January 11, 2021 Thank you, Barbara Schock, for sharing your extraordinary gift of these vignettes of Galesburg & 19th century American history.
Backhouses By Barbara Schock
As Carl Sandburg walked to the various jobs he held while
growing up, he often observed “backhouses.” They were small wooden buildings at
the back of the lot behind houses large and small. Under each one was a pit for
collecting feces and other things. Many of the little buildings had a crescent moon opening in
the door. In colonial times the custom was to carve a crescent for the ladies’
outhouse and a star or sun for the men. Cartoonists of the time took up the
crescent in their drawings so it became the dominant form. Anyway, it was meant
to help with ventilation of the little house. Most of the little buildings had two holes in the seat to
distribute the waste. The pit was usually five feet deep to help contain the
odor. The pits were supposed to be cleaned regularly. Sandburg wrote that his
father employed a man to come during the night to clean the pit. Archaeologists today explore historic locations of outhouses
to discover what might have been thrown away in past times. They reveal broken
dishes as well as a variety or other household items. The income of a family can
be revealed by the items thrown away. Sandburg had experience with open pit latrines while in the
army during the Spanish-American War in 1898. Care wasn’t always taken to place
the latrines in the safest places to protect the soldiers or to keep the odor
from pervading the camp site. In the United States today most homes now have bathrooms
which provide sanitary conditions for the residents. Even today it is estimated
1.7 billion people around the world still use latrines. Many are squat latrines
without benefit of a seat. Thomas Jefferson may have had the best outhouse of
the colonial era. He had a brick outhouse constructed at his Poplar Forest
estate near Lynchburg, Virginia. The National Parks are the most common place in this country
to have non-flushing toilets. Some are composting and others require the
addition of powdered lime for proper sanitation. Alaska has more privies than
any other state due to the amount of wilderness there. Mount Everest in the
Himalayan Mountains has a waste problem. It has to be flown out by helicopter. Most privies (meaning private) disappeared after World War
II ended in 1945. In the United States, new housing was built at a rapid pace
and indoor plumbing became the norm. On a cold winter morning we can be thankful
for a clean, warm and odor free facility.
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