Don't put yer muck in our Poubelle, Monsieur!

One of the many joys of girlfriend Claire is the way that she continues to educate moi, l'anglais in the lesser byways of La Belle France and all things français.

Take the humble word, poubelle, which, as any fule kno, means dustbin. As it happens, poubelle was one of the first words I learned in French at the tender age of about ten under the psychopathic supervision of our inspirational, if astonishingly violent, teacher. We all learned lots of French as it was a good way to stay alive.

I was most intrigued to learn from Claire that in fact, the illustrious-looking gent in the picture is none other than Monsieur Eugène Poubelle, after whom all modern French dustbins are named.

Monsieur Poubelle was le préfet de la Seine from 1883-1896 and the author of a determined effort to clean up Paris; evidently by the most literal means. He ordered that all apartment block proprietors should provide three different bins with lids for different grades of refuse. All these new-fangled and wondrous receptacles became known as poubelles. Careful with that trashcan, Eugène! Which is pretty trippy, even by the exalted standards of Syd Barrett . . .

Monsieur le préfet was thus one of the great, early unsung heroes of modern hygiene and recycling, on a par with our own English giant, Mr Thomas Crapper. When I first wrote this piece I was under the impression both that Crapper invented the flushing WC and that he also lent his (abbreviated) name to that most universal and democratic act of going for a crap.

Actually he did neither: He invented various improvements, notably the ball valve, and pulled off a remarkable marketing coup in being born with such an apt name. However crap has apparently been around since at least the age of Middle English (early C15). What a relief . . .

Unfortunately Poubelle remained largely unappreciated in his own lifetime. The proprietors did their best to avoid the expense of nice new poubelles, hand in glove with the tenants who feared rises in rents and service charges. They continued to use any garbage container that came to hand until after the Second World War, when at last the battle to beat the pong was won.

Fascinating, eh? Il n'y a pas beaucoup du monde qui le connâit . . .