Privy digging

Excavating a stone-lined, urban privy (ca. 1851).

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 considerable depth vaults are sometimes referred to as wells. In these instances well digging is synonymous with privy digging. Privies 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, are also engaging in privy digging.

Controversies

There are controversies regarding who should be permitted to investigate private residential privies and sometimes potent disagreements pertaining to the importance of what is actually being found in most of them. From a conventional archaeological perspective it is generally assumed that all privies contain vital and unique information which cannot be found elsewhere and that a costly forensic approach is required in every instance. Privy diggers who are not professional archaeologists are often labeled “looters”, even while working on sites which are in the process of being destroyed. The unfavorable term is used to define and condemn both professional and nonprofessional digging worldwide and as a result can be misleading when applied randomly. Moreover, while both parties are engaging in similar activities, each is confronted with very different logistics, constraints, and unique opportunities for genuine discovery.

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, major excavations and so on. As a result they are salvaging and collecting more than anything else (illustrated in the photos from Mongo: Adventures in Trash). Additionally, many vaults are known to have been rigorously cleaned out (“dipped”) around the time modern plumbing was installed. This routine process addressed the growing concern for foul odors and related airborne illnesses, something which was prevalent at the time. It also provided some of the necessary organic material for the fertilizer industry. These dipped vaults usually do not have an undisturbed night soil layer and the probability of one containing anything of major archaeological importance is very low. The article Into the Night Soil addresses this familiar scenario.

Privy diggers often remark that they are investigating common garbage on private property and mention the fact that an enormous amount of technical information is already known about 19th century privy contents in general. Like other polarized debates the situation between professional and non professional diggers and salvagers is ongoing.

Sites

Excavating a wood-lined privy (ca. 1876).

Most privies are located behind the building or buildings which they served. In urban areas they are commonly found in the middle or rear section of the residential lot (see Making It Work; Through Bottles, Darkly, Glimpses of the Past, The New York Times). 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 being considered or one may exist for each. In other instances some structures apparently have no outlying property at all. 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 19th century insurance maps for New York City generally 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 had 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. 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 than 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 multiple doors and inner compartments, once stood. Some vaults are cylindrical and made of stone or brick, others rectangular and commonly made of stone or brick as well. Many shallower rectangular vaults were only wood-lined.

Investigating a barren wood-lined privy (ca. 1840).

Some privy diggers also research excavation sites where old houses and other buildings, such as factories, saloons, and hotels 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, root cellars, and trash pits. Managers and owners of construction sites are not always eager to accommodate privy diggers on their missions to salvage on these sites. However, some of them are enthusiasts themselves and agreements can sometimes be formed allowing the diggers to search for privy vaults and 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 rapport 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

Iron pontiled soda or beer bottle, ca. 1855.

Privy digging is directly linked to antique bottle collecting. In reality glass or clay bottles are the most likely things to be found in an average 19th century privy. Yet, more often than not they are in found in pieces, prohibitively damaged, or absent altogether. While pondering the large number of brickbats and stones which are found at all levels while privy digging, excavators have theorized that at least some of them were thrown in with the intention of crushing down the contents of the vault, so it could be used longer without needing to be cleaned so often. For this reason alone privy digging is one of the most unpredictable and arduous methods of attempting to form a bottle collection. There are exceptions (New York Artifact Art) and over time some groups of regularly active diggers, operating in good locations, will encounter thousands of antique bottles and other interesting things. Statistically, the vast majority will be very common examples of nominal value and not very useful to serious collectors, historians, or archaeologists. In some areas, such as older industrial cities near the east coast, mining towns, boomtowns, port towns, major transportation hubs, and elsewhere key bottles from the mid 19th century are dug up sporadically. In many places it can be exceedingly difficult to find anything manufactured prior to the late 19th century while investigating the contents of vaults.

Not unlike dump diggers privy diggers also encounter miscellaneous tableware, stoneware, occasionally clay pipes, 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, hard-rubber combs and hair picks, ambrotypes, and other objects which are usually broken or damaged. Most of these items were valueless and intentionally discarded into the privy, others fell through the opening in the outhouse seat, and some were tossed in at the hands of small children (Lost & Found). In each instance the insides of active vaults were very caustic environments, the highly toxic ingredients causing most things to break down and rot very quickly.

Related topics and history

Privy diggers, along with dump diggers and other historical diggers (The Manhattan Well Diggers) are enthusiastic about 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 persistence and tenacity. 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, dump diggers and so on. However, each designation is a specific subject on its own.

Typical urban privy fill.

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 salvaging the contents of defunct 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 lesser 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 statistically 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 second half of the 20th 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 and considered hand made), 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 exceedingly 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 exactly the 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 statistically they are unlikely to be discovered with any regularity on average privy digs.

Pontiled medicine bottles, ink bottles (Emmett & Marjories Inkwells), beer and soda bottles, and many others (Federation of Historical Bottle Collectors), 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 which motivate privy diggers to continue searching 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. Sometimes, after plumbing was installed at the residence there was a final cleaning, 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. In rural areas where vaults are usually much smaller and shallower farmers and other property owners often conducted this task themselves. Remarkably, despite lying in human waste and other decaying refuse for years many recyclable bottles of the time, and other reusable items as well, 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. The evidence suggests that not all dippers were equally concerned with being meticulous and periodically dozens of bottles, and even some night soil, can still be found while privy digging; this can range from a few inches to several feet. The many out of place bottles sometimes discovered in clusters near the top or bottom of a dipped out vault are referred to as “kick backs”, or “throw ins”, done seemingly at the hands of disinterested workers who cleaned out the privy. Via privy digging a lesser percentage of vaults have occasionally been found largely undisturbed (or undipped) 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 and other household garbage. It appears that some were not used for that purpose at all. Moreover, for practical reasons only a small percentage of a household’s total trash was ever distributed there.

A sterile mixture of 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 night soil deposits remaining down below, they no longer emit any offensive odor.

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 of the Land: Garbage in New York: The Last Two Hundred Years, New York: Four Walls Eight Windows

External links

• Antique Bottles of Baltimore Maryland
• Antique Bottle and Glass Collector Magazine
• Antique Pot Lid Gallery
• Emmett and Marjories Inkwells
• Federation of Historical Bottle Collectors
• Historic Glass Bottle Indentification & Information Website
• Manhattan Well Diggers
• National Bottle Museum
• New York Artifact Art