The Fleet Ditch

oursin linked to a couple of Guardian pieces about a project to restore some of London's lost rivers. This reminded me of Ben Jonson's mock-heroic poem about the two men who took a bet to take a boat up the Fleet River (then an open sewer) as far as Holborn. Here are three of his most graphic passages:

In the first jawes appear'd that ugly monster,
Ycleped Mud, which, when their oares did once stirre,
Belch'd forth an ayre, as hot, as at the muster
Of all your night-tubs, when the carts doe cluster,
Who shall discharge first his merd-urinous load:
Thorough her wombe they make their famous road,
Betweene two walls; where, on one side, to scar men,
Were seene your ugly Centaures, yee call Car-men,
Gorgonian scolds, and Harpyes: on the other
Hung stench, diseases, and old filth, their mother,
With famine, wants, and sorrowes many a dosen,
The least of which was to the plague a cosen.
But they unfrighted passe, though many a privie
Spake to'hem louder, than the Oxe in Livie;
And many a sinke* pour'd out her rage anenst'hem;
But still their valour, and their vertue fenc't'hem …

The banks of the Fleet were lined with privies. The following lines seem to be describing a particularly big and well-known one:

By this time had they reach'd the Stygian poole
By which the Masters sweare, when on the stoole
Of worship, they their nodding chinnes do hit
Against their breasts. Here, sev'rall ghosts did flit
About the shore, of farts, but late departed,
White, black, blew, greene, and in more formes out-started,
Than all those Atomi ridiculous,
Whereof old Democrite, and Hill Nicholas,**
One said, the other swore, the world consists.
These be the cause of those thick frequent mists
Arising in that place, through which, who goes,
Must trie the un-used valour of a nose:
And that ours did. For, yet, no nare*** was tainted,
Nor thumbe, nor finger to the stop acquainted,
But open, and un-arm'd encounter'd all:
Whether it languishing stuck upon the wall,
Or were precipitated down the jakes,
And, after, swom abroad in ample flakes,
Or, that it lay, heap'd like an usurers masse,
All was to them the same, they were to passe,
And so they did …

Higher up, near Newgate Street, there was a stretch of the river where butchers and cooks routinely disposed of refuse, under some misguided ordinance of the Middle Ages. Jonson compared this part to Acheron (the burning river of the Greek Hades):

The ever-boyling floud. Whose bankes upon
Your Fleet-lane Furies; and hot cooks do dwell,
That, with still-scalding steemes, make the place hell.
The sinkes ran grease, and haire of meazled hogs,
The heads, houghs, entrailes, and the hides of dogs:
For, to say truth, what scullion is so nasty,
To put the skins, and offall in a pasty?
Cats there lay divers had been flead and rosted,
And, after mouldie grown, again were tosted,
Then selling not, a dish was tane to mince'hem,
But still, it seem'd, the ranknesse did convince'hem.
For, here they were thrown in with'the melted pewter,
Yet drown'd they not. They had five lives in future.

*sinke: cess-pit

**Nicholas Hill (1570–c.1610), a philosopher

***nare: nostril

Ben Jonson (1572–1637)

from 'The Famous Voyage'


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