The skyline of Victorian London was dominated by sinister mounds of
rubbish, graphically described in Dickens's novel Our Mutual Friend.
Surprisingly these dust mounds were where hundreds of so called running
or flying dustmen made a meager living. Working in the open air in all
weathers, amid the dust and smell, they separated out the refuse,
selling much of it on, in an early form of recycling. They turned a
profit from mere rubbish - the 'Alchemy of Dust'. In time the fear of
cholera and other epidemic diseases resulted in public health
legislation that banished the dust mounds, and 150 years later Londoners
do their own recycling. In this pioneering book Peter Hounsell explores
the changes in the management of London's rubbish over the last two
centuries.