The Strange Story of Gunpowder and Pigeon Droppings

Claim A says Royal agents once dug pigeon droppings out of dovecotes. Claim B says English law once banned owning pigeons without a license fee. Claim A is true, and Claim B is completely made up.

The secret ingredient was saltpetre, the key component of gunpowder. For centuries, England had few natural sources of it, and pigeon droppings were the country's main supply until the late 18th century.

So the state took an interest in dovecotes. Officials known as "saltpetre men" traveled the country, scraping up droppings and hauling them away. According to one heritage account, the extraction recipe was once so hush-hush that England paid £300 to bring it over from Germany.

Dovecotes reportedly weren't even allowed to have floors, so the droppings would pile up on bare earth. The King's men would come around a couple of times a year to dig out the bottom of the dovecote.

By 1646, a Parliamentary ordinance gave saltpetre men authority to dig in pigeon houses, stables, cellars and vaults, with limits on the hours they could work. Popular lore also credits King George I with declaring all droppings Crown property, though that story is hard to pin down.

Claim B is false because England never had a pigeon license fee. Dovecotes were regulated, but the real rules were about who could build one, not who could own a pigeon.

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