英和和英

名詞

nightsoiler (plural nightsoilers)

1. One who removes nightsoil.

   Synonym: shit-carter

   Near-synonyms: night soil man, nightman

   • 1865, “Half-hour services in Lancashire; or, how to get at the people”, in The Sunday Magazine‎, page 559:

     He next secured an entrance amongst the goods porters of the London and North-Western Railway; and now the work promised so to grow on his hands, that the Committee of the City Mission set him apart for this special line of labour, and gave him a commission to open similar services wherever a suitable opportunity presented itself. He has since then been quietly, but earnestly pushing this scheme: and now he holds fifteen meetings weekly in and around Manchester, besides five which are held at the stations of Wigan and Bolton. Four nights every week he addresses the "nightsoilers" at ten o'clock; once a week he holds a meeting with the lamplighters, and once with the lorrymen of the Manchester, Sheffield, and Lincolnshire Railway; the others, with two exceptions, are held amongst the railway goods and passenger porters. In all, from 1000 to 1200 men are weekly listening to the Gospel message, through this agency.

   • 1915, Eighth Annual Report of the Commissioner of Health for the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, 1913‎, Part II, William Stanley Ray, State Printer, page 1253:

     The City Bureau of Health reports about sixty poudrette pits within the city limits, of which number approximately fifty are in South Philadelphia, the others being widely scattered over the north and northwestern sections of the city. Some farms have one pit, others two and three, while still others have none. Several of the pits are owned by the nightsoilers themselves who sell the composted material to various stores for retail trade.

   • 1989, John Higginson, “Copper, Community, and Death”, in A Working Class in the Making: Belgian Colonial Labor Policy, Private Enterprise, and the African Mineworker, 1907-1951‎, University of Wisconsin Press, →ISBN, page 36:

     Even where the worst conditions obtained, workers weighed the total set of circumstances before they decided to flee. For example, most of the nightsoilers, or latrine cleaners, at Kambove were Lozi from Barotseland. Their work directly exposed them to enteritis and dysentery—so much so that they were sometimes literally wading in blood and feces. This showed up in the mortality rates for the Lozi, which were higher than any other ethnic group in relation to their numbers. Yet they were the least inclined to flee, since they were over 200 miles from home. In short, there was no direct, month-to-month correlation between mortality and illness and the decision to abscond. Such decisions were cumulative. The conditions of work, the distance between a given work site and their homes, whether their families were with them or not, as well as the contours of morbidity, entered into the workers' calculations. The workers did not rush blindly at the prospect of absconding. What the workers themselves thought of these horrible living and working conditions surfaced occasionally in the reports of the industrial inspectors.