Think of the squallier that was 1900 New York City was. Very little indoor plumbing and 3.4 million humans. 200,000 horses making 25-37 pounds of poop daily.
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Twenty families in a Lower East Side tenement using one backyard privy. The city had had plumbing since the 1840s but indoor sanitary facilities were slow to be adopted. (Cheap landlords?)
I found this amazing: NYC’s water supply was introduced without a companion drain system. (I guess they figured it would run into the ground like it had when they used public pumps.)
Eventually, Manhattan’s water table rose so much that it flooded basements and made a mess of every backyard. Remember: privies. Yech!
No thanks!