I hate to go from chalets to outhouses again, but BelM demands, "Do you mean to tell me that they were emptied out?" Oui, ma chère, c'est ça exactement.
My father-in-law grew up in an area which was, before 1918, adjacent to the city of Baltimore, at which time it was incorporated into the city. It was developed in the 1880s and was a neighborhood of small row houses (some only 9 feet wide) with very small yards in back, and each had a outhouse. There was a service called, of all things, the OED or Odorless Excavation Device, familiarly known as the "honeydipper" which you called for when needed. It was essentially a horse-drawn wagon with a large tank on top and some sort of handpowered pump hooked up to thick hoses. They usually arranged matters so as to do a number of houses on the same block on the same day, as it was anything but odorless. The outhouses were not replaced by city sewers until well into the 1920s.
*** Post scriptum. The folks at the big word book by the Isis will be glad to hear that I was wrong about what the device was called. My wife tells me her recollection of her father's story is that it was the OEO, Odorless Excavation Operation, and the kids would run around chanting, "Oh-ee-oh-ee" when it came around.
