Night Soil: A Time Before Sewerage (Transcription)

[u]Danny[/u]: The history of the impact of sewerage on domestic architecture within Ipswich is sort of interesting and it's I guess it's the same story across across Queensland as well when sewerage was introduced in the early 19th, late 20th century.   Ipswich was quite late in getting becoming sewered.  It wasn't sewered beginning until 1938, which was in the depth of the depression, which meant that it was actually quite an expensive job to do. Brisbane had started to be sewered in 1923.   Prior to sewerage becoming available, I guess if you go back to the beginning, prior to 1891, in Ipswich people had a cesspit in their backyard where all of their night soil went and everything else and obviously this had health implications and those sorts of things.  So in 1891, Ipswich Council brought in that you had to have an outdoor toilet, or dunny, with a timber seat and a can that was collected regularly and I think in those days it probably wasn't daily. The people had those until, you know, they were sewered, you know some 30 or 40 years later. [i][u]Melanie[/u]: So the cesspit, was that being treated in any way?[/i] [u]Danny[/u]: I don't know, I think just all household waste went into it. [i][u]Melanie[/u]: It's not something that they would have re-dug another hole?[/i] [u]Danny[/u]: they may have, I think you probably would have. You know in the Ipswich at that at that particular time, even in 1891, I guess there are probably a few thousand people living here, but you probably would have to, you know, dig your own separate cesspit occasionally [laughs]. I guess the health authorities around that, the turn of the the 19th century, we're aware of all of those plagues and epidemics of things.   Brisbane had had a bout of the bubonic plague in the late 19th century I think, so I guess they were sort of, you know, it would have been seen as a sort of getting a, it would have been public health program to get sewerage or to get the night soil I guess rather than you know collect it and control it rather than you know in denser places where you hear those stories about in London where it was all thrown out the window on the street and things that.