Donald Dostie, "'The original situation of the large necessary'--Urban Privies in Post-Revolutionary Philadelphia"
Abstract: François Rabelais once compared privies to monasteries. Though both were places that held a wide variety of people, they were “separated from political conversation.”[1] Rabelais was wrong. In urban environments like Philadelphia’s at the end of the eighteenth century, outdoor privies were intensely political. The location of privies on public and private property and the ability of different people to access them were intimately connected to notions of bodily privacy and social status. The yards and alleys in which urban privies were situated were intimate spaces that all Philadelphians were compelled to share with other people to varying degrees. The physical relationships between people in these often-overlooked urban spaces--who could share this space with you, who could surveil you in that space, and your ability to control that situation—helped define their social relationships.