Entertaining My Potty Brain—and Yours

ENTERTAINING MY POTTY BRAIN—AND YOURS

MATERIAL CULTURE AS HISTORY

A former Union County researcher, Linda Brazaitis, was ecstatic when she found this list of items to be auctioned by Thomas Molloy in December 1905. Thomas was retiring from management of the resort, Glenside Park. He and his wife Annie had started working there even before 1884, when Warren Ackerman first teamed up with Ella King Adams to create the resort. Thomas and Annie had been managing the resort since 1889.

This list, as my archaeologist friends Matt Tomaso and Carissa Scarpa pointed out, is an amazing slice of material culture history, giving a glimpse into everyday life at the resort. How does one understand what each of the items on the list was? For this purpose, Matt and Carissa referred me to the Sears Catalogue, and the 1897 one in particular.

The 1897 Sears Catalogue, called a “Consumers Guide,” was more than 770 pages and was sent “post-free to millions of American homes.”¹ In 1968, a team of researchers had worked to get that edition of the catalogue reprinted for the use of historic researchers—and, apparently, because browsing it to see what everyday people in an earlier time bought and used was so much fun. When the catalogue was reproduced, Fred L. Israel, then teaching at City College of New York, wrote the following about its significance in the preface to the reprint:

If all the records for the 1890’s should be lost, a scholar in the remote future who stumbled upon this book could obtain a fairly accurate description of American life during the last decade of the nineteenth century. The items displayed represent artifacts people really wanted and bought. Sears Roebuck did not as a rule experiment with fads. Nevertheless, the catalogue does record technological advances, changes from earlier ways of living, but changes that were rapidly becoming engrained in the American life style. Hence, the panoramic view drawn from the Sears catalogue is revealing and valid. For this reason alone, thesis catalogue occupies a unique place as authentic Americana, a companion to the faded family album. Today we chuckle at the wordy descriptions and repetitious phrases, but in its day the catalogue earnestly—and I think sincerely—satisfied the ravenous appetite for detail that characterized the rural mail order customer. although Sears’ catalogues from the 1890’s are now collector’s items, millions of Americans once considered these crowded pages as required reading.²

In addition to the preface, the reprint includes two introductory essays, the first written by S.J. Perelman, described on the inside back cover as “one of America’s best-known humorists,” and a “regular contributor to the New Yorker Magazine.” Perelman first gives us the following description of the catalogue:

Its 770-odd pages list a dizzying variety of merchandise intermingled with sales appeals, testimonial letters, and colorful engravings illustrating the wealth of articles available to the customer. The profusion of goods shown in the index, in which there are over six thousand items, ranges through every conceivable form of artifact, from autoharps to kraut cutters, from dulcimers to teething rings, from foot scrapers to feather boas. One can well imagine some archaeologist of the twenty-fifth century scratching his head (if our posterity will indeed have heads to scratch) over this gigantic kitchen midden, vainly attempting to adumbrate a vanished civilization from its household machinery.³

Perelman’s humor will be seen below in his highlights of some of the catalogue’s items, but you really don’t have to be a humorist to enjoy the catalogue’s quirkiness. The reprint includes a somewhat more sober introductory essay, this one by Richard Rovere, a staff member for The New Yorker, and the “author of several books, among them are Affairs of State: The Eisenhower Years and The American Establishment.” Rovere sees the catalogue as evidence that “materialism had won the struggle for our souls,” but he argued that Americans were not unique in this regard and suggests:

One can find evidence of our present vices and our present virtues in this splendid volume, but the evidence that interests me relates to values and developments that, in my judgement at any rate, are not to be assessed in moral terms. This catalogue is at once a product and a display of our culture, especially our mass culture in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century.⁴

Rovere notes that the company was only four years old at the time of the catalogue, but that its creators had already begun to understand to effectively market consumer goods, one must “entertain as well as hector.”⁵ The crammed pages of the catalogue, says Rovere, provided reading material to “people who endured much solitude through the long nights and winters of what, despite the steady move to the cities, was still a predominantly rural America.”⁶

WHAT CONSTITUTED A “TOILET SET”

One of the most numerous items being auctioned off by Thomas Molloy were 47 toilet sets. As someone who grew up visiting my seemingly antiquated grandparents and great aunts, I, assumed that toilet sets were probably the fancy brush and comb sets that were on every bureau.

The dictionary⁷ confirms that such brush and comb sets are indeed within the significance of what is referred to as “toilet sets”—presumably relating to the notion of “making one’s toilet,” i.e. grooming oneself. But the dictionary also confirms that there was an earlier meaning for the phrase toilet set—“the vessels on a washstand (as a basin and ewer).”

I hadn’t looked up the phrase toilet set when I first looked at the 1897 catalogue. There, the only things which are identified as “toilet sets” are sets including up to twelve items: “Basin and pitcher, mug, brush vase, hot water pitcher, soap dish, cover and drainer, chamber and cover, and slop jar and cover.”⁸ Presumably the word “chamber” is the catalogue’s delicate way of saying chamber pot, which it should be noted, always came with a cover, presumably, also for delicacy.

The 1897 catalogue includes five different styles of toilet sets, some available in choices of 6, 10 or 12 items. While the Merriam Webster dictionary delicately described such toilet sets as vessels on a washstand, and identifies only two of the possible items included, “basin and ewer,” every one of the Sears Catalogue sets includes a chamber pot—whatever the number of items chosen. So, presumably, the dictionary writers are being a bit delicate themselves.

Online, I have found what I judge to be the 1905 Sears catalogue, without any of the interesting explanatory material of the reprinted 1897 one.⁹ The 1905 catalogue still includes toilet sets meeting the significance of “vessels on a washstand,” although the selection is far more limited. Their pictures and descriptions occupy only half a page in the catalogue, rather than the one and two thirds’ pages of the former catalogue.

The 1905 catalogue offers six of the other type of “toilet set,” a set including a brush and comb. Four of the sets also include a hand mirror, and one style includes manicure items, and a “button hook,” apparently for button emergencies, and a “corn knife,” for cutting corns off your feet. I have found no such identified “toilet sets” in the 1897 catalogue, only brushes, combs and hand mirrors sold as separate items.¹⁰ Presumably the shift shown between catalogues is evidence of a reduced need for either chamber pots or basins and ewers, as homes got indoor plumbing and running water.

The fact that the phrase “toilet set” seems to be moving towards something else entirely can probably be a subject for research on its own. I won’t undertake that here. I will turn back to the auction announcement.

Thomas Molloy’s auction took place on one of the last days he was at the resort as manager, just prior to his retirement at the end of December 1905. What kind of toilet set was he selling?

THE ARCHAEOLOGICAL EVIDENCE

Part of the evidence of what the list of items meant when it referred to “toilet sets” must come from the evidence about when the resort of Glenside Park got indoor plumbing—and thus, ceased to need the type of toilet sets which included a chamber pot. Archaeological digs of two privies at the village—a privy being an outhouse—give somewhat weird evidence.

Privies are one of the features that archaeologists love to find in a site. Any site without trash pickup service—i.e., one where inhabitants were disposing of waste items on-site—will usually have a rich cache of waste items in the privies, since they were often used to keep more than human waste out of sight. Archaeologists are especially pleased when they find dated items, such as coins or newspapers. I understand that the presence of newspapers in privies is generally due to use in place of our toilet tissue, although they may have served as reading material, prior to use.

Typically, when a building gets indoor plumbing and is served by a septic system or sewer system, privies are abandoned, and may collect even more waste items, since their primary use is no longer needed—indeed, they may get quite a large cache of interesting items being disposed. Tomaso and his team found two privy sites in the village, one behind House 1 and one behind the workers’ cottages, nearest to Masker’s Barn. Evidence from the privies suggested that the workers’ cottage privy (a two-seater), was neither well-constructed nor well maintained and its use was discontinued about 1904. Matt Tomaso indicates that “The Workers’ Cottage privy’s closing layers consisted primarily of chamber pots, lime and oil lamp chimneys—indicating the installation of electric lighting, indoor plumbing, and the closure of the privy (lime).¹¹ Thus, this might be evidence of all of these improvements coming to the resort and Village about a year before the Molloys left.

Matt notes that such improvements would probably have been applied across the whole village at the same time. So what I find really weird is that Tomaso’s team found a “rolled up 1916 newspaper in a tobacco tin” in the upper privy. Other artifacts found in this privy suggest that it a more affluent group—i.e. resort guests as opposed to resort workers—who were using it. So why would the privy be still in use a decade longer than the one down the road, which served the smallest cottages, those occupied by the resort’s staff?

Moreover, we know that at least by 1912, the village/resort had indoor plumbing along with electricity. Anna Molloy Walsh supplied a copy of a resort brochure to James Hawley when he interviewed her for his book.¹² The brochure lists D. W. Bogert as the “Proprietor” at the resort. Bogert, whom Anna identifies as the second manager in succession after her parents left, took over for the seasons of 1912 and 1913.

Bogert’s brochure lists the resort’s modern conveniences:

Glenside Park covers a tract of 125 acres, with roadways, walks and lawn kept in perfect condition and well lighted all night by electricity. The whole place is well sewered and supplied with pure water from mountain springs. . . .

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There are fifteen cottages, besides the Inn, in the park, containing from six to ten rooms each and completely furnished, excepting linen. Each cottage has from two to four fireplaces, with bath, toilet, running water and electric light.

“CHAMBERS” OR HAIR BRUSHES?

The auction took place at the end of 1905. Were the toilet sets, the ones seen in the 1897 catalogue or were they brushes and combs?

Thomas and Annie Molloy had managed and operated the resort for at least a decade and a half, likely starting in 1889, the year after Frank Hosniger, who had served Warren Ackerman as superintendent of the site, drowned. Their daughter, Anna, recollects that until Warren’s death,¹³ Warren himself “furnished” all the cottages, but after he died, Thomas had to supply any necessary replacements.

Clearly, whatever Thomas was auctioning off in 1905 were items he believed belonged to him and Annie. Does this mean he replaced everything between 1893—the time of Warren’s death—and 1905? Did Thomas have to exclude from his auction any items which remained from the time when Warren “furnished” the cottages.

The three nephews who were Warren’s executors and who hiked the rental charged to Thomas for use of the Village as a resort might be expected to keep track of what had belonged to Warren, and what had been replaced by Thomas. But—I am just thinking this through here—another item on the auction list is “About 1500 yards of matting,” i.e. the matting that had served as floor coverings, and that Anna had called “quite attractive, as I remember.” Yes, it had been 12 years since Warren died when Thomas sold off the contents of the cottages, but I am seriously doubting he had replaced 1500 yards of matting in that time. So, I am thinking the nephews were not tracking the contents of the cottages to see what they could enter into the estate’s holdings.

I included the above reasoning as, I believe, relevant to which Sears catalogue might more accurately represent the type of toilet sets being auctioned. Thomas and Annie knew that 1905 was going to be their last year managing the resort, and that they were going into retirement after that. They wouldn’t be purchasing a lot of new items that year, since they wouldn’t be there to need them. I’m going with the 1897 catalogue as more relevant, at least for now, and toilet sets that included chamber pots, not simply brushes and combs.

I am making this judgement both with the knowledge that Thomas—or someone else—had already tossed a number of discarded chamber pots into the workers’ privy, and the fact that the area around the resort was probably increasingly getting indoor plumbing. With indoor plumbing, of course, the need for chamber pots would disappear at the resort. But that doesn’t mean someone in the area might not want to buy them.

MY POTTY BRAIN

Okay, I have just demonstrated my history geek reasoning again. However, regardless of whether the toilet sets being auctioned off in 1905 included chamber pots, we know there must have been such toilet sets in the cottages at some time during the Molloys’ tenure at the Village, since there were many years before the resort got indoor plumbing. Anna tells us “The water we got from a well in back of the cottage. There were no baths in the houses at that time”—presumably referring to when the Molloys began managing the resort, and for some time thereafter. So, for many years of the resort’s operation, guests had the privies to use during the day, but at night they would have resorted to chamber pots. Chamber pots, presumably, were cleaned up by any servants guests had brought with them.

Of course my mind turned to the question of how people used toilet facilities, whether chamber pots or privies, prior to indoor plumbing. You already know, from observations I have made in previous posts, that I am especially curious about how women managed these day to day functions in the clothing of the time, especially corsets and underskirts. Indeed, the breadth of skirts created by the various underskirts worn, including stiffened ones called crinolines, could be life threatening. Author Karen Bowman describes incidents of the wide skirts catching flame and endangering the wearer. She also tells a story of a man knocked off the sidewalk by a woman’s skirt, and into the path of a passing “brewers dray” ran over him, causing injuries that led directly to his death a few days later. Women’s nineteenth century clothing was no joke.

Both Sears catalogues give plenty of insight into women’s clothing, and an opportunity to think about how women used a chamber pot—or a privy. I will stick to the 1897 catalogue for some images.

Here are some examples of women’s “drawers” for sale. What the pictures do not show is that the drawers, unlike modern panties, had an opening which allowed women to use toilet facilities without actually removing their drawers.

From the 1897 Sears, Roebuck & Co., Catalogue

From the 1897 Sears, Roebuck & Co., Catalogue

Kate Scott, a historic costumer, explains the function of the drawers as follows: ¹⁴

A standard pair of women’s drawers comprises a waistband with two separate legs attached. The legs overlap in the front and the back, but have a completely open crotch seam. Why, you might ask? Because removing them was next to impossible while wearing a corset and thickly layered petticoats. This allowed the wearer to go to the bathroom without taking them off. As a bonus, it kept them warmer while visiting the outhouse in January.

How was it possible the other clothing items a woman was wearing, such as corsets, did not require removal to use the potty? The 1897catalogue has a page and a half devoted to corsets, including a nursing corset and corsets for girls and young ladies, which allowed for a developing bust size. Corsets encase the torso, nipping in the waist and emphasizing the bust, but are not of a length to impede bathroom use, except for the fact they may be rather tight. S.J. Perelman, a quotation from whose introduction to the reprinted 1897 catalogue is above, shows his penchant for humor with the following comments on the corset advertisements:

Leafing through the catalogue at random, the readers gleans not only a fascinating spectrum of life in the closing years of the nineteenth century, but an astonished sense of how inexpensive it was. Take ladies’ corsets, for instance (an invitation I’m sure no red-blooded male will decline). No. 24810, a model known as “Exposition,” is thus described: “Perfectly shaped and a fine fitting corset, equal to any retailed at 80 cents. Price, $0.40.” Could any late Victorian wolf, encircling his inamorata’s hourglass waist, ever have dreamed that the treasures in his grasp were packaged in forty cents’ worth of whalebone and cambric? If Milady wanted something really de luxe, there was No. 24813: “This corset is modeled after the finest French shapes [which, incidentally, Toulouse-Lautrec was busy immortalizing at that very point in history, brother, and hot ziggety] [commentary in original] and will fit any lady of average proportions. It is made with soft busts and stayed with unbreakable French wire, $0.75.” Unbreakable, obviously, in order to repel the forays of the above-mentioned Victorian wolf.¹⁵

There are also corset covers offered, which like corsets, do not interfere with using toilet facilities.

Sears featured a number of white underskirts—i.e. petticoats, which were wide, to give that bell shaped volume to whatever skirt was worn on the outside:

Lengths 36, 38, 40, 42 inches. Our skirts are three yards around the bottom, never less, often wider. Please give size when ordering.

I can’t seem to find any examples in the 1897 catalogue of the starched or otherwise stiff item known as the crinoline, which was generally worn under the underskirts/petticoats, to make a wide bell shape that was so fashionable and could be dangerous.¹⁶ But they may be included in the catalogue under some term other than the ones I searched.

The catalogue has fourteen pages of “Ladies’ Ready-to-Wear Clothing,” which actually includes one page of “Tailor Made Walking and Bicycle Suits,” along with the skirts, dresses, and suits that the fashionable woman would use to cover all of those undergarments.

Okay, that is a lot of clothing. Author Stephanie Celeberti goes even further than Kate Scott in explaining how, even with all of these layers of clothing, a woman or girl would not need to remove anything to go to the bathroom. She indicates that “crinolines are malleable and light weight,” and outlines three options Nineteenth Century women could choose for using toilet facilities, all basically gathering clothes together and letting “the split-crotch drawers make it easy to do the rest.”¹⁷ Indeed, it seems that a chamber pot made it easier than a privy, since “women could hold the chamber pot in their hands, rest a foot on the top and hold the chamber pot underneath the skirts.”

At nighttime, a woman did not wear these multiple layers of clothing, presumably, only wearing a nightgown. While quite voluminous, the styles offered in the 1897 catalogue would have made using a chamber pot even easier than daytime use of either the chamber pot or the outdoor privy.

As one might expect, the drawers did not allow for complete passage of bodily wastes. Kate Scott indicates that they “soaked up sweat, oils, and other bodily fluids, thus keeping petticoats and outer clothing clean and preventing their deterioration. As with chemises and shirts, people washed drawers often.”¹⁸

HAPPY HOLIDAYS!

This is only a very cursory beginning of exploring the material culture of toilet sets, and that there is a huge list of other items that, when researched, will give a more complete glimpse into day to day life at Glenside Park, the resort. I hope that you have found this fun! Pick up an old Sears catalogue, if you get the chance, and open to any random page for a laugh.

Until next month.