I last used a pit a couple of weeks ago. It’s a 2-seater, but, ummm, no! The weird thing is they built a new building last year that has indoor plumbing but it still isn’t finished, as in there’s a toilet but no door yet.
I’ve changed diapers. I was probably in the bathroom, standing there, when the kid was learning how to use the potty but I have never gone where someone else was sitting so close that we could touch outer thighs.
This weekend, I used a modern, temporary version at the festival I was at & in a couple of weeks I’ll have the opportunity to use a fancy pit - cinder block, 5 walls (single interior separating wall) & a roof; single M seat on the one side & single F seat on the other side in a rural state park
My summer Boy Scout camp had a multi-seat outdoor latrine. The camp hosted several hundred boys throughout the summer.
I assume it used composting. My biggest concern was dirt dauber and wasps. I’d see them flying in and out of the seat holes. It really makes a guy want to sit down and have his anus tickled by the dirt daubers. 
I never got stung, and I never crapped faster in my life. Did my business and got out.
I wanted to add a little to this. The place i vacation also has a composting outhouse, which is vastly less stinky than the pit ones. But it requires more maintenance. Every day, wood shavings are added, and it’s regularly “stirred”. There’s a fan, both for the benefit of the people and the benefit of the composting process. Ours does not have a rotation like that, but it has 8 stalls, and sometimes the most popular one or two are closed for composting.
And yes, the decomposed compost is spread on the forest floor, where it is fairly benign.
My then-girlfriend’s family had an outhouse in the 80s, although this was rural Japan.
Worse than any smell were the mosquitos, and I tried to not use it after dark.
The family also had a wood fire for heating the bath water, which was fun for me, but I would imagine would get old.
At JazzFest in NOLA, they had 30 or so porta-potties lined up. People were in line for each of the 30, with a dozen or so people waiting in each line.
There was one porta-potty with no line. Obviously there was a problem with that one. While waiting in line I saw an occasional brave woman run up to the porta-potty with no line. She’d open the door and immediately slam it shut, looking like she’d seen a ghost.
I recently travelled on a heritage steam train in Germany where there was just a downpipe and you could see the tracks and sleepers. Regular trains (of course) have some sort of airplane-like suction system into storage - for cleaning out at the destination or the depot, I assume.
But I’m still unable to hear Dvorak’s Humoresque without remembering my family’s rather more explicit version of this:
Here’s what you need: ‘The Specialist’ by Charles Sale.
Went to an Oktoberfest celebration in a suburb of Chicago. They had Port-a-Potties for the women, but brought in a trailer with a trough for the men. They were obviously planning for the necessities of a beer-drinking event, that the beer had to come out. The “Mens Room” was set up as walk in one door; use the trough; walk out another door. Nice and efficient. Doors were propped open for airflow. This, of course, led to the more… exhibitionist of males to be tucking in and zipping up while walking out the door.
Radiolab had an interesting episode covering outhouses. Apparently they weren’t universal in the US South until after the Rockefeller Commission did a study on hookworm infections in 1908. They found that hookworm larvae can travel for up to 4’ through loose soil. If hookworm-infected poop isn’t buried 5’ or more the larvae reach the surface, ready to burrow into the first bare foot that steps on them. They had to educate folks that it wasn’t good enough to just do your business behind a tree or out in the field.
I read somewhere that it is common in some African communities.
Oh - it might have been on that show Monsters Inside Me.
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.
I doubt they’d use a pit design in that period – the Victorians were very keen on sewers, and I think by the late period, towns and cities typically had extensive sewage systems.
Certainly all the ones I’ve seen (late Victorian and early Edwardian) were flush toilets, and some of the fancier ones had a cold-water hand basin.
Do you have a link to the whole album? On our way from Le Havre to Paris after disembarking from the QE2 we rode with a nice old lady who sang “Three Old Ladies Locked in the Lavatry” for us - to the tune of “Johnny’s Too Long at the Fair.” It would be fun to hear another version.
“Oh dear, what could the matter be?
Three Old Ladies locked in the Lavatory,
They’ve been gone from to Coventry
Nobody knew they were there.”
Appropriate inappropriate song - https://YouTube. com/watch?v=QMlIItNjm3c (remove the space between YouTube & Com)
I recall in the movie A Boy Ten Feet Tall he starts to sing this to amuse himself while traversing the desert. It was a well-known song back in the day.
I recall the version:
Dear, dear, what could the matter be?
Three Old Ladies locked in the Lavatory,
They were gone from Monday to Saturday
Nobody knew they were there.
I don’t know of any other verses. And sorry, I only looked on YouTube for the Humoresque, I didn’t follow up on any others in that series
bah… for a real exhibitionist, no tucking and zipping is needed …