# Honey Wagon History Lesson



## hurricaneplumber

During WW II many of the sixteen million plus US service personnel were stationed in the orient witnessed how the Orientals handled their sanitation needs. The homes there had a receptacle that drained into a benjo ditch that drained the waste from inside to outside your home. A worker, known in the Orient as a honey dipper, would come along and dip out the human waste and place it in containers on a horse drawn cart, known as the *honey wagon*, and then sloppily transport it to a local agricultural site where it would be emptied into a pit and left until it fermented enough to be spread as fertilizer.

*Americaâ€™s outhouse:* Before American homes and businesses had internal plumbing the external toilet facility was called by many names, but the most common was â€œthe Outhouse.â€ Over the years many additional names arose including Privy, Biff or Biffy, Necessary house or Nessy, Chapel of Ease or Comfort Station, Loo â€" still a favorite in the UK, Wood Pile, Latrine, Uncle John or John, Jake, Rosebush, Backhouse, Sears Booth, Dooley- now a favorite in Australia, Reading Room, Library, Throne or Throne Room, White House, Eleanor, Roosevelt Monument and of course the proverbial Shithouse.

During Franklin Rooseveltâ€™s presidency the WPA was formed to make use of the many people out of work during the Great American Depression, one of the many projects these men did was build outhouses for the residents of rural America. The homeowner paid for the materials -$17 â€" the labor was provided free. Eleanor was Rooseveltâ€™s wife and was very influential in the program.

The typical outhouse was of simple construction, merely a hole in the ground with a building, either plain or even elaborate, built up around it. The more progressive homeowners would perhaps treat the hole with a coating of lime occasionally, but that was the state of sanitation for hundreds of years. Today you rarely see the old outhouse anymore and when you do they are quite dowdy.

One infamous name America attached to both indoor and outdoor toilets requires us to travel back to England in the year 1836, and discuss a man by the name of Thomas Crapper, an early plumber by trade. Tom owned three plumbing supply and repair businesses and a factory. A gentleman that worked for him by the name of John Harington is credited with inventing the original water closet. Queen Elizabeth, who supposedly had a very sensitive nose, had a water closet made at Thomas Crapperâ€™s factory, The Marlboroâ€™ Works, and had it installed in her palace at Richmond. It proved a momentous success.

It seems, contrary to poplar opinion, Thomas Crapper didnâ€™t invent the WC but he did have the insite and wherewithal to manufacture and promote it. Probably the most important thing about Thomas Crapper is that he initiated sanitary reform. Until the day of Thomas Crapper, anyone in the business discretely situated himself in hidden places and didnâ€™t talk about his trade in public. Imagine the fuss in the Victorian age when Thomas Crapper opened a flamboyant location on the Kingâ€™s Road, directly opposite Royal Avenue, with bright red paint and water closets prominently displayed in his showroom windows for the entire world to see. Thus began the genesis of a professional image for the emerging industry and which gave us the beginnings of a proud tradition of working within the sanitation industry as purveyors of sanitation service or as portable toilet manufactures or renters.

The now pervasive naming of a toilet or water closet as a Crapper stems from World War I American soldiers passing through England on their way to the war front. They saw the words â€œT. Crapper Ltd, Chelseaâ€ printed on the tanks and coined the slang â€œcrapperâ€ meaning toilet.

So it seems the genesis of portable toilet manufacturing is quite simple, the Europeans put a â€œchamber potâ€ into a portable enclosure and had a portable restrooms. The Americans borrowing the idea put a skid under an â€œouthouseâ€ and had the beginning of todayâ€™s Portable Sanitation Industry.


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## Markh1

Which brings us to the three things plumbers everywhere must know....

1. Payday is Friday

2. Sh*t runs downhill

3. Never, ever chew your fingernails


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## PDX_Doug

Fascinating read, Hurricane!
You learn something new around here every day!









Happy Trails,
Doug


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## California Jim

Just my luck that I find myself eating lunch over this one


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## djd1023

I want to know if the honey dipper was a volunteer position or if you got it by pissing someone off. That has got to be one nasty job


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## biga

I'm thinking this thread is full of s..........manure.
















couldn't resist.


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## mik0445

The bad part is, thanks to uncle sam, I have visited South Korea and found that there are still benjo ditches today...luckily they are only used for grey water now! They are still pretty nasty, and they are right next to a lot of roads, so it makes it a fun walk home after you've 'had a few'!


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## HootBob

Thanks Kevin for the History lesson
I really didn't know how or where they came up with the name for the blue totes
Just heard it called a honey pot on wheels
Very interesting

Don


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## RizFam

Yes, very interesting Kevin, Thanks.

Tami


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## campmg

Where's Moosegut when we need him most?


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## RizFam

campmg said:


> Where's Moosegut when we need him most?
> 
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> [snapback]130916[/snapback]​

















Actually campmg he is in Lake George















I am sure he will read this thread when he returns.









Tami


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## Oregon_Camper

Now I really CAN tell my wife I learned something from Outbackers.com today. And she just thinks I'm addicted to this site.


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