Philly’s Privy Passages

Dec 20

I didn’t realize what was hidden behind these middle doors

*Before indoor plumbing came to Philadelphia, many of these middle doors hid “Privy Passages” or “Privy Alleys.” Photo by Jim Murphy, Author of Real Philly History, Real Fast.*

In these days of iPhones, instant messaging and crypto-currency, it’s hard to remember this amazing fact:

… Until the 1950s, there were homes in Philly that didn’t have running water — or indoor bathrooms

As a result, some — if not many — of the middle doors you see in older parts of Philadelphia, once concealed Privy Passages or Privy Alleys.

(A privy is a toilet located in a small shed or outhouse outside of the home — often at a rear corner of a city lot. Sitting over a pit, it usually included a wooden bench with one or two holes.)

I first heard the terms Privy Passages or Privy Alleys in July of 2016 when I took a long, interesting Preservation Alliance tour of Queen Village with long-time local architect and tour guide emeritus – Larry Weintraub.

Typically, these middle doors provided access to the privy of a large townhouse for cleaning purposes. In some cases, though, where rows of small “Trinity Houses” were built in the rear yards, these passages were also the only way tenants could get into the backyard.

(Tiny, trinity houses, common in Philadelphia, had just one room each on three levels connected by a twisting spiral staircase. Philly Catholics also referred to them as Father-Son-and-Holy Ghost homes — in honor of the Blessed Trinity.)

Make way for “night soil” men and their “honey dippers”

The primary purpose of Privy Passages or Privy Alleys was to allow workers called “honey dippers” access to clean out privy pits — both private and shared community ones. They removed what was euphemistically called “night soil” and carried it away in “honey wagons.”

Later, in the 1840s or 1850s, these “honey dippers” would enter through a gated back alley or cartway that stretched the entire block. On an “Old Images of Philadelphia” Facebook page, one person in North Philadelphia calls these narrow passageways or cartways “Baker Alleys.”

This unpleasant, difficult and important privy cleanup work was usually carried out in the middle of the night — often by Blacks or immigrants — so people weren’t exposed to the sight or smell of it in the light of day. That’s why they were called “Night Soil Men.”

Today, these privies are like gold to artifact collectors

Starting during his college days at Tulane University in New Orleans, Larry has investigated or “dug” 120 privies in his career, including one at his own home in Bella Vista. He calls New Orleans an “ideal place to dig privies.” It’s close in age to Philadelphia and like Philly, has two- and three-story row homes with outhouses built behind them.

Larry is fascinated by privy digging, because, “it’s really archaeology.” The 19th century is his favorite architectural period. “Discovering these dug items brings me closer to the lives and lifestyle of those who lived back then,” he says.

Privies came in various sizes and depths

Some smaller-diameter privies were built for tiny backyards, with those privy pits being up to 25 feet deep, he says. Others in Society Hill may have been 6 to 8 feet wide, and 10 feet deep. Most city privies were round and brick-lined. They became squared off near the top to support the square structure of the outhouse.

Typically, privy pits took about 15 to 25 years to fill, depending on the number of regular outhouse users. To reduce the smell, layers were often interspaced with lime and oyster shells. These helped neutralize the acidic stench produced by human waste and urine.

One large Queen Village property Larry saw had a large house in the front, with four former trinity houses behind.

On that property, Larry “dug” through a giant privy 8 feet in diameter and 11 feet deep that was filled with 1,200 antique bottles. Why the bottles? Workmen on the nearby wharves often used opium, alcohol or patent medicines to deal with the pain of their very long workdays, he believes. And of course, due to their ingredients, these “medicines” caused addiction and overuse.

Everything went into the privy pit

People tossed trash, syringes, smoking pipes, animal bones, table scraps, paper, inkwells (possibly for secret letters), dentures, plates and more into the privies.

A group of trinities shared a single large privy with two seats. A regular single home often had a small privy with one or two seats. A large single home might have a large privy with two or more seats.

Larger privies may have had two or four seats for use by one sex. Privies were a real danger to children, who had to be careful not to fall in. A hinged cover usually covered the holes when not in use.

What moons or stars meant on privy doors

Shapes on outhouse doors told who the users were: a crescent moon, the female symbol for Luna, meant it was made for women; for males, a circle or star symbolized the god Apollo. If used by both sexes, the privy most likely had a moon.

An abundance of everyday items

Before the Museum of the American Revolution was built at 3rd and Chestnut Street, some 12 privy pits on Carter’s Alley yielded over 82,000 artifacts for archeologists to study.

Among the finds, says archaeologist Rebecca Yamin, was a beautiful porcelain punchbowl with the words, “Success to the Tryphena” written on it. Antiques and the Arts Weekly says the Tryphena was a ship that sailed between Liverpool and Philadelphia. It reportedly carried a message from Philadelphia merchants and traders to their colleagues in England, asking them to help stop the Stamp Act.

Interesting Oddities

Some privies owned by the wealthy had medicine cabinets in them, just as we do in bathrooms today.
In Colonial times, wealthy people called their privies “necessaries.” They certainly were.
Larry says the first commercially available toilet paper on a roll was made in the 1850s, and became more popular and available by the 1880’s. The first patented roll dispenser was in 1883. And the first rolls with perforated sheets came in 1890. “I have a reproduction of this type of dispenser in one of my bathrooms,” he says. “When they come up on eBay they can sell for a couple hundred dollars.”
It may have taken longer for toilet paper use to grow in rural areas. Sue Bowman in a Lancaster Farming story called: “Pondering the Privy,” says it did not become popular until the 1920s, and was sold in sheets, not rolls. Still, it was a welcome replacement for earlier substitutes that included: plant material, old rags, pulp paper like the “Sears, Robuck & Co. Catalogue” and soft corn cobs. (In the 1970s, I had to use Time magazine pages at a Yugoslav rooming house when I was there. They were not very absorbent.)

The word “loo” for a bathroom probably came from the French word, “l’eau” for water, says a story in LancasterFarming.com. Toilet rooms called “garderobes” were built into the walls of castle walls, and waste was discharged into the moat below, creating a cesspool. To warn people below to pull in their heads and avoid the waste — those using the facilities would shout, “Gardez l’eau” or “Watch out for the water.” Today, we just describe a bathroom as a “loo.”
Surprisingly, Philadelphia’s Eastern State Prison, which opened in 1829, had indoor running water before the White House did, with a flush toilet in every cell.

Indoor plumbing made cities a lot more livable.

But this progress did not come quickly. My wife’s father didn’t have running water in his house when he grew up in South Philly. And a writer for the Philadelphia Tribune says a friend’s mother bought a house in North Philly in the 1950s without indoor plumbing.

Nationally, about half the dwellings in the county lacked complete indoor plumbing in 1940.

By 1867, Philadelphia had 67 miles of sewers. In 1900, it had 848 miles. And today, almost 3,000 miles of sewers.

Thanks to indoor plumbing, life in Philadelphia is certainly much cleaner and easier today than in the “good old days” … as long as our modern conveniences work correctly.

*This middle door may have provided access to “Honey Dippers,” so they could clean out a backyard privy pit. Photo by Jim Murphy.*

Some Sources:

Geffen, Elizabeth M. “Industrial Development and Social Crisis 1841–1854,” in Philadelphia: a 300-Year History, ed. Russell F. Weigley (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1982), 308.

Geismar, Joan H. “Where Is Night Soil? Thoughts on an Urban Privy.” Historical Archaeology 27, no. 2 (1993): 57–70. http://www.jstor.org/stable/25616239.

https://archive.curbed.com/2017/3/16/14945986/tiny-house-philadelphia-trinity-for-sale

https://artsandculture.google.com/story/unearthing-philadelphia-national-constitution-center/OwWBPRuj_hvSLQ?hl=en

https://brazos.org/About-Us/Education/Water-School/ArticleID/267#:~:text=An%20outhouse%2C%20commonly%20referred%20to,outhouse%20sits%20over%20a%20pit.

https://cottagelife.com/outdoors/10-things-you-probably-didnt-know-about-outhouses/

https://daily.jstor.org/a-history-of-human-waste-as-fertilizer/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honeywagon_(vehicle)

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/privy

https://hiddencityphila.org/2013/08/tales-of-a-privy-pirate/

https://hiddencityphila.org/2014/01/pedestrian-streets-past-present-and-future-footways/

https://hiddencityphila.org/2019/07/northern-liberties-couple-digs-history-after-unearthing-artifacts-beneath-their-home/

https://historythings.com/historical-toilets-give-insight-philadelphias-revolutionary-history/

https://merryfarmer.wordpress.com/2013/08/26/history-down-the-toilet/