Minding the Streets
Blockboys
When horse drawn vehicles filled the city streets, street cleaning
involved more than just sweeping and watering to keep the dust down.
There was all that horse dung to be got rid of.
And to make a profit from. In the 1870s the City Council could
sell a load of horse manure for ten shillings and hire a labourer
for seven shillings a day. And a boy could be hired for much less
than a man. By the 1890s the Council employed a small army of boys,
whose job it was to dart in and out of the traffic shovelling up
the offending material. A boy was assigned a city block to keep
clean. Officially, he was called a ‘block boy’. Most
people called them ‘sparrow starvers’.
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Clearing
a path
A blockboy, centre, clears a path for a lady in Pitt Street,
(n.d.). Blockboys belong to the folklore of the horse-and-cart
city, and the memory of them is retained in a romanticised
vision of the city before the days of the motor car, a time
when life was gentler, or at least a bit slower.
(image: SPF, Mitchell Library, State Library
of New South Wales) |
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be nimble
“Block-sweeping is essentially a boy’s work.
His ability and youth permit of his working the traffic with
a greater degree of safety than a man.” (City Cleansing
Engineer’s Report, 1926). This might be true, but even
in the horse and cart era being a blockboy was dangerous work.
In this letter dated 14 April 1892 the Inspector of Nuisances
reports to the Town Clerk of an accident to J. Gibbons, who
“was this morning whilst in the discharge of duty knocked
down by a cart which ran over a portion of his body”.
(image: City of Sydney Archives, CRS 26/731) |
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Blockboy,
c.1910
The job of being a blockboy went to lads just out of school.
They shovelled horse manure from the streets, and in their
heyday were equipped with uniforms, scoops on wheels with
long handles and brooms, while recessed receptacles in the
footpath held the manure they collected until it was removed
to a Council depot and sold to the public as fertiliser.
(image: City of Sydney Archives, CRS
51/266)
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Sparrow-starver
at work
A block boy at work in Elizabeth Street, 1908. At the end
of World War I there were more than 200 ‘sparrow starvers’
employed on the city streets. The job may have been lacking
in status in the eyes of some people, but for many working-class,
inner-city families it was a job keenly sought for their sons:
Every boy dreamed of becoming a ‘sparrow starver’.
This was the stepping stone to becoming a rubbish cart or
a dirt box man. Besides this, there was the social distinction
of being in the Council. (Syd Mackey quoted in Shirley
Fitzgerald, Sydney 1842-1992, Hale & Iremonger,
Sydney 1992)
(image: City of Sydney Archives, CRS 51/1554)
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Hanging
around
Some things never change. Shovelling shit was not likely
to hold the attention of many fourteen year old kids just
out of school, and then as now, many members of the respectable
public were more than ready to find fault with ‘youth’.
They were criticised for congregating in groups chattering
noisily and insulting passers-by. The Council records are
filled with comments about lads arriving late and ducking
off home early, of ‘loitering’, of ‘insolence’
and of ‘skylarking’. This photo shows youths,
including a blockboy, hanging around and chatting in Pitt
Street, c.1908.
(image: City of Sydney Archives, CRS
51/240)
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A
new look
This photograph was taken to promote a new-look, smarter
blockboy in 1926. The accompanying text said, in part, “the
blockboy is not an ordinary pedestrian or jaywalker, but by
his occupation a privileged unit of the traffic. Accordingly
[he] should be distinguishable by some mark of office.”
What the photograph also showed was the reason for the blockboys’
inevitable demise: the motor car.
(image: City of Sydney Archives, Report
on the City Cleansing Engineers Department, 27 May 1926)
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Changing
roles
The sparrow-starvers found themselves in a position of diminishing
work and increasing danger, as horse-drawn vehicles gave way
to motors. By the end of the 1920s there were only about sixty
of them still employed, and their work was gradually incorporated
into general street-cleaning procedures. In 1928 the City
Commissioners introduced a new type of Blockboy Cart to replace
the Blockboy Scoop. They reported:
The increasing density of the motor traffic has impaired
the efficient use of the scoop, which is too small to afford
any protection to the user and for the same reason holds a
small quantity of refuse, which necessitates many visits to
the street orderly bin, which is often inaccessible owing
to parked vehicles.
(image: City of Sydney Archives, CRS 538,
191) |
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| In
the tradition
The City Council still employs street sweepers today. Here
a group of two pose for the camera, during the Sydney Olympics
in 2000.
(photographer: Steve Sycz image: City of
Sydney Media Image Library, 001\001648) |
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