What is a Gongfarmer?
Compliments of www.chiptin.com
Some earlier terms I've found of interest: the name for the medieval privy closet was garderobe. The individuals in those days who cleaned out the privies and cesspools were called gongfermors or gongfarmer (appeared in 1814) - a scavenger. Gong is a word (appeared in 1633) for the contents of a privy, the ordure (appeared in 1388) as the French called it. A gong-burl was the hole of a privy.
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Fyodor Dostoevsky "Notes From the Underground"
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