Privy digging

Excavating a stone-lined, urban privy.

Privy digging is the process of locating and investigating the contents of defunct outhouse vaults in the pursuit of old bottles and artifacts. Privy digging is a form of historical digging. In some locations, most notably New York City, due to their appearance and depth vaults are sometimes referred too as wells. In these instances well digging is synonymous with privy digging. Privies vaults are also called pits, holes, chambers, etc. Privy digging is usually done on private residential properties but there are exceptions depending on the specific location and the circumstances involved. Historical contractors, privy diggers who enter into contracts enabling them to investigate vaults on commercial properties being renovated, are also engaging in privy digging.

Controversies

There are major controversies regarding who should be permitted to excavate privies, and sharp disagreements pertaining to the importance of what is actually buried in most of them. From a conventional archaeological perspective it is assumed that all privies contain vital and unique information which cannot be found elsewhere. Privy diggers who are not licensed archaeologists are often labeled “looters”. The term has been in use for centuries and is commonly applied to define and condemn a wide variety of professional and nonprofessional digging activities worldwide. The designation looter in these instances can be confusing as its application is almost exclusively one-sided and sometimes open to interpretation.

Many privy diggers emphasize that an abundance of their efforts are applied to areas under development, locations where privies are in the process of being permanently altered by renovations, demolitions and major excavations. As a result they are salvaging and collecting more than anything else. Additionally, a high percentage of vaults are known to have been meticulously cleaned out (“dipped”) during the advent of modern plumbing. These usually do not contain an undisturbed night soil layer and as a result the probability of holding a truly unique item is greatly reduced. Privy diggers often remark that they are digging through common garbage on private property with the owners’ permission and that an enormous amount of technical information is already known about privy contents in general. Like other debates the strongly polarized situation between professional and non professional diggers and salvagers is ongoing.

Sites

Excavating a wood-lined privy.

Most privies are located behind the building or buildings which they served. In urban areas they are commonly found in the back section of the residential lot. Old fire insurance maps, such as Sanborn, indicate that some properties were several lots wide and sometimes had two or more houses within the same boundary line. In these instances only one privy vault may exist for all the houses or one may exist for each. In other instances some structures have no property other than that on which they are situated on the map. It is assumed that these particular vaults were incorporated into a neighboring lot or perhaps placed within the structure itself somewhere, possibly the basement. Some insurance maps show outbuildings and sheds, and occasionally privy outlines too but many do not. For example many 19th century insurance maps for New York City do not have markings indicating privy placements and some for New Jersey do. However, when researching the latter sometimes privy diggers find no evidence that a privy ever existed within the map outline indicating that one should be in a specific spot.

When a property is determined to be old enough to have an outhouse somewhere within its original boundaries, probing and test digging are the common methods for finding it. Ideally, the basic probe is made of spring steel and between 4’ and 6’ feet in length and 5/16” and 3/8” respectively. Many variations exist and each locale being probed has its own peculiarities regarding which equipment and what techniques should be applied. Adept privy diggers develop considerable skill interpreting the faint residues which come up on the end of a probe and the subtle noise variations encountered while sliding it in and out of the ground. Test digging is a small hole going down a few feet to determine that a probe reading is accurate. Once it is learned that something other than dirt and rocks are being encountered and that man made objects are buried deeply in a particular spot, the outline of the privy is carefully excavated. This can take hours or days depending on its size and the materials being dug through. Dug dirt or fluff as it is sometimes called, is systematically removed from the hole by shoveling. Deeper holes require a rope and bucket setup and sometimes a tripod mechanism to alleviate stress on the body. Some privy vaults are less then 2 feet deep and others are more than 25 feet. They can be as narrow as 2 feet or as wide as 8 feet or more, particularly in urban settings where a large privy shed with many doors once stood. Some are cylindrical and made of stone or brick, others rectangular and commonly made of stone as well. Many shallower rectangular privies were originally wood-lined or had nothing but packed earth for their walls.

Some privy diggers also research excavation sites where old houses and other buildings, such as factories, once were. Searching residential backyards and other property borders for indications of stone or brick structures and other subterranean anomalies being dug up by heavy machinery can lead to sporadic discoveries of privies, cisterns and root cellars. Managers and owners of construction sites are not always eager to allow privy diggers to salvage on their sites. However, some of them are enthusiasts themselves and agreements can sometimes be formed allowing the diggers to search for vaults, and sometimes landfill deposits with some potential for old bottles and other things. Some historical diggers focus exclusively on these kinds of sites and develop a strong report with various development companies over time. Permission to salvage on sites can occasionally lead to remarkable discoveries with relatively little physical effort but this is the exception to the rule as bottle-laden privies and landfill are an elusive source requiring remarkable timing and diligence.

Items recovered

Privy digging is directly linked to antique bottle collecting yet it is one of the most unpredictable and arduous methods of forming a collection. However, over time literally thousands of intact bottles can be excavated by a single digger. The majority will be very common examples of nominal value and not interesting to a collector. In some areas, such as older cities and towns near the east coast, bottles from the mid 19th century are dug up sporadically. In other parts of the country it can be difficult to find anything manufactured prior to the 1870s.

Not unlike dump diggers privy diggers also encounter miscellaneous tableware or kitchenware, stoneware, occasionally clay smoking pipes, assorted doll parts, tea set pieces, marbles, buttons, chamber pots, decorative porcelain pot lids and bases used for pomades and skin creams, bone or ivory toothbrush handles, early hard-rubber combs and hair picks, and a variety of other objects which are commonly discovered broken or damaged. All of which were discarded as unusable trash items, except for the occasional things which unintentionally (or perhaps mischievously as in the case of small children, etc.) fell through the opening in the outhouse seat.

Related topics and history

Typical urban privy fill.

Privy diggers, along with dump diggers and other historical diggers, are enthusiastic about locating and making their own discoveries and will get sufficiently dirty as a result. Though there are some exceptions this work is usually done by hand and requires a remarkable degree of perseverance and tenacity. More often than not career level diggers are obsessive by nature, sometimes achieving considerable skill with the various forms of privy digging techniques available. Some privy diggers also use a metal detector to pinpoint old coins and other easy to miss metal objects. Some privy diggers are metal detectorists’ and some metal detectorists’ are also privy diggers and dump diggers. However, each designation is a specific subject on its own.

Privy digging has things in common with dump digging and to some degree treasure hunting and garbology but is none of these exclusively as it involves excavating privies more than anything else. Privy digging and dump digging are equally concerned with antique bottles and related items. Though many exceptions exist in most instances even the oldest dump-bottles are not as old as privy bottles can be. Dumps are commonly associated with bottles and trash manufactured between the 1880s-1920s. This was a time when everyday bottles were being mass produced annually by the hundreds of millions. They were reused less and often thrown away rather than recycled due to their relatively inexpensive production costs.

Many bottles were still being mouth-blown and their lips formed by assorted tooling devices as late as 1915-20. The patent for the first fully automatic bottle machine, the Owens Automatic Bottle Machine, was not issued until 1903. And by 1906 it was swiftly replacing the old method at glasshouses nationwide. Early examples of machine made bottles manufactured between about 1906 and 1915 often resemble their predecessors in shape and color and can be nominally valuable for that reason. Whether found in privies or dumps late period mouth-blown bottles manufactured between about 1880-1915 have a minor amount of serious collectable potential depending on rarity, condition and color. Dug bottles manufactured between 1880 and 1915 have sold for hundreds or even thousands of dollars but this is very rare.

Although privy diggers usually attempt to focus on the contents of vaults built before the Civil War, these too can also contain bottles made as late as the 1920s or later up near the top. Depending on when a vault went into permanent disuse it could contain bottles and debris deposited as late as the present century. According to a 1950 census 50 million homes reported no indoor plumbing. In 1990 more than 4 million old style privies were still in use coast to coast. No matter what is encountered near the top assuming a given vault was active in 1850 its potential for older bottles lying at a lower section has a consistently strong draw for serious privy diggers.

Whether mold blown or free blown (both forms of mouth-blowing), most bottles produced before 1860-65 have a distinct scar on their base. This mark is the result of removing the pontil rod. Something which was temporarily fused to the base in order to handle them effectively while they were still very hot, as their necks and lips were being tooled at the glassworks. The decades just prior to the absence of pontil rods from bottle-glass making were a time when endless variations pertaining to shape, size, style, color and embossing were being produced regularly in an unprecedented quantity. Some of the most interesting bottles were manufactured during this time; 1830s-1860s. Even after the pontil rod was replaced by assorted clamping mechanisms known as “snap cases”, many bottles were still being created in the same interesting molds and sold in huge quantities annually. These are known as smooth base bottles and are sometimes found in privies which were in use after the 1860s and as late as the 1880s. Visually, the difference between an early smooth base and a pontiled example of the exact same bottle is insignificant but to a collector it often means everything. Rare early smooth base bottles can occasionally be as valuable as rare pontiled bottles but they are unlikely to be discovered with any regularity on average privy digs.

Pontiled medicine bottles, ink bottles, beer and soda bottles, and many others, particularly those manufactured between the 1830s-1860s are among the most sought after and can sell for thousands of dollars each. However, in reality an average pontiled find discovered while privy digging is worth less than a hundred dollars. Even these are not discovered consistently in most locations. Not unlike old stamps and coins invariably they are required to be in mint or very good condition to be sufficiently interesting to a serious bottle collector. An enormous quantity of rare bottles are known to exist in private collections, museums, museum and university basements and elsewhere but these prime examples are seldom found on average privy digs. In fact a high percentage of all valuable bottles and related containers were never buried in privies, dumps or elsewhere; these are known as “attic” bottles among privy diggers and bottle collectors. Additionally, cargo laden shipwrecks, along with major urban archaeological excavations, have produced an astounding quantity of high quality bottles and related artifacts of all types. Though the odds are incredibly slim in most places, these are the kinds of bottles privy diggers attempt to locate underground.

Privy maintenance

Brick-lined privy (ca. 1855).

Due to extreme odors and overfilling problems a high percentage of privy vaults were cleaned to varying levels while still in use. This is commonly referred to as “dipping” among privy diggers of today. Frequently, after plumbing was installed at the residence a more rigorous final cleaning occurred which had a tendency of removing the earliest contents at the deepest levels of the vaults; there are many exceptions to this general rule. Even at depths reaching 30 feet or more, some of the deepest vaults known to exist, many were cleaned to the base at some point. Alternatively, some examples of shallow vaults only 2 feet or less have contained noteworthy bottles, plentiful common shards or artifacts, and even sparse night soil remains around the edges.

During the mid 19th century operators connected to the booming waste-generated fertilizer (night soil) business circulated cities and towns emptying vaults periodically. In rural areas where vaults are usually much smaller and shallower farmers often conducted this task themselves. Remarkably, despite lying in human waste and other refuse for years many recyclable bottles and other usable items were also retrieved during the dipping process. Genuine garbage would be taken to designated landfills, swampy areas and other suitable locations and dumped, along with a never ending supply of stove and fireplace ashes and other trash. Not all dippers were equally concerned with being meticulous and periodically dozens of bottles, and some night soil can still be found while privy digging. This can range from a few inches to several feet but statistically this is not the norm. The many out of place bottles sometimes discovered in clusters near the top or bottom of a dipped vault are referred to as “kick backs”, or “throw ins”, done seemingly at the hands of the workers who cleaned out the privy. Via privy digging a lesser percentage of vaults have been found largely undisturbed but even this has not guaranteed anything noteworthy was ever deposited in them. Privies were only sporadic dumping spots for kitchen or food preparation refuse, sometimes common bottles, and many were not used for that purpose at all. Less than 1% of a household’s total garbage was ever distributed there.

Dirt, rocks, ashes, brick bats and other worthless debris manufactured around 1880-1920 was frequently used to backfill privies once plumbing was installed at a particular address. With or without small night soil deposits remaining near the sides or bottom of the vaults they no longer have any related offensive odor connected to them.

See also

• Bottles
• Dump digging
• Historical digging
• Nightsoil
• Outhouses

References

• Barlow, R. S. (1992), The Vanishing American Outhouse: A History of Country Plumbing, California: Windmill Publishing Company

• Miller, B. (2000), Fat f the Land: Garbage in New York: The Last Two Hundred Years, New York: Four Walls Eight Windows

External links

• Antique Bottle and Glass Collector Magazine
• The Manhattan Well Diggers
• National Bottle Museum