What is honey dipping?

[Skrimpy]

I know "honey dipping" is what is said when people say that a privy used to be cleaned by laborers so that another privy did not have to be dug, but how did they do it? What was the job called? "Privy dipper"? "Honey dipper"? "Privy cleaner"? What kind of tools did they use besides shovels and buckets? Were privys commonly dipped before they were capped?

 

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[root]

I don't know too much on this subject but I do know the wealthy could afford to have this done and so they did. Finding where they hauled the spoils to can be very rewarding. Often times if there was a creek nearby, the 'honey' would be dumped there.

HH,

root

 

[Gypsy Heart]

Chimney sweeps often served double duty as the town's "night man", whose job it was to clean out the privy.

The dripping horse−drawn carts of the "nocturnal goldfinders," as a Boston newspaper called them in 1800 who emptied the vaults and took their loads outfor burial or water disposal — "night soil" was almost never used as manure — were a familiar partof nighttime traffic on city streets. Those privies more poorly constructed sometimes opened directlyon a stream or pond, or simply overflowed their pits, making the yard "a sink of filth.

 

[Skrimpy]

Chimney sweeps often served double duty as the town's "night man", whose job it was to clean out the privy.

The dripping horse−drawn carts of the "nocturnal goldfinders," as a Boston newspaper called them in 1800 who emptied the vaults and took their loads outfor burial or water disposal — "night soil" was almost never used as manure — were a familiar partof nighttime traffic on city streets. Those privies more poorly constructed sometimes opened directlyon a stream or pond, or simply overflowed their pits, making the yard "a sink of filth.

This helps. Do you know if they usually buried on the client property or did they bury on their own? Would it be worth trying to find the chimney sweepers house?

 

[Gypsy Heart]

Well...Isnt this an interesting topic.....hahahahah

If it was in a bigger town...they took it out to a field on the outside of town. There was a big to do in the eastern states about the smell...so I am guessing that once the sanitation laws started taking place,they must have had a dumping station for this. And alot of times it was dumped in a river or stream.....

I would imagine if the client was living in the country, and was wealthy, their own servants disposed of it on the property,usually in a hog pen.

Plantations didnt have priveys for the slave quarters from what I have read, there were chamber pots and these were dumped...outside you just went wherever