Transfer provider

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Privy provider was a profession whose representatives a mobile urinal operated. This job description was widespread in some Western European cities at the end of the 18th and early 19th centuries. Another name was Buttenmänner and Buttenweiber or Madame Toilette .

Equipment and activity

The vendors, mostly masked, walked through the streets with large wooden buckets. The buckets had lids and were hung on chains, which in turn were connected by a yoke so that the equipment could be carried over one's shoulder. Furthermore, the providers wore a wide cape. When performing the emergency exercise , they protected the citizen with a coat or cloak from prying eyes.

Background and necessity

While in Rome already two thousand years ago public toilets with water flushing was and water-borne, came this achievement - as much from the Roman period - later forgotten. Only with the introduction of the sewer system (around 1842 in London , 1856 in Hamburg ) were there public toilets again. For hygienic reasons, after the end of the Middle Ages it was not desirable, sometimes even prohibited under penalty, to relieve yourself in the big cities on the street, on walls, on stairs or in backyards. In the Middle Ages, the lack of a sewer system often encouraged the emergence of epidemics . After the sewer system and fixed public toilets appeared, the job description of the cessation provider disappeared again.

The collected urine was not necessarily disposed of as waste, but was used in saltpetre production and in tannery . In addition to the required wages for their service, providers of cessation also received payment for the urine.

reception

The Hamburg writer Dietmar Bittrich published a historical story in 2000 with the title The Resignation Provider , in which the fate of the protagonist is linked in a punch line to the Hamburg fire of 1842. The first-person narrator , who identifies himself as the author Bittrich , browses the archives in search of his protagonist, so that in addition to the fiction, some descriptions and details can be found in the narrative that illustrate the reality of the profession.

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Süddeutsche Zeitung: Good night, Sandman. Retrieved April 24, 2020 .
  2. ↑ The transfer provider . In: Dietmar Bittrich: Hamburg love affairs. Three stories. First edition. Svato Verlag, Hamburg 2000, ISBN 3-924283-56-7 , pp. 53-84. (with illustrations by Svato Zapletal)

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