My grandparents had a much simpler setup on their farm. They dug a hole (the ground was clay so it was unlikely to cave in) and put a shack on top of it. After a while when the hole got full, the shack started to fall apart, or some other reason, they’d fill in the hole, dig a new one in a different place, and repeat the process.
At least by the time I came along, they did use actual toilet paper, not old magazines or corncobs.
Anthropologists love hitting a hundred year old outhouse pit. Or should I say that construction workers hate hitting them, because an anthropologist might stop the work to dig through it. They could find broken dentures, old medicine bottles, broken crockery, anything that wouldn’t go in the family incinerator/burn pit.
Sorry if not clear. I was referring to the use of the thin paper “like the kind most RV owners use so as not to clog up the [RV] works”. We used that similar very thin paper so that it deteriorated quickly and didn’t pile up in the pit.
I went to a party once at a friend’s grandpa’s farm in a rural area. They had a pavilion way back at the end of the property, along the Cuyahoga River. Since it was so far from the house, grandpa had built an outhouse to use back there. It dumped right in to the river.
I thought it was an interesting setup. Oddly enough, the friend/granddaughter is now a biologist who oversees the Cuyahoga River watershed. I wonder if she had to shut down the outhouse?
[Moderating]
If you can’t resist, please at least wait until some folks have had a chance to make factual responses before starting with the jokes.
When I was growing up, my Grandmother owned a cottage with an outhouse. MY memories of it (late 60s / 70s), there was running water in the kitchen, but the outhouse was still the, um, waste dumping grounds. Yeah, it was moved at least once. Dig a new pit; move structure; fill in old pit.
After my Grandmother died, one of my uncles bought the cottage. Built a new house there with plumbing, but kept the outhouse as a “conversation piece”. Kept an old Sears catalog and a couple of corn cobs in there.
I mentioned my Aunt & Uncle’s place over here. They had a handpump in the yard, that and a bucket were presumably the handwashing station before the house had indoor plumbing.
We bought this place we call home as land. We found an old cabin and pieces of outbuildings in a used to be clearing.
The outhouse, I’ve immortalized previously on these boards. A body (or particular parts of one) were discovered down there. Big,big problem. Believe me.
I’ve thought about outhouses a fair bit since then. The only live ones I’ve ever encountered were at an old friend of my Granny’s when I was a kid. One look and I held my pee. Too many spiders. Gah!
I’ve used the camp ground type, maybe 3 times. The smell is unfortunate and unforgettable.
And yes, wash up is a problem. Germaphobes, beware.
I’ve also heard tales of snakes, raccoons and other varmints. And the spiders and bugs. I think I may have taken my chances in the bushes.
But…
I’m watching the Yellowstone 1883 series right now and one girl squats behind a tree and gets snake bit on the butt. What a way to go.
Elimination was just a crap shoot(
) in those days.
Modern toilets are a gift from heaven. IMHO.
Don’t forget about the bears.
When I was a kid I regularly went to a Boy Scout summer camp (Tomahawk Scout Camp in northern Wisconsin). There are a few dozen campsites; when I was there each campsite had its own multi-seat outhouse shared by an entire troop of boys and adult leaders. There was a wall between each seat, but it only extended as far as the front of the seat; privacy was pretty limited.
There’s an old Lone Ranger joke similar to this… punchline “Dcotor him say… you gonna die.”
The oddest “outhouse” I’ve seen was a row of what looked like brick and wood stalls - door air gap top and bottom, roof cover It was down the path from a Tibetan Temple, and a small stream from the Himalayas ran through a trough along the floor of the stalls. The standard there is “squat” so just two footpad boards, no nice seat with a circular hole.
Does anyone remember the old trains where the sign said “do not use in station”? Look down the toilet and you could see the railroad ties.
The “great vine” in Hampton court, covering an acre or so, is believed to have grown from an old palace cesspool. I suppose if you keep moving things long enough, you create pockets of rich soil. I assume a lot was from emptying the chamber pots of the nobles too posh to venture out at night. (There’s a bit in a W.C. Fields movie where he accidently kicks a crockery pot sitting under a bed, which I assumed was pretty risque for movies at the time…)
The row houses in late Vicotrian England were allegedly built with an outhouse in the tiny back yard - usually brick, with I assume a pit that needed to be emptied every so often. It’s not like there was room to keep moving the thing, even if it was moveable. Seems it would be an interestingly fragrant neighbourhood. After all, anyone been around those “Johnny on the Spot” portable toilets in county fairs and music festivals and such? Eureka!
Most of the rural outhouses I remember from my youth (summer camp and such) were the basic single occupancy wood shed over a pit. I remember comments about having to dig a new hole and move them. The use of the Sears catalog is also legendary. As is the Halloween prank about a bunch of teens moving the outhouse building a few feet further back along the path.
I get the idea that Victorian England was a rather ‘fragrant’ place to abide for many reasons.
I saw a similar “multiple squatting areas over a trench” toilet when we visited the Great Wall of China.
You mean “Passengers will please refrain…”
This train’s got the disappearing railroad blues.
I remember another similar warning about not flushing the on-train toilet in a tunnel because the ram air effect might cause the toilet to flush up into the bathroom rather than down onto thw tracks.
Thanks for this, for once I don’t mind an all-day ear worm.
Here in the great state of Rhode Island a recent state court ruling rejected a proposed statewide ban on new outhouses leaving it to the local towns to decide if it was allowable. I assume if the outhouse is far enough away from streets, wells, other property, wet lands etc. there’s no reason not to allow it.
I have used one many times; nobody ever said anything to me about not putting things down it. Any and all trash went into the hole. I can’t imagine why a little wad of cotton would be considered a problem. All trash got buried, pretty much, and none got buried deeper than what went into the dunny. Old telephone books were the thing there. There was a metal pail with wood ash in it. When you were done you lifted the lid and sprinkled a scoop of wood ash in. I presume the lye helped break things down and eliminate smells.
I even helped move one once. First we dug the hole, which was even harder than it sounds. Like somebody said above it was lined with the sides of 55 gallon drums (metal, not plastic), so you couldn’t use an ordinary shovel. Most of the work was done with a post hole digger. We did a bit each day for four days and got about 5 feet down. Then a neighbor had rented a massive stump digger thing and lent it to us for an hour. We did the rest and had it back to him before the hour was up. LOL!
The next job was lifting up the housing and carrying it to the new site. The bottom half was quite gamey, but four of us were able to carry it and get it set into place.
Then we wheeled almost all of the dug up soil to the old site and buried the waste about 5 feet deep. We mounded it good and high and planted a sassafras tree on top. This was apparently a local tradition/joke. Don’t step too close to a sassafras tree, in case the ground gives on you. All this was on Monacan Indian land near Lynchburg, VA.
The house I live in is 114 years old (South Minneapolis, MN, near Minnehaha Creek) and had no indoor plumbing when originally built. It originally had an outhouse at the back end of the property, next to the alley. There was a small garden area there beyond the back yard. It had very rich, productive garden soil.
Those are especially smelly because:
Amtrak still had those last time I rode coach, circa 2007. The ties could be seen when the toilet flushed.