Regarding the privy in the house and attendant smell -- if they emptied
the buckets every day, there wouldn't have been much smell.
 
My first chore, as a 5-year-old, was "emptying the pot" which was kept
at the foot of my parent's bed. It was one of those white enamel buckets
with the red trim you often see lying in old dumps. The fact that you
see them so often in trash deposits probably has very little to do with
the arrival of indoor plumbing. Enamel pots are prone to pinholes on
that angle where the base turns under, and one tiny hole is usually more
than sufficient to make even the most frugal person go buy a new pot. We
had to replace ours every year or so.
 
Back to smell... there is a faint pong in the morning, but it vanishes
after the pot is taken out of the room. If they had covers over the
holes, kept the privy door closed, and emptied it regularly, I doubt
there would have been much more than a faint whiff out in the kitchen.
The other type of johnny-house, with a big hole underneath which is
never emptied, is a totally different matter.
 
Ripe human dirt has been the order of the day for the last few million
years, so in terms of "normal,", our modern ultra-sanitized bathrooms
are the truly deviate bit of behavior. Also, if your people were
farmers... those guys are constantly wallowing through and wearing the
feces of various animals. They're not going to be bothered by a little
smell from the privy.
 
 
Taft Kiser
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