A pail closet or pail privy or dirt closet was a room used for the disposal of human excreta, under the "pail system" (or Rochdale system) of waste removal. The "closet" (a word which had long meant "toilet" in one usage) was a small outhouse (privy) which contained a seat, underneath which a portable receptacle was placed. This bucket (pail), into which the user would defecate, was removed and emptied by the local authority on a regular basis. The contents, known euphemistically as night soil, would either be incinerated or composted into fertiliser.
Although the more advanced water closet (flush toilet) was popular in wealthy homes, the lack of an adequate water supply and poor sewerage meant that in 19th-century England, in working-class neighbourhoods, towns and cities often chose dry conservancy methods of waste disposal. The pail closet was an evolution of the midden closet (privy midden), an impractical and unsanitary amenity considered a nuisance to public health. The pail system was popular in France and England, particularly in the historic Lancashire town of Rochdale, from which the system commonly took its name. The pail closet was not without its own problems; if the pail was not emptied on a regular basis, it overflowed and became unhygienic. Some manufacturers lined the pail with absorbent materials, and other designs used mixtures of dry earth or ash to disguise the smell.
Improved water supplies and sewerage systems in England led directly to the replacement of the pail closet during the early 20th century. Municipal collection of pail toilets (dunnies) continued in Australia into the second half of the twentieth century. In the western world, the pail closet has now been almost completely replaced by the flush toilet. However, similar systems still exist in less developed countries, and are discussed at sanitation.
Before the pail closet
Pail closets were used to dispose of human excreta, dirty water, and general household waste such as kitchen refuse and sweepings. The pail closet system was one of several methods of waste disposal in common use in the 19th century, others of which were the privy midden system, the pail system, and the dry-earth system.
Middens
By 1869, Manchester had a population of about 354,000 people who were served by about 10,000 water closets (flush toilets) and 38,000 middensteads. An investigation of the condition of the city's sewer network revealed that it was "choked up with an accumulation of solid filth, caused by overflow from the middens." (Middens and middensteads both refer to dunghills, ash pits, or refuse heaps.) Such problems forced the city authorities to consider other methods of dealing with human excretion. Although the water closet was used in wealthy homes, concerns over river pollution, costs and available water supplies meant that most towns and cities chose more labour-intensive dry conservancy systems. Manchester was one such city and by 1877 its authorities had replaced about 40,000 middens with pail and midden closets, rising to 60,000 by 1881. The soil surrounding the old middens was cleared out, connections with drains and sewers removed and dry closets erected over each site. A contemporary estimate stated that the installation of about 25,000 pail closets removed as much as of urine and accompanying faeces from the city's drains, sewers and rivers.
The midden closet was a development of the privy, which had evolved from the primitive "fosse" ditch. Midden closets were still used in the latter part of the 19th century but were rapidly falling out of favour. A Mr Redgrave, in a speech to the Institution of Civil Engineers in 1876, said that the midden closet represented "... the standard of all that is utterly wrong, constructed as it is of porous materials, and permitting free soakage of filth into the surrounding soil, capable of containing the entire dejections from a house, or from a block of houses, for months and even years". The 1868 Rivers Pollution Commission reported two years later: "privies and ashpits are continually to be seen full to overflowing and as filthy as can be... These middens are cleaned out whenever notice is given that they need it, probably once half-yearly on an average, by a staff of night-men with their attendant carts."