Sometimes privies are not cleaned, just moved. A new hole is excavated and the structure is moved over it. Then the old hole is covered, sometimes after the addition of lime. In order to proceed this way the land area has to be large enough not to have to re-excavate the same area,
 for awhile at least.

Lots in the city of Houston appear to have had only one privy each. Therefore, it is presumed these were regularly cleaned. The City Council records also show that they passed a regulation that the cleaning of privies was to be done at night. The material cleaned out in urban areas was frequently dumped into drainage ditches along with other household and commercial waste. Cities in areas without naturally occurring ditches would create a city dump just outside town. Also it must be remembered that many urban households kept pigs (regs at first were just to keep them from running loose on the streets) and chickens as well as other livestock. The mayor of Houston had not only horses but at least one cow on his city lot in 1858.

Prior to modern sanitary sewers all of this must have kept the local pooper scoopers quite busy.

It is assumed that when privies were cleaned the artifacts associated with the night soil were also removed and redeposited in the dump areas. Someone mentioned earlier finding a backyard with multiple and overlapping privy pits - wow, what a great ---- load of research potential.

Diane