Dung relic rakes in £1,100

A 300-YEAR-OLD leaflet encouraging residents in a Scottish city to clean up dung from its streets has fetched £1,125 at auction.

The Act of the Town Council of Edinburgh was published on April 2, 1718, following complaints from ‘inhabitants and strangers’.

The council took into ‘consideration the negligence of those appointed for cleaning the streets and carrying away the dung’.

The Act declared it ‘lawful for all persons in town or country... to rake, gather and carry out of the town for their own use allenarly [solely] all dung, fulzie [filth] or nastiness that they can find in any place within the city on the streets, closes, wynds, public markets or anywhere else throughout the whole quarters of the town’.

The single sheet was sold at Lyon & Turnbull auctioneers in Edinburgh, where it exceeded its £1,000 estimate.