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54-552: Fewer and fewer cesspits needed to be dug out as more modern sewage disposal systems, such as pail closets and water closets , became increasingly widespread in 19th-century England. The job of emptying cesspits today is usually carried out mechanically using suction, by specialised tankers called vacuum trucks . "Gong" is derived from Old English : gang , which means "to go". Towns usually provided public latrines, known as houses of easement, but numbers were limited: in London towards

108-514: A home in Halifax , where it was used in more than 3,000 closets after 1870. The wooden pails used in Halifax were oval in cross-section (about 24 by 19 inches) and 16 inches deep. Each was lined at the sides and bottom with a mixture of refuse, such as straw, grass, street sweepings, wool, hair, and even seaweed. This lining, which was formed by a special mould and to which sulphate of lime

162-465: A midden closet built in Nottingham , used a brick-raised seat above a concave receptacle to direct excreta toward the centre of the pit—which was lined with cement to prevent leakage into the surrounding soil. This closet was also designed with a special opening through which deodorising material could be scattered over the top of the pit. A special ventilation shaft was also installed. The design offered

216-529: A much larger population, Manchester Corporation employed 73 wagons. By 1875, 4,741 pails were in use, and in 1876 the number was 5,566. A separate cart accompanied the wagon to collect other household refuse which was collected from a separate chamber in the pail closet. About 9,000 long tons (9,100  t ) of night soil were collected in Rochdale each year, from a population of about 64,000—roughly 313 lb (142 kg) per person. At

270-415: A potty chair means they can be packed away in a bag for days out or when camping with young children. A chamber pot might be disguised in a sort of chair (a close stool ). It might be stored in a cabinet with doors to hide it; this sort of nightstand was known as a commode , hence the latter word came to mean "toilet" as well. For homes without these items of furniture, the chamber pot was stored under

324-432: A regular basis. The contents, known euphemistically as night soil , would either be incinerated or composted into fertiliser. Although the more advanced water closet ( flush toilet ) was popular in wealthy homes, the lack of an adequate water supply and poor sewerage meant that in 19th-century England, in working-class neighbourhoods, towns and cities often chose dry conservancy methods of waste disposal. The pail closet

378-540: A separate building from the main structure and were well ventilated. As with the pail system, earth closet containers were designed to be emptied frequently. The earth closet was popular and was used in private houses, military camps, hospitals and extensively in India . It remained in use well into the 1930s. From a sanitary perspective, the pail system of waste removal was imperfect. Excreta and other general waste were often left above ground for hours, sometimes even days at

432-402: A significant improvement over the less advanced midden privy, but the problems of emptying and cleaning such pits remained and thus the pail system, with its easily removable container, became more popular. ...the absorption appeared to me to be trivial in pails used by women and children. Widely different degrees of sloppiness existed, obviously dependent upon differences in the families using

486-567: A time. In his report on the Goux system used in Salford, the epidemiologist John Netten Radcliffe commented: "In every instance where a pail had been in use over two or three days, the capacity of absorption of the liquid dejections, claimed by the patentee for the absorbent material, had been exceeded; and whenever a pail had been four or five days a week in use, it was filled to the extent of two thirds or more of its cavity, with liquid dejections, in which

540-416: A weekly basis during the day. Each pail was secured by its lid and loaded onto a sealed 24-bay wagon to be taken to a depot where they were emptied, cleaned and returned. While the pail was removed from the closet, a replacement was installed in its place. In 1874, Rochdale Corporation employed five such wagons in full-time service, collecting from 3,354 privies spread across the town. By contrast, with

594-399: The 6th century BC and were known under different names: ἀμίς ( amis ), οὐράνη ( ouranē ) and οὐρητρίς ( ourētris , from οὖρον - ouron , "urine" ), σκωραμίς / ( skōramis ), χερνίβιον ( chernibion ). The introduction of indoor flush toilets started to displace chamber pots in the 19th century, but they remained common until the mid-20th century. The alternative to using

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648-410: The amount deposited on the excrement. Charcoal—which could be obtained cheaply from street-sweepings—and sawdust were also used to good effect. The process was more expensive than the simpler pail system. The mixture of earth and excreta could often be dried and re-used, but the fear of infections meant that it was sometimes used instead as a garden fertiliser. Earth closets were usually housed in

702-459: The approved manner could be harsh. One London gong farmer who poured effluent down a drain was put in one of his own pipes filled up to his neck with gong, before being publicly displayed in Golden Lane with a sign detailing his crime. Gong-farming can be hazardous and has a strong odor, making it a less desirable profession. The work of gong-farmers was physically exhausting, with no ventilation in

756-496: The back to allow easy emptying and a non-slip bottom to prevent the child from sliding while in use. Some are given bright colors, and others may feature gentle or unoffensive drawings or cartoon characters. In many cases they are used since it is difficult for children to maneuver themselves up onto the normal toilet; in addition the larger opening in the regular toilet is much too wide for a child to sit over comfortably and can be intimidating when they first start learning. The size of

810-468: The bed. The modern commode toilet and bedpan , used by bedbound or disabled persons, are variants of the chamber pot. A related item was the bourdalou or bourdaloue , a small handheld oblong ceramic pot used in 17th- and 18th-century France to allow women to urinate conveniently. This item, similar in shape to a deep gravy boat , could be held between the legs and urinated into while standing or crouching, with little risk of soiling their clothing. At

864-455: The bedroom. It was common in many cultures before the advent of indoor plumbing and flushing toilets . "Chamber" is an older term for bedroom. The chamber pot is also known as a Jordan , a jerry , a guzunder , a po (possibly from French : pot de chambre ), a potty pot , a potty , a thunder pot or a thunder mug . It was also known as a chamber utensil or bedroom ware . Chamber pots were used in ancient Greece at least since

918-546: The cesspits, making the night-long job even more challenging. The cesspits were not always maintained, and the rotting of the pit's ceiling was a common hazard. One notable incident occurred in 1326, when a gong-farmer named Richard the Raker fell into a cesspit whose ceiling had rotted, and drowned while collecting feces. Due to the unsavory nature of the job, gong-farmers were typically well-paid, but they were not well-respected and were often avoided by others in their community. From

972-699: The chamber pot was a trip to the outhouse . In China, the chamber pot (便壶 (biàn hú) was common. A wealthy salt merchant in the city of Yangzhou became the symbol of conspicuous excess when he commissioned a chamber pot made of gold which was so tall that he had to climb a ladder to use it. Chamber pots continue in use today in areas lacking indoor plumbing. In the Philippines, chamber pots are used as urinals and are known as arinola in most Philippine languages , such as Cebuano and Tagalog . In Korea, chamber pots are referred to as yogang (요강). They were used by people who did not have indoor plumbing to avoid

1026-466: The city authorities to consider other methods of dealing with human excretion. Although the water closet was used in wealthy homes, concerns over river pollution, costs and available water supplies meant that most towns and cities chose more labour-intensive dry conservancy systems. Manchester was one such city and by 1877 its authorities had replaced about 40,000 middens with pail and midden closets, rising to 60,000 by 1881. The soil surrounding

1080-416: The cold elements during the winter months. The term "potty" is usually used to refer to the small, toilet-shaped devices made especially for children training to use the toilet, also called potty training , which are similar to chamber pots. These "potties" are generally a large plastic bowl with an ergonomically designed back and front to protect against splashes. They may have a built-in handle or grasp at

1134-497: The council was forced to change their plans. Originally they had intended to build incinerators, but public objections to the dumping of waste into rivers forced the council instead to purchase Carrington Moss in 1886, and Chat Moss in 1895, which were both developed as refuse disposal sites. But by the 1930s neither site was still receiving night soil, the water closet having replaced dry conservancy in Manchester. The pail system

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1188-402: The depot, the night soil was emptied into a storage tank. The pails were washed in a large trough using a mixture of chloride of lime and water. The night soil was then dried in revolving cylinders, using furnace heat from other borough refuse, before being transferred to so-called drying plates. Gases were burnt in a furnace, the fumes escaping up a 250-foot (76 m) chimney. Clinker from

1242-511: The early 17th century onwards the larger towns and cities began to employ scavengers, as they became known, to remove human waste from the streets. Much of this waste came from overflowing privies and dunghills, or from chamber pots emptied into the streets from upstairs windows. By 1615 the town of Manchester was employing nineteen under-scavengers, or rakers, managed by two scavengers. Notes Citations Bibliography Pail closet A pail closet or pail privy or dirt closet

1296-594: The edges of town. Much of the contents of London's cess pits was taken to dumps on the banks of the River Thames such as the appropriately named Dung Wharf—later the site of the Mermaid Theatre —from which it was transported by barge to be used as fertiliser on fields or market gardens. Some of the dumps became quite massive; Mount Pleasant in present-day Clerkenwell , London, occupied an area of 7.5 acres (3.0 ha) by 1780. The penalties for not disposing of waste in

1350-411: The end of the 14th century, for instance, there were only 16 for a population of 30,000. Local regulations were introduced to control the placement and construction of private latrines. Cesspits were often placed under cellar floors or in the yard of a house. Some had wooden chutes to carry excrement from the upper floors to the cesspit, sometimes flushed by rainwater. Cesspits were not watertight, allowing

1404-478: The end of the 19th century, this and the construction of a new sewer system enabled all pail closets to be phased out and replaced by water closets. In Manchester, faced with phenomenal population growth, the council attempted to retain the pail closet system, but following the exposure of the dumping of 30–60 long tons (30–61 t) of human faeces into the Medlock and Irwell rivers at their Holt Town sewage works,

1458-551: The entire dejections from a house, or from a block of houses, for months and even years". The 1868 Rivers Pollution Commission reported two years later: "privies and ashpits are continually to be seen full to overflowing and as filthy as can be... These middens are cleaned out whenever notice is given that they need it, probably once half-yearly on an average, by a staff of night-men with their attendant carts." Midden closets were, therefore, generally insanitary and were also difficult to empty and clean. Later improvements, such as

1512-470: The excrement. The Goux system, invented in the 1860s by Pierre Nicholas Goux , a landowner near Paris, and widely used in France, overcame some of the more common problems associated with pail closets by lining the pail with an absorbent material. The Rochdale Corporation experimented with Goux's design for several months but settled instead on a system which used smaller pails. Goux's system did, however, find

1566-464: The first half of the twentieth century, "a dunny against the back fence, so that the pan could be collected from the dunny lane through a trap-door". Pail toilets with municipal collection was common in cities such as Colombo and Kandy in Ceylon into the late 1950s and 1960s. Footnotes Notes Bibliography Chamber pot A chamber pot is a portable toilet , meant for nocturnal use in

1620-403: The flush toilet. However, similar systems still exist in less developed countries, and are discussed at sanitation . Pail closets were used to dispose of human excreta, dirty water, and general household waste such as kitchen refuse and sweepings. The pail closet system was one of several methods of waste disposal in common use in the 19th century, others of which were the privy midden system,

1674-545: The front door is seldom kept closed ... The lack of proper attention in regard to cleaning is perhaps the principal drawback to this style of privy and one which makes it practically a failure for general use. In towns it is becoming more and more difficult to find anyone willing to do this kind of work and in rural districts the privy is usually neglected. Following the successes seen in various northern towns, about 7,000 pail closets were introduced in 1871 in Leicester , where

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1728-447: The implementation of water closets had been hindered by the refusal of the water company to provide adequate supplies. The use of pail closets reduced the demand placed upon the area's inadequate sewerage system, but the town suffered with difficulties in the collection and treatment of the night soil. Initially, night soil was collected by contractors, but after 1873 the local authority became responsible. The authority found dealing with

1782-412: The liquid waste to drain away and leaving only the solids to be collected. A foul odour from cesspits was a continual problem, and the accumulation of solid waste meant that they had to be cleaned out every two years or so. It was the job of the gong farmers to dig them out and remove the excrement. In the late 15th century they charged two shillings per ton of waste removed. Despite being well-rewarded,

1836-475: The need to carry barrels of waste through the house to the street. Much of what is known about London's privies during the 17th and 18th century comes from witness statements describing what had been discovered among the human excrement, such as the corpses of unwanted infants. All of the human waste farmed had to be removed from the town or city where it was collected, either by spreading it on common land or by transporting it to laystalls , which were usually on

1890-453: The night soil an expensive and difficult business and, following legal proceedings against the corporation in 1878, transport of night soil was transferred from the railway system to canal barges. This, however, led to complaints that the canal was being polluted. In 1886, the authority found that the River Soar was badly polluted by sewage and so they built a sewage farm at Beaumont Leys. By

1944-436: The noxious fumes produced by human excrement. Gong farmers usually employed a couple of young boys to lift the full buckets of ordure out of the pit and to work in confined spaces. After being dug out, the solid waste was removed in large barrels or pipes, which were loaded onto a horse-drawn cart. As privies spread to the residences of ordinary citizens they were often built in backyards with rear access or alleyways, to avoid

1998-418: The old middens was cleared out, connections with drains and sewers removed and dry closets erected over each site. A contemporary estimate stated that the installation of about 25,000 pail closets removed as much as 3,000,000 imperial gallons (14,000,000 L) of urine and accompanying faeces from the city's drains, sewers and rivers. The midden closet was a development of the privy, which had evolved from

2052-479: The pail system, and the dry-earth system. By 1869, Manchester had a population of about 354,000 people who were served by about 10,000 water closets ( flush toilets ) and 38,000 middensteads. An investigation of the condition of the city's sewer network revealed that it was "choked up with an accumulation of solid filth, caused by overflow from the middens." ( Middens and middensteads both refer to dunghills, ash pits, or refuse heaps. ) Such problems forced

2106-554: The pail with absorbent materials, and other designs used mixtures of dry earth or ash to disguise the smell. Improved water supplies and sewerage systems in England led directly to the replacement of the pail closet during the early 20th century. Municipal collection of pail toilets ( dunnies ) continued in Australia into the second half of the twentieth century. In the western world , the pail closet has now been almost completely replaced by

2160-454: The pails; but the extent of sloppiness noticed in Salford, in 1869, was rarely observed in Halifax, greater care being apparently taken in the latter town to avoid the emptying of chamber utensils into the pails. Probably the more regular locking of the doors of the closets, which is practiced in Halifax, contributes not a little to the exclusion of the contents of chamber utensils from the pails, less trouble being experienced in casting them into

2214-485: The primitive "fosse" ditch. Midden closets were still used in the latter part of the 19th century but were rapidly falling out of favour. A Mr Redgrave, in a speech to the Institution of Civil Engineers in 1876, said that the midden closet represented "... the standard of all that is utterly wrong, constructed as it is of porous materials, and permitting free soakage of filth into the surrounding soil, capable of containing

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2268-508: The remains of burnt refuse was used to make mortar. The manure works was a filthy environment, filled with dust. Enginemen were paid 7¼d , firemen 6½d, and general labourers 4½d. The fertiliser was transported from the works via railway to local filtration plots for disposal. Some pails were supplied with deodorants such as iron sulphate . Manchester Corporation attempted to remove the smell of putrefaction by attaching cinder-sifters to their closets so that fine ash could be poured on top of

2322-679: The role of gong farmer was considered by historians on television series The Worst Jobs in History to be one of the worst of the Tudor period. Those employed at Hampton Court during the time of Queen Elizabeth I , for instance, were paid sixpence a day—a good living for the period—but the working life of a gong farmer was "spent up to his knees, waist, even neck in human ordure". They were only allowed to work at night, between 9:00   p.m. and 5:00   a.m. They were permitted to live only in specified areas, and were sometimes overcome by asphyxiation from

2376-418: The second half of the twentieth century. Brisbane , its third most populous city , relied on " dunny carts" until the 1950s (one source says until the 1970s ); because the population was so dispersed, it was difficult to install sewerage. Tar, creosote, and disinfectant kept the smell down. Academic George Seddon claimed that "the typical Australian back yard in the cities and country towns" had, throughout

2430-484: The solid excrement was floating." The pail closet contained several important design considerations. In his 1915 essay to the American Public Health Association , author Richard Messer described some of the more commonly encountered problems: Any of these [pails] should be provided with handles and be held in place by guide pieces nailed to the floor. Too often no mention is made of the latter in

2484-425: The specifications. Wooden boxes are unsatisfactory for they soon become leaky due to warping, are too heavy to handle and hold excreta long enough to permit the breeding of flies. To keep flies away from the receptacle is a difficult matter. The hinged door at the rear, being exposed to weather, soon warps, leaving openings around the edges, the self-closing seat cover fails to operate properly due to rusty hinges and

2538-435: The time, women did not customarily wear two-legged underwear as today. " The Crabfish " is a 17th-century folk song about what is most likely a common lobster , stored in a chamber pot by an unwise fisherman. The moral of the song is that one should look into a chamberpot before using it. Philippine mythology recounts that giving newlyweds a chamber pot assures them of prosperity. President Elpidio Quirino , as part of

2592-489: The yard drain. At any rate the aspect of the lined pails in use in Halifax generally, was less offensive to the eye than that of the simple pail, and the casting down of a portion of the lining, as I noticed in several instances, sufficed effectually to hide the offense and diminish the odor from the pail. John Netten Radcliffe (May 1874), commenting on the use of the Goux system in Halifax The Rochdale system

2646-401: Was a room used for the disposal of human excreta , under the "pail system" (or Rochdale system) of waste removal. The " closet " (a word which had long meant " toilet " in one usage) was a small outhouse (privy) which contained a seat, underneath which a portable receptacle was placed. This bucket (pail), into which the user would defecate , was removed and emptied by the local authority on

2700-443: Was added, was designed to help remove the smell of urine, slow putrefaction and keep the excreta dry. Pails were collected between 7 am and 5:30 pm. Members of the public occasionally complained about the smell, which usually occurred when a pail was left to overflow, such as in winter 1875 when severe weather conditions prevented the horse-pulled collection wagons from reaching the closets. In some areas, an earth closet

2754-457: Was an evolution of the midden closet (privy midden), an impractical and unsanitary amenity considered a nuisance to public health. The pail system was popular in France and England, particularly in the historic Lancashire town of Rochdale , from which the system commonly took its name. The pail closet was not without its own problems; if the pail was not emptied on a regular basis, it overflowed and became unhygienic. Some manufacturers lined

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2808-413: Was first used in 1869. It used a wooden tub, or pail (sometimes half of a petroleum barrel), which was placed under the closet seat. The pails were often circular (to aid cleaning), and were designed to be easily handled and of a size that encouraged regular collections. The top of the pail carried a cast iron rim about 3 inches deep to receive a tight-fitting inner lid. The pails were collected on

2862-551: Was used throughout Europe, in French cities such as Marseille and Le Havre , and English towns and cities such as Leeds , Birmingham , and Manchester , but it was popular in the town of Rochdale , from which the Rochdale system of pail collection took its name. It was widespread in Australia too. In Coventry , the number of pail closets in use declined from about 712 in 1907, to 92 in 1912, and only 16 by 1926. Pail toilets with municipal collection persisted in Australia well into

2916-412: Was used. Invented by Henry Moule , this system used a metal container as with the pail system, but small amounts of a mixture of peat, dry earth and ashes were used to cover the excreta, removing any smells almost immediately. These deodorisers were often applied with a small scoop or shovel, but more elaborate systems existed where the powder was kept in a box near the seat, with a small handle to control

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