Apologies for cross-posting.

Americans are uncomfortable when they discuss toilets, which may explain
why the literature of domestic plumbing history is so strange. Books with
cute titles like "Clean and Decent" or "The Porcelain God" give testimony
to our discomfort with the subject. Our source on the lore of the privy is
still Chick Sale's "The Specialist," with the "standard eight-family
three-holer."

In recent projects, I have been wrestling with toilet-related questions such as:

1. When did pit privies begin to appear in domestic sites?  What was the
motivation for moving to a pit privy, as opposed to whatever was being done
before?  The fact remains that we don't know much about what people did
before they had privies.

2. Has anyone studied the movement, concurrent with the introduction of
running water, of the toilet from the outhouse to the back porch?  When,
and under what circumstances, did it become acceptable to put the toilet
inside the house?  We know, from archaeology and documentation, that the
first plumbed flush toilets were installed outside the house, sometimes in
the porch and sometimes in the old privies. Has anyone looked at the market
share enjoyed by frostproof flush toilets that could be installed in
unheated spaces? That might tell us something about where the potties were
located when running water became available.

3. Is there any documentation for individual households' conversions from
pit privies to flushed water closets? Did some families resist?  How
quickly did families abandon their cesspools after the arrival of municipal
sewers?  In places where hookups were not mandated, what were the arguments
for and against on-site domestic wastewater disposal?

4. This is important. Today we accept the sitting position as the norm for
bowel movements. In some societies, the squatting position is generally
accepted. This has considerable bearing on the structure of the disposal
devices, and on a myriad of other issues. There's evidence that squatting
(or hunkering) was the norm in America, notably before the introduction of
the pit privy with its throne and consequent sitting position. Has anyone
addressed this issue, and its effect?

5. We make uncomfortable jokes about upper-class facilities like William
Byrd's privy at Westover, or an equally elegant Rhode Island sanitary
embrasure. Did the "throne" defecating position trickle down from the upper
classes? Then there is that wonderful story about LBJ ordering bigger
potties in the White House even before JFK was properly planted. Our
discomfort is showing.

We have assembled a vast archaeological literature of privy-pit contents,
and much has been written about night-soil disposal. But once the pipes
reach the site, the toilet seems to become archaeologically invisible.
Granted, we are culturally uncomfortable with the subject, but it needs to
be addressed seriously, without resorting to cute book titles.

I remember digging an eighteenth-century privy pit located adjacent to a
state highway historical marker titled "Cornwallis's movements."  (Giggle,
blush, shuffle)

Has anyone compiled a bibliography? Go ahead and make jokes about writing
in the margin of a Sears catalogue.

Okay, everybody's tittering uncomfortably by the time they reach this point
in the text. Let's deal with it, eh?

Ned Heite  ([log in to unmask])
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Ever notice that your contemporaries
seem to be so old, while you're not?
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