The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
WHEN DUTY CALLS
Historical society’s outhouse tourists will be privy to ‘plumbing’ from late 18th, early 19th centuries
HADDAM >> Elizabeth Hart Malloy knows her potties.
In fact, she can gauge the size of a family long after its humble home has been demolished simply by virtue of the features of its water closet.
The executive director of the Haddam Historical Society’s Thankful Arnold House Museum, a child of the 1960s and ’70s, was raised in a home with indoor — and outdoor — plumbing.
“I grew up in Haddam Neck and my parents would run out of water every summer, which meant we couldn’t use the toilet, and I grew up using an outhouse during the summer. It was a part of life for us,” said Malloy on Monday, just back from photographing several of the outhouses that will be a part of the tour.
“Then we dug a new well and turned it into a chicken coop,” said Malloy, who will offer a self-guided tour of the outdoor latrines of Haddam and Higganum, on April 29 from 1 to 5 p.m., which will offer a glimpse into the difficult lives of those who lived in this rural town during the late 18th and early 19th century.
Malloy estimates about a couple dozen outbuildings remain in town — all now repurposed.
Joseph and Thankful Arnold and their 12 children lived in the mustardcolored colonial house at the corner of Hayden Hill Road and Walkley Hill that was built in 1798. Joseph Arnold, whose family was one of the original settlers of Haddam, married Thankful Clark of Chester when she was 21. He was a merchant whose endeavors
"I grew up in Haddam Neck and my parents would run out of water every summer, which meant we couldn’t use the toilet, and I grew up using an outhouse during the summer. It was a part of life for us." — Elizabeth Hart Malloy, Haddam Historical Society director
included turnpike building, commercial fishing sites, quarrying, money lending and real estate, according to the society’s website.
Saturday’s event will allow visitors to explore a time when a family’s sense of privacy was worlds away from today’s septic systems, running water and other amenities of modern society.
“These have a history — they are really an integral part of the property and clearly define a time when there weren’t all the comforts that we have now,” Malloy said. “If your home was built prior to 1900, you had an outhouse; some even after that time.”
Many will be surprised, when the doors of these lavatories are swung open, to find two, three or more holes set in a row along the well-worn wooden seating area inside.
“If the child had to use the outhouse, chances are they could be frightened or didn’t want to go in on their own,” said Malloy, who has run the society for the past 15 years. “They would have an adult accompany them. I think if duty called, they might have had to share it at the same time.”
Pre-industrial revolution society was governed by necessity and practicality, she said.
“They didn’t have the privacy rules we have now — it was just going about your business ... literally,” Malloy said. “At one point, families would sleep in the same bedroom, but as time passed and industry developed, everything changed,” she said.
The Arnolds, like their fellow New Englanders, were very particular about where their latrines were located. “It had to be far away from the water source, but it also had to be far enough away from the house so the smells wouldn’t be overwhelming, but close enough where people could get to it in a hurry,” Malloy said.
The Arnold House’s privy is the perfect distance from the main house, Malloy said, with the well situated on the far side of the property. It, like others of the time, was built and painted to mirror the house proper.
“Although a lot of them are stylistically the same, they’re each different” as far as number of windows, seats, and other features, Malloy said. “They treated these little outbuildings as basically another room, an extension of the house. They were plastered, they were painted, there’s wainscoting in some of them and even wallpaper.”
One tiny window was a typical feature of these loos, many of which had a crescent or star cutout in the wood to provide the perfect amount of light.
“You didn’t want to offer too much view as to what was going on, but the window would provide ventilation,” she explained.
To be sure the odor wouldn’t be overpowering, Malloy said, homeowners would usually dig a five- to 6-foot pit underneath. “They’d fill it with lime. You’d actually have to turn it over every now and then. They’d move the outhouse around after a year or two — maybe only over another six or seven feet — and eventually the ground where it was before would ultimately turn into soil and they could move it back,” Malloy said.
However, unlike manure, “you couldn’t garden with it.”
Each outhouse would vary, depending on the number of individuals in the household, Malloy said, adding that enough seats for two adults and one child was the most typical.
The average family size in the early to mid-1800s was between seven and 10 children, according to digitalhistory.uh.edu, although the average age expectancy was about 29 years. It was a time when diseases like pneumonia, cholera, meningitis and typhoid were rampant — and fatal.
Malloy admitted to being a little wistful about how quaint things once were in Haddam.
“I don’t think families are as close as they used to be — literally and figuratively. I think you can long for it,” Malloy said. “I don’t particularly long for the difficulty of their lives,” however, she said.
In the colder months, in the evenings or when illness struck the family during the Arnolds’ time, chamber pots were important elements of necessity, Malloy said. They were used quite often for convenience. “You didn’t have to get dressed, or used if you were sick or you couldn’t get there in time.”
Chamber pots, several of which are on view at the Arnold House, along with early bedpans, were made of clay or porcelain and often had a lid with a handle.
“Indoor plumbing began in the early 20th century in this part of town,” Malloy said. However, she said, some individuals used their outhouses up until 1940s.
“It was probably that some people didn’t like change. Good old Yankees — ‘It’s fine the way it is. It worked perfectly well, you don’t need to change it up,’ that’s my guess,” Malloy said.
“Unlike electricity, which completely changed your life, I think the flush thing was probably a dramatic change. I don’t think it was such a startling change to have indoor plumbing,” she said.
With the advent of septic systems in the early 1900s, families throughout New England repurposed these little outbuildings into other, just-as-practical abodes, like tool sheds, homes for poultry and, in some cases, little “clubhouses” for the kids.
“I’ll be perfectly honest — I’m happy to have my flush toilet,” Malloy said. “It’s romantic to a degree, but I think if you had to do it 365 days a year for your entire life, the romance is gone,” said Malloy, who said she has an interesting photograph taken from Swan’s Hill in Higganum near Haddam Elementary School. “You can see down there, a row of outhouses in the backyard.”
This particular arrangement, she said, was for factory housing along Dublin Hill Road.
Some latrines even had a basement level, Malloy said, “and they’d actually let the animals come in — like pigs — and it served a dual purpose: when it was cool in the winter, I think having animals down there actually provided warmth.”
Saturday’s tour, for which there is a $10 donation asked, starts at the Arnold House, 14 Hayden Hill Road, where participants can pick up a map. All the outhouses are located in Higganum center. Tourgoers can park at the First Congregational Church, 905 Saybrook Road (Route 154), lot and walk to four of the homes. Others are very nearby, Malloy said.
“The building, in and of itself, is a tangible link to the past: whether you know anything about a family that lived here or not, it just tells you about a time when things were very different then they are now,” Malloy said, calling these toilets “quaint little houses of a time gone by.”
For information, see haddamhistory.org or call 860345-2400.