As America industrialized throughout the 19th century, millions of people left farms for factory jobs, driving the most prominent rural-to-urban migration in U.S. history. As cities grew portly with new arrivals, infrastructure lagged far behind.

Crude sewers, contaminated water, and overcrowded tenements created ideal conditions for waterborne diseases to spread, infect and kill large swaths of city populations. It’s estimated to have been upwards of a million civilian deaths from cholera, typhoid fever, and dysentery in the U.S during the 19th century alone.

In Massachusetts in 1850, deaths from tuberculosis were 300 per 100,000 population, and infant mortality was about 200 per 1,000 live births. Across the pond, In London’s poorest neighborhoods, more than half of all children died before their fifth birthday. Laborers in city slums had an average age at death of only 16, compared to 36 for the upper classes.

Pre-Modern Plumbing Era

In the early 19th century, most cities across the western world lacked any organized plumbing infrastructure. Water was typically obtained from local wells, rivers, ponds, or basic pumps. As city populations grew in numbers, these sources not built for scale, quickly became polluted with human and animal waste. New York’s streets in 1865 were piled waste 2–3 feet deep in places across the city.

Waste management in as a concept was primitive. Chamber pots (ie: portable toilets you’d put in a closet) were the hygiene standard and they were often emptied straight into the streets or in backyard pits.

Because of this an entire industry was built around “night soil men”, an occupation based around digging out and hauling away cesspit contents. They would do this on horse drawn carriage under the cloak of night. Hundreds of men were employed in cities doing this work and it was effectively essential for public health.

A night soil man in Baltimore. (Photo: Public Domain)

In the absence of proper sewers dedicated for waste, rain gutters and ditches served as open sewers, carrying yes rain, but also waste runoff. This meant raw sewage would be brough straight through town or into the nearest river. Wild.

Given the meager waste management infrastructure of the time, primary water sources like the Collect Pond in New York City, essentially become polluted sewers themselves — making access to clean drinking water sparce. City dwellers often were forced to rely on wells, rain barrels, or water sellers and regularly could did not have sufficient water for daily washing or drinking. Its no accident that American alcohol consumption peaked in 1830. The average man drank “4 to 5 shots per day, every day of the year” and yes they were probably alcoholics, but also water was dangerous and sparce, Milk was exclusively unpasteurized, and Apples trees were everywhere, but, like might as well make it hard cider. Right?

The Plumbing Revolution

By the mid 19th century the mounting public health crisis placed sanitation at the forefront of urban policy. The three core ideas that would capture the policy zeitgeist around urban sanitation in both the U.S. and in the U.K. :

1. Remove sewage

2. Provide clean drinking water

3. Improve drainage

Enter modern plumbing. Rapid urbanization due to industrialization may have been the core cause of the overwhelming of urban infrastructure, but industrialization was also the only way to have get out of this issue.

The Industrial Revolution provided the picks and shovels that made large-scale plumbing projects possible. Cast-iron pipes and steam-powered pumping engines in century enabled cities to construct more expansive water distribution and sewer systems than ever before.

Major Innovations In Plumbing:

1. Underground Sewers.

Chicago implemented one of the first and most ambitious underground Sewer plans in U.S History. Originally the city was built on a low, swampy plain. In order to implement the newly designed sewer system the entire city was physically raised by several feet to allow for gravity sewer lines to be laid. They jacked up individual buildings block by block, until the city was raised and the new “underground system” was installed.

After a severe cholera wave in 1849, New York’s leaders pushed forward a plan for a comprehensive sewer network and by the 1860s, NYC had built over 70 miles of sewers. Other American cities like Boston, Philadelphia, and New Orleans built significant sewer infrastructure in the late 19th century, often in tandem with water supply projects. By the early 20th century, virtually all major cities had replaced their cesspools and open drains with underground sewers.

2. Piped Water Supply

The flip side of sewage removal was the provision of abundant clean water, piped directly into homes. In the 19th-century municipal waterwork projects boomed —powered by the production of cast-iron pipes and steam-powered pumping engines. The abundance of these components filled the 19th century with ambitious projects to bring fresh water from distant sources via aqueducts, canals, and iron pipes.

NYC’s Croton Aqueduct was an engineering marvel of its time. Completed in 1842 it channeled water from the Croton River, 40 miles north of the city, through masonry conduits and over high bridges into Manhattan, where a massive receiving reservoir and a distribution reservoir (what is now Bryant Park) stored millions of gallons.

Similarly, Philadelphia had earlier built the Fairmount Water Works (1812–1815) to pump water from the Schuylkill River into a reservoir, and Boston completed its Cochituate Aqueduct in 1848. By the 1860s, virtually every large American city was investing in modern water supply systems, often following the model of bringing water from distant clean rivers or lakes.

3.Indoor Plumbing: The combination of the underground sewer systems paired with newfound ability to procure clean water through pipes enabled another 19th century innovation…indoor plumbing systems. For the first time you could now connect to sewer pipes directly to alleviate waste automatically and also connect to clean water.

Indoor plumbing fixtures were introduced, cities had pressurized water mains, buildings could be equipped with taps (faucets), sinks, and bathtubs. The widespread adoption of flush toilets took off in the mid-19th century. Daily life was changed for ever. Running water was now possible to have in kitchens and bathrooms. By 1940 over 55% of homes has indoor piped water and by the post–World War II boom, indoor plumbing became a standard feature of essentially all new housing.

4.Water Treatment: Now that water was plentiful at scale, ensuring it was safe was the next part of the equation. Sand Based filtration became common for city water by the late 19th century and by the early 20th century chlorination made its way into the world of water treatment. Together filtration systems with chlorine based water treatment virtually eliminated waterborne diseases like typhoid fever. One analysis of U.S. cities from 1900–1936 found that introducing filtration and chlorination reduced total mortality by 13% and infant mortality by 46%.

The Night-Soil Men Fade and a New Craft Rises

A night soil man in Baltimore. (Photo: Public Domain)

The Night soil man’s job was regarded as one of the worst jobs in the 19th century. The role became particularly prominent during the rapid urbanization of the early to the mid 19th century. Despite the role being essential in removing large amounts of human waste from cities, it was one of the toughest and more dangerous jobs that could be done. Given the public health crises of the time, it turned out to not be all that effective in ensuring sanitary living conditions as populations scaled rapidly. Novel engineering feats, bold public health policy, and large capital investments of the time led a superior solution delivered more efficiently in every sense of the word. By the turn of the century the job was gone.

As underground sewers and the flush toilet took over the dirty work of digging and hauling waste, the night-soil men went extinct. What took this dangerous and onerous occupation’s place was a higher-skill craft focused on installing and maintaining the new tools and systems that powered the push button convince and safety of todays bathrooms. The plumber, a steward of hidden rivers, married math to cast-iron, and eventually emerged an entire trade of practitioners who kept entire cities (and farms too) flowing. Nearly 200 years later and the occupation of installing hidden pipes is still one of the most indispensable jobs of modern life.

Powering the Modern Metropolis

The modernization of plumbing infrastructure didn’t just save lives, it fundamentally altered how cities grew and how future cities would be planned. Prior to it, there were natural limits to city size: without enough water or with too much waste, cities would become so unhealthy that death rates rose or people fled. Today, those limits have significantly expanded.

Today, 99.6% of households in the U.S have piped safe water and modern sanitation. Indoor plumbing has become such a basic amenity that its absence is considered extreme deprivation. Access to hot showers, flush toilets, and clean kitchens fundamentally shapes daily comfort yet, a few generations ago these were luxuries unavailable even to kings and presidents.

Innovation in Plumbing systems represents one of the greatest improvements in human living conditions in history. Sewers and water mains are still to this day the invisible arteries that keep cities alive. Their invention, construction, and implementation have been the hidden hero’s of progress.

Much remains undone and grander triumphs lie ahead. Recounting the great feats of the past helps us in thinking more ambitiously about the future. Onward!