Brown Street, Portland, ca. 1875
Maine Historic Preservation Commission
In 2006, while rebuilding the garden wall along the original Wadsworth property line, workers noticed broken glass and ceramics in the soil.
A team of archaeologists investigated the discovery and determined the ceramics had been thrown into a privy that was used by people who lived in a house at 47 Brown Street.
The excavation of the Brown Street privy provided interesting insights about the mid 19th century neighborhood surrounding the Longfellow house.
Brown, Preble block, Portland, 1877
Maine Historical Society
John Corey, a dry goods merchant with a store on Middle Street, built the house around 1850. He lived here first with his mother.
By at least 1860, Corey rented rooms or another floor to grocer Lewis Hutchins and his family. At that time, two families and 10 people lived in the house.
By 1870, every house on Brown Street served as a multi-family home. Some houses were divided into apartments (or tenements), others were boarding houses where rooms were rented or shared.
As many as 20 people boarded in the house next to the Corey family.
These different living places were home for factory workers, store clerks, domestic workers, and others. In later years, many of the residents were immigrants from Canada, Ireland, or Germany.
In 1874, sewers came to Brown Street. Corey probably added a water closet and bathroom with running water. The privy was no longer needed and was filled with debris.
The materials found in the privy provide some insights into the nature of working class life in an urban household of mid-19th-century Portland.
What is a privy?
Privies or outhouses were bathrooms and did not have running water. Privies were usually built outside or in a connecting building over a pit in the rear of a house lot. In rural areas, when the pit became full, a new pit was dug, the outhouse moved, and the old pit was covered over.
Chamber pot and lid, Portland, ca. 1875
Maine Historical Society
In urban areas, there wasn’t space to do this so a permanent "privy vault" was constructed of wood, brick, or stone. Workers removed the "night soil" when the privy was full.
City residents often dumped their rubbish and night soil off of the Commercial Street docks into the Fore River. In 1878, Portland passed an ordinance prohibiting residents from emptying or removing the contents of any privy vault within the city.
Then individuals were licensed to remove the night soil, during the night, and dispose of it. These men became known as "night men."
Privies served as repositories for human waste and as receptacles (or trashcans) for the daily waste generated in a household such as broken china, glassware, and food scraps.
