An unexpectedly primordial source aided in the city’s sanitation, as observed by one British visitor, John Benwell, author in 1857 of An Englishman’s Travels in America. “As you walk the streets of Charleston, rows of greedy vultures, with sapient look, sit on the parapets of the houses, watching for offal,” he wrote. The birds were protected; anyone caught killing one was subject to a ten-dollar fine. “They appeared to be quite conscious of their privileges, and sailed down from the house-tops into the streets, where they stalked about, hardly caring to move out of the way of the horses and
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