London at the time of the Italian Boy killings was awash with all manner of unmentionable filth. A letter was received by The Lancet in April 1831 from an angry septuagenarian who lived in the countryside. He was no longer very fast on his feet, he wrote; and whenever he came up to London for the day and was caught short, all he could see were fierce notices stating “Commit No Nuisance” (that’s a euphemism for “do not urinate”).
If he ever decided to chance it, and attempt a discreet pee, “he was furiously driven off by the new [Metropolitan] policemen.”

Lancet, 16 April 1831