Plumbing part II

My musings on plumbing provoked some parental memories. There was, of course, the incident where the long drop on the farm got blown up by someone disposing of an illicit cigarette down it in an attempt to avoid being caught smoking (I'm sure an almighty bang and a shower of dunny parts was easier to explain.....)

And then there was the nightman - the night-soil man, the night-cart man. How could I have forgotten that? Mum says that when she was young, the Dillon St house (that's the one in the painting) still had an out-house, as did Tomo Mai, the house where she grew up. The night-man came around on Saturday nights and emptied the can. That's a job to add to my I'm Having A Crappy Day But At Least I'm Not A....... list, along with the modern equivalent, being the person who empties the sanitary bins in the office toilets.

So more questions - when did the night-cart service start in Wellington? Who was the nightman? Was it a family business? It's not something I've seen in the newspaper advertisements, but then, I don't suppose it was something people wanted to be very public about. You don't see recruitment ads for sturdy young lads willing to work by night, either...

Plumbing

I've been reading C Hodding Carter's Flushed : How the Plumber Saved Civilization, which gives a general overview of plumbing (mainly toilets and sewage) and a history of plumbing in the US. Actually, the book has been in the loo, and I've been reading chunks on each visit, so it has taken a while to finish it. The reason for the interest is of course that one of William's trades was plumbing, so I'm trying to get a handle on what plumbing might have involved in the second half of the nineteenth century. I'm not all that much wiser really - more questions raised than answered. What exactly was the state of domestic sanitation in Wellington 1841? And did Sarah perhaps have a slightly better deal, being married to a plumber, or was she like most tradesmen's wives, living in a series of unfinished projects? Did William install the latest state-of-the-art facilities (whatever they might have been) at home? Did they have an earth-closet or a cess-pit, and whatever it was, did they have to trek halfway down the back yard in full view of the neighbours to use it? Did a chamber-pot lurk under the marital bed? What about loo paper? I think it had been invented by then, but would it have been available in a primitive town at the uncivilised end of the world? And if it was available, was it affordable? Was it something you wanted to spend money on? Or was the newspaper carefully ripped into squares and rationed economically - the local paper at the time only came out twice a week, and it wasn't very big, so would it have gone far enough? Or perhaps both local papers were purchased, to ensure wide coverage of local politics as well as sufficient sanitary coverage?

And am I completely and utterly twisted for wanting to know about my great-great-grandparents' toilet habits?