DIY Builds
DIY Builds
Photo: Andrea Piacquadio
Most families had an outhouse, called a privy after the Latin word for private. Even village homes had privies until municipal sewage systems were developed in the late 19th century. Area farms were more likely to rely on outhouses into the 20th century.
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Learn More »The sanitary equipment of the house is an all-important matter, as there is no other feature of the home which will afford more comfort and be so conducive to perfect health as good plumbing.
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Running water usually meant a gravity feed from a spring or well into a box or tub in the kitchen. By 1900, earlier log pipes were being replaced by ones made of lead. An advertisement for a Vermont farm for sale in 1900 mentioned “running water to the house” as a positive feature. That was a definite advantage over the handpump in the yard. For many, bathing still meant a washtub in the kitchen. Many bedrooms were equipped with a wash stand or dry sink that held a porcelain pitcher and wash basin and towel rack. The earlier prejudices against bathing were replaced by the realization of the value of washing to prevent disease. By the late 1880s, companies such as Mott Iron Works began to advertise claw-foot bathtubs. By then the ritual of the Saturday night bath was observed by many. That made sense in anticipation of Sunday church services and weekend visitors. I interviewed two individuals who grew up in local farm houses and confirmed what is described above. Theresa Cassady Shepard, 89, of Bradford, Vt., grew up three miles from the village of Groton, Vt. From the time she was born in 1928 until she was married and moved to a farm in Piermont in 1947, Shepard lived in a home without indoor plumbing or running water. This condition was primarily the result of not having electricity. The family backhouse was a two-holer attached to the backside of the woodshed. Each bedroom had a chamber pot. When the pit began to smell, her mother or father would apply lime or sawdust. She said that every spring her father would remove the back of the pit and using a wagon and horses would carry the contents to be spread on the hayfield. Bathing was usually accomplished in a large galvanized tub set in the kitchen. Water was heated in the reservoir attached to the wood-burning kitchen stove. The tub held only several inches of water. Asked if it was a Saturday night ritual, she said that you took a bath “when you couldn’t stand yourself.” After she bathed and went off to bed, her father would use the same water for his bath. Otherwise, bathing was with a washcloth and a basin of water for a daily washing up. Water came from a large metal container with gravity feed. Sometimes in the summer, the well would begin to dry up and the family would have to prime the handpump in order to get water for the house. The 1940 census revealed that nearly half of American houses lacked piped hot water, a bathtub or shower or a flush toilet. Census figures showed that about 29 percent of households in Vermont did not have flush toilets. In New Hampshire, it was about 25 percent of households. One of those homes was near Sunday Mountain in Orford. My second interview was with a woman who lived there from the 1940s to the early ’60s. She told me they had running water to the kitchen and to a tub in the bathroom, but no flush toilet. Cold water was piped into a holding tank above the kitchen. From there, water flowed into a tank next to the wood stove to be heated. “Luckily, the outhouse was located off the bathroom that included an enclosed passageway through an unheated area in the back of two sheds. It was a well-crafted two holer on the east corner of the house that looked like a small addition. So that we didn’t have to make the long trek at night, each member of the family was provided with a chamber pot under the bed that was emptied each morning.” During two recent speaking engagements, I asked for comments about privies and indoor plumbing. Descriptions of the outhouse facilities varied. One person mentioned their childhood outhouse was wall-papered with the same gold paper as the living room.
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Some participants responded by telling about the fear of snakes, bees and flies and the need to carry a “spider switch” when visiting the privy. They told of pranks played against the unsuspecting, especially at Halloween. When the topic of wintertime visits was raised, the universal response was “you did what you had to do.” Those who lived in villages and cities had to deal with sewage on a larger scale and public health concerns led to the decline of urban outhouses. Homes and businesses began to be required to connect to municipal sewer systems. After installing a municipal water system in 1891, the village of Bradford turned to the issue of a sewer system to replace individual cesspools. One result of not having a proper sewer system was the loss to Ludlow of the proposed Vermont Odd Fellows’ Home in 1895. The first vote to create a village system failed at a special village meeting in 1896. It was not until 1927 that the village voted to construct a sewage system. As with most municipal systems, raw sewage was flushed into nearby waterways. In the 1950s, the Connecticut River was being described as the “world’s best landscaped sewer.” Until Bradford’s sewage treatment plant began to operate in October 1978, the nearby Waits River received the village sewage. In 1903, the Vermont Board of Health report contained the following description of the situation in Ryegate: “several sewers running, one down Main street and the others which empty into the bed of the river as it formerly ran … a most filthy and unwholesome place.” In 1972, and after the State passed legislation to deal with pollution in the state’s waterways, Ryegate voted to acquire land in both East and South Ryegate for sewer treatment sites. Wells River and Woodsville both used adjacent rivers for sewers until the early 1980s when a treatment plant was built in Woodsville to serve those two villages and portions of North Haverhill. Until these improvements were made, nearby rivers and lakes were often so polluted as to make them unusable for drinking water. Woodsville Water Works, begun in 1885, suspended using the Ammonoosuc as a source of drinking water in 1906 because of sewage and industrial waste from upriver towns. Advancements in sewage treatment were also reflected in home facilities. By 1960, the number of New Hampshire and Vermont homes without a flush toilet was less than 8 percent. That was less than half the number of a decade before. Nationwide, a high percentage of all new homes have 2 or more bathrooms. The National Association of Home Builders has found that buyers like the number of bathrooms “to roughly equal the number of bedrooms.” While that may not be as common in the Upper Valley, selling a house without at least a second half or full bathroom is difficult. High-end bathrooms now feature spa-like amenities — elaborate tubs, luxury showers, heated floors, accent lighting and dual-flush toilets. There are a number of titles given to what use to be called “the necessity.” The toilet, john, lavatory or the head, the facilities, the loo and the powder room. The latest AARP Bulletin reports that June is National Bathroom Reading Month. Regardless of what you call the little room and whether or not you have a stack of reading materials nearby, consider how far we have come from the cold and drafty privy in the backyard and the skimpy warm water in a tub in the kitchen. Give regular thanks for that.
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