Taking a Scrap of History
That posting stated:
This scrap of newspaper was excavated from a privy at the National Constitution Center site where it had likely been used as toilet paper. That's right - this piece of paper likely wiped a bottom in ye old outhouse sometime following November 5, 1790, the day it was published. Sometimes the most fascinating objects are those that capture the most private moments of the past.The clipping might also have come from the 8 Nov and 12 Nov 1790 Pennsylvania Packet, and Daily Advertiser. Before and after those days, wine merchant Benjamin W. Morris’s advertisement differed slightly.
3 comments:
Was recycling newspaper as toilet paper commonly done (e.g. was old newspapers stashed in outhouses a common 18th century practice)?
I almost gave this article a miss, but am glad that I didn't. I believe this wine merchant was likely Benjamin Wistar Morris, later founder of Wellsboro, Pennsylvania, and father of Samuel Wells Morris, a Congressman from Pennsylvania. His namesake grandson, The Rt. Rev. Benjamin Wistar Morris, became the second missionary bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Oregon (on whose board of trustees I currently happen to serve), and great-grandson of Benjamin Wistar Morris III, a prominent architect whose works include the Union League Club in New York City, the first "sky scraper" in the state of Oregon, and interiors of the Queen Mary.
This print from the British Museum shows a small shelf holding loose papers or rags in an English outhouse. (The joke is that this stereotypical Scotsman doesn’t know how an outhouse works.) That’s evidence that British readers were familiar with that practice. But, like today, there’s not a lot of detailed public discussion of how people wipe themselves.
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