>Did gutters ever in history carry along sewage?

pssst, Wordwither'd*, brush up on your history.

1711 -- Johnathan Swift notes the contents of London's gutters: "sweepings from butchers' stalls, dung, guts and blood, drowned puppies, stinking sprats, all drenched in mud..."

(see the Plague Years, or the Black Death)

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* - "the winds were wither'd in the stagnant air" - Byron