Paris Sewers and Sewermen: Realities and Representations
By Donald Reid (NHC Fellow, 1987–88; 2012–13) The expansion of the Paris sewer system during the Second Empire and Third Republic was both a technological and political triumph. The sewers themselves were an important cultural phenomenon, and the men who worked in them a source of fascination. Donald Reid shows that observing how such laborers as cesspool … Continued