Great Horse Manure Crisis of 1894

By the late 1800s, large cities all around the world were “drowning in horse manure". In order for these cities to function, they were dependent on thousands of horses for the transport of both people and goods.

On average a horse will produce between 15 and 35 pounds of manure per day.

Each horse also produced around 2 pints of urine per day and to make things worse, the average life expectancy for a working horse was only around 3 years. Horse carcasses therefore also had to be removed from the streets. The bodies were often left to putrefy so the corpses could be more easily sawed into pieces for removal.

This problem came to a head when in 1894, The Times newspaper predicted... “In 50 years, every street in London will be buried under nine feet of manure.”

However, necessity is the mother of invention, and the invention in this case was that of motor transport. Henry Ford came up with a process of building motor cars at affordable prices. Electric trams and motor buses appeared on the streets, replacing the horse-drawn buses.

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