In December 1875, the cleanliness and tranquility of the city of Rio de Janeiro ceased to be the responsibility of the City Council and became the responsibility of the Ministry of the Empire. In January of the following year, a new entrepreneur took over service. In his short tenure, he stirred the newspapers with opinions about the services. Amid criticism and intense fines, Júlio Richard had no other option than to terminate his contract. This fact paved the way for the Empire minister to call Aleixo Gary to the ministry secretariat and deliver the contract. This episode marked the beginning of a trajectory in the history of the city's cleaning service that consecrated, to this day, the surname "Gari".

This dissertation sought to analyze the sanitary aspect of the streets of the city of Rio de Janeiro based on the public cleaning and cleaning service carried out between 1876 and 1877. The time frame considers the almost five months in which Júlio Richard was in charge of the services and first twelve months of managing the company Gary. The administrations of both companies were highlighted and compared based on newspaper publications made by the population about the service, addressing: 1st character of the message (reach), 2nd the authority to which the writers resorted when publishing about the services , 3rd the position adopted by them in relation to the situation related to the publication, 4th the specific issues that motivated the publication.

To compose the framework of information related to the service, the letters that were exchanged at the time between the City Council and its inspectors, the Ministry of the Empire and the Central Board of Public Hygiene were considered. Thus, we identified certain aspects of the sanitary conditions of the streets of Rio de Janeiro in a context marked by the dissemination of the ideals of civilization and progress, as well as the role played by the municipality, through its agents, in the daily maintenance of public hygiene. Furthermore, we demonstrate a informal exercise of citizenship by those who took their demands to the newspapersabout cleaning and irrigation services in the city of Rio de Janeiro.