Night Soil Carter

Although there are still a few men and dwarves that work as night soil carters, they most often do no more than oversee centaur workers in the wealthier districts. Most of the night soil carters in the crown city are centaurs that work for men that run workhouses and oversee several carters in the district where the workhouse is located.

Career

Career Progression

Night soil carters begin their work in the poor district, where they are trained by older workers in the proper maintence of the carts. Once they have proven they can maintain a cart properly they are assigned to walk patrols with carters, that have at least five years experience, who will train them in the proper transfer of material from chamber pots or dump bins to the barrels on the carts. They are then instricted in the correct procedure for dumping the barrels into the pits where the wate from the city is to be processed for use as fertilizer for the fields.
Older workers, and those unable to pull carts throughout the city, are assigned to work the pits. There they oversee the proper aggregation of the waste and the chemicals  that are used to break down the solids and deodorize the slurry before it is spread, by bucket loads, across the fields.

Payment & Reimbursement

Night soil carters are granted a small stipend that is just enough to pay for meals and a few other essentials. The crown treasurer provides a payroll to the men that run night soil workhouses throughout the city, which is supposed to be paid out to the workers. Since the law does not recognize centaurs as having rights, however, the workhouses will usually charge a variety of fees for meals and the rental and maintence of rooms and carts.

Other Benefits

Night soil carters are granted a small room in a boarding house in the poor district, often these are no more than a converted stable or old warehouses that has been divided into small apartment units. Most of these are workhouses that provide not only a room, but also require the workers to pay for various services such as the cost of meals from an on-site soup kitchen and laundry services. The workhouse will provide the worker with a cart and barrels, for a small fee that is intended to cover maintenance that is often not performed on the carts until they have broken, the repair of which is taken out of the worker's future income. Most workhouses are designed to incur more debt from their workers than the workers can pay off, thus indebting the workers to the workhouses for life.

Perception

History

The night soil carters began as a profession held by the lower classes in the city. Men would ride carts pulled by mules or centaurs through the streets in the hours before dawn and collect the refuse and chamber pots that were left out on the back stoops of homes and shops.
Those who used centaurs to pull their carts soon realized that with a few modifications that allowed the centaur to harness and unharness themselves from the cart, the men would be able to remian in their seat and never handle the waste containers that were dumped into the barrels on the back of the carts.

Type

Sanitation

Related Vehicles

• Night Soil Cart