There were men in every ward appointed to be “sweepers of litter,” and they were sometimes called “rakers.” Scavagers were officers who took custom upon the Scavage (showage) of imported goods. They also discharged various other duties, one of which was to see that precautions were taken in case of fire. Later, they kept pavements in repair and looked after streets and lanes, so that they gradually became what we now call scavengers, giving the name of an honourable occupation to a menial office. On this word Professor Skeat sends me the following remarks:— “Another London word is _scavenger_; the solution of which, without the _Liber Albus_, would have been hopeless. It arose in a way we could never have suspected, and could never have anticipated; and it shows the futility of guessing. To begin with, the old sense was quite different, and the old form was not _scavenger_, but _scavager_. The man whom we now call a _scavenger_ was formerly called a _raker_; Langland tells us that, amongst the company in the tavern of which I have already spoken, there was ‘a raker of Cheapside,’ _i.e._ one who had to rake the filth together and keep the street clean. The inspection of streets came to be included among the duties of a _scavager_, but this was not so at first. Originally, his business was _scavage_; and _scavage_ meant the inspection of imported goods, which had to be submitted or shown to the _scavagers_, or inspectors. As to the word _scavage_ itself, it is a Norman coinage meaning ‘show-age’ or exhibition, coined in an extraordinary fashion by adding the French suffix _-age_ (as seen in _porter-age_, or _broker-age_), to the Middle-English word _schaw-en_, which we now pronounce as _show_. And the net result is, that, once upon a time, a _scavenger_ was one who was busied about the ‘inspection’ of imported goods; which is quite a recondite point of history. And it is clear to me, though the fact has never been made out before, that—when we come to consider that Chaucer was controller of the City Customs, that it was his special duty to inspect the imports of wool, and that wool was one of the commodities on which there was a duty of twelve-pence for every ‘cark’ or load—it is clear to me (as I said before) that Geoffrey Chaucer the poet was, by occupation, neither more nor less than a scavenger.” Complaints were made in 1298 that the people took the stones from the wall and the timber from the gates, so that both wall and gates were falling into ruin.