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Night soil is a historically used euphemism for human excreta collected from cesspools, privies, pail closets, pit latrines, privy middens, septic tanks, etc. This material was removed from the immediate area, usually at night, by workers employed in this trade. Sometimes it could be transported out of towns and sold on as a fertilizer.
Another definition is "untreated excreta transported without water (e.g. via containers or buckets)".[1]
Disposal has varied through time. In urban areas, before deep drainage, a night soil collector usually arrived during the night, hence its name. The vehicle used for collection has been called a night-cart, and its operator a night-man or night-cart man.
Gong farmer (also gongfermor, gongfermour, gong-fayer, gong-fower or gong scourer) was a term that entered use in Tudor England to describe someone who dug out and removed human excrement from privies and cesspits. The word "gong" was used for both a privy and its contents. As the work was considered unclean and off-putting to the public, gong farmers were only allowed to work at night, hence they were sometimes known as nightmen. The waste they collected, known as night soil, had to be taken outside the city or town boundary or to official dumps for disposal.
Fewer and fewer cesspits needed to be dug out as more modern sewage disposal systems, such as pail closets and water closets, became increasingly widespread in 19th-century England. The job of emptying cesspits today is usually carried out mechanically using suction, by specialised tankers called vacuum trucks.
From the early 17th century onwards the larger towns and cities began to employ scavengers, as they became known, to remove human waste from the streets. Much of this waste came from overflowing privies and dunghills, or from chamber pots emptied into the streets from upstairs windows. By 1615 the town of Manchester was employing nineteen under-scavengers, or rakers, managed by two scavengers.