There was also a large sized blue Hubbell open pontil corset waisted pharmacy product bottle that took a paper label and was probably for cologne, lotion or some other liquid sold by the pharmacy. The smooth based examples were just as nice as the pontiled ones. It was half and half mix of iron pontil and smooth base examples and all were green in color. This privy contained about 25 Engle & Wolf teepee shaped soda bottles from Dillwyn Street in Philadelphia. Can you imagine digging through 10 feet of c1850 bottles? It dosen't happen often, even a 4 foot thick layer can be very productive. The use layer can vary from just a few inches to 10 feet in depth. The remainder of the shaft is not seen in the photo and this portion must be excavated with a shovel, bucket and rope until you reach the bottom. The fill dirt can now be easily thrown downhill and out of the way. As you can see an earthmoving machine has ripped half of the upper privy away. Privies in odd places have a better chance of not being cleaned out before they were filled as was the case with this brick lined privy. In this photo it appears that the privy was very close to the sidewalk. Newer privies were then dug on the rear property line, usually in the corners or in the middle. A later addition onto the original building would cover over this first and most early shaft. Sometimes the early privy or well shafts were in the middle of the backyard. All sorts of possibilities for privies exist. There was much habitation in the massive expanse of neighborhoods that make up the greater Philadelphia area. It is not uncommon to see square and rectangular privies in Philadelphia yards along side the round wells that were later converted to privies. This is not to say that many round brick lined structures sunk into the earth were not built as privies from the start. In Philadelphia non functioning wells were quickly converted to privies once the clean water from them was not realized. Wells were obviously dug to supply clean potable water, unlike Manhattan and other early cities that had water piped in from a reservoir system. This is a typical round brick lined privy/well in Philadelphia. They made the necessary arrangements and they were allowed to conduct their excavations on a Sunday when the workers were not there and the diggers were not in anyone's way or in any danger. Of course the guys obtained permission from construction site management. This created the 'prairie do'g effect where everyone gets their own hole, now that's great digging, more privy layer that can be dug in a day. Once you found one you just had to pace off 22-25 feet and you were into another one. No bucketing of sterile fill just dig the layers! The other great aspect was that the entire privy line was undisturbed. Since the layers were about 4 feet thick this was an ideal situation since 20 feet of overburden was removed and the layers were already exposed. Since the privies were about 25 feet deep from street level there was only 5 feet left to dig. As you can see from the sheeting and shoring activity, the ground level of the site has dropped about 20 feet. This picture was taken on a construction site on Broad Street in Philadelphia. That's Dave Peterson in the foreground, Tom Kennedy-Jansen with the yellow hard hat and further down the privy line is Dave Tinney. Here's some club members on a cold day February 14, 1999, these photos were taken and submitted by Dave Leitinger.