://bit.ly/2f2T6HG
  12. Eric Morris, “From Horse Power to Horse Power,” Access, Number 30, Spring 2007, http://www.uctc.net/.../Access%2030%20-%2002%20-%20Horse...
  13. Stephen D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner, Super Freakonomics: Global Cooling, Patriotic Prostitutes, and Why Suicide Bombers Should Buy Life Insurance, William Morrow, 20 October 2009. https://www.amazon.com/.../0060889578/ref=tmm_hrd_title_0...

(Mods: My first post -- hope I did ok!)