This may be a little strange, but what kind of toilets did they have in the bar rooms of the old west?
They had no toilets in the bars. In a very civilized town there might be an outhouse in the back.
As an aside, my grandparents did not have indoor plumbing until my uncle put in a septic tank for them in the 1970s. (They never had indoor plumbing, so they never really missed it.) II would be happy to answer any outhouse related questions you might have.
Yeah, the drinkers and card players would have used an outhouse behind the building. Chamber pots would have been available for those taking rooms upstairs.
In the area around Auburn California there are many relief stations that are simply a board, with a hole in it, nailed to a convenient branch over a natural depression. These are so common that I assume they were standard for the time. Outhouses must have been upscale.
My Father grew up on a farm in Saskatchewan in the 1930s. He said a rich man has a canopy over his bed and a poor man has a can o’ pee under his bed.
I have a historical photo of Wallace, Idaho. There is a building (presumably a bar) with a two story outhouse. It has a enclosed walkway from the second story of the building. I’m guessing some type of staggered seating and a false wall to make it work?
They probably also had chamber pots in the rooms used for overnight guests.
They would have had an outhouse. My Grandparents had an outhouse and no inside plumbing when I went back to visit them in Arkansas when I was 10 years old. About 1962. Once the outhouse pit got full they simply dug a new hole in the ground and moved the outhouse.
I remember getting some water from the well and there was a frog in it so I kind of freaked out. They told me to throw the frog back into the well because it was eating the bugs. Different times.
Outhouses outside, chamberpots inside.
Outhouses could use cans or an in-ground cesspit. Human shit had some value as manure and because you could arrange for people to deposit it in a single place was very attractive if you ran market gardens. And if you had a tannery as presumably some places in the Old West did, you’d pay good money for barrels of rancid urine. There’s a whole human economy that we tend to avoid thinking about.
It must have been tough in the winter.
After a big cattle drive, I can see a line forming.
Did they separate men’s and women’s?
Going to the bathroom at -40 isn’t too bad. The worst part is breaking off the icicle when you’re done.
This thread is making all my dad’s favourite jokes come back.
When the Sears catalog changed to glossy paper, many people were upset. Glossy paper is no good for wiping.
The time of year also made a significant difference in the quality of the corncobs that were available for wiping. Later in the year, the corncobs were larger, but had a rougher texture.
Hell, my brother had an outhouse out behind his first home with his wife. That was early sixties in rural Alaska. They had no running water in his house; he hauled water in five gallon jerry cans from a creek a few miles from his place. My mother was mortified that they had no water or bathroom, but I sure enjoyed my summers out there.
Recalling the saying, “so poor they didn’t have a pot to piss in or a window to throw it out of.”
I’ve actually given this a lot of thought … more than is normal, I suppose.
Obviously, you are going to encounter situations in your life outside the reach of indoor plumbing — such as hiking. In the national parks, pit toilets are provided along improved trails … so there’s that! People who don’t venture off the beaten trail have no idea.
I recall a (very) small town bar called Tilley’s in Beachwood, WI, closed now since Tilley died. When motorcycle rallies gathered at the location, the guys were explicitly instructed to go around and use the back wall for number one. Tilley had an indoor head but reserved it for number two and for the use of female patrons to avoid overflowing the holding tank.
I found myself unexpectedly but similarly confronted with the lack of resources at the Jersey Lilly in Ingomar, MT.
o JERSEY LILLY, Ingomar - Restaurant Reviews, Photos & Phone Number - Tripadvisor
I asked whether it was OK for me to use the restroom, and the barkeep told me, “Sure! Go out the front door. Turn right, and turn right again at the corner.” … a well rehearsed response, no doubt. Indoor facilities were available to women, though. In the case of the Jersey Lilly the trouble was the town’s water supply was out of a railroad water tender parked on a nearby siding. This was limited and expensive, and effort was put forth to preserve it.
Everybody’s heard of the Jersey Lilly, but fame has not spared it from changing hands recently and extended episodes of not-being-open. I have no idea of its current status. The above review indicates that some of the “Olde West” look and feel has been mitigated by installing actual outhouses.
These are two instances of a sort of holdover of conditions that prevailed everywhere in the country at one time — not just in the West. Horses were a universal and ubiquitous source of motive power. Anyone who’s visited Mackinac Island, MI, where motorized vehicles are prohibited knows what that means. There’s a reason that brick streets had a very high crown and ample gutters. It wasn’t just to handle precipitation.
Because there were stables on every block, men could find relief without needlessly filling an outhouse pit and without going home to do their business, leaving the outhouse behind the home to the nearly exclusive use of their female relatives.
Public institutions where men spent a large portion of the day nevertheless did have public outhouses. Courthouses and schools were equipped with separate facilities for men and women. Women’s facilities were marked by the common and familiar quarter moon. Men’s facilities were marked by the considerably rarer sunburst.
On a tour of Germany I took in 2010, one of the stops was a medieval brewery in Erfurt. Farmers around the area also grew woad, for dye. The guide told us that many dye makers also brewed and sold beer on the premises; one step in the dyemaking process required urine, and having a pub nearby guaranteed a regular supply. Indeed, the brewery we toured had an open pit right outside the door, which was usually filled with dye in need of peein’ on.
For number one, many men would probably just go around the corner and find a wall to piss on; heck, many still do that. Or a rock; at one scout camp we were told that if the need arises while hiking on the trail, piss on a rock, not a fence post or a tree. The salt would attract animals who would gnaw at the wood.
Our rural farmhouse had water installed about 1945 (before my time) but kept the outhouse standing a short distance from the house. As kids we were scared of using it, because of the odor, spiders, and frankIy the fear of falling in. My oldest brother finally got the tractor out and dragged it to the grove of trees. His reason was he was embarrassed when his friends came to visit and make fun of the outhouse.
The Belle Plaine Hooper House in Minnesota has a two-story outhouse. The upper unit’s waste flows behind a false wall. You can visit it but not use it.
That’s really cool, but I’ll bet the lower privy stunk.
Back in 1975 I was working a construction job building a small dam waaay back in the woods. I ran a push cat (large bulldozer used to push scrappers when loading dirt) which left me in the borrow pit alone most of the day waiting for the next scrapper to come get a load. At the end of the work day the last scrapper would leave it there for first load in the morning and ride back to the road with me in my pickup and back in the morning.
So about two weeks into the job a new guy took over for a guy that was off for an injury. Thursday was the new guy’s turn. We parked our equipment so we could start up and already be in position for the first load after morning safety and maintenance check. New guy decided to take a leak and (unknown to me) off we went. Next morning while doing my safety check he started yelling and I ran over to see what help I could give and when I come around the back of his scrapper I see him just standing there looking at one of his tires. Now these tires are eight feet tall and two and a half feet wide. (Not cheep) The day before that leak he took was directed at that tire and over night the local critters feasted on the salty rubber.
I never saw that guy again.
I think, of course, it was outhouses and chamber pots. But what I wonder is whether it was an outhouse for the bar, or just a public outhouse for the town. Would a bar near other businesses really build their own outhouse?
BTW, we had an outhouse at the house I first lived in, though we also had indoor plumbing. The plumbing was new enough that nobody had cleared away the outhouse yet.