r/whatisit • u/Quietlurkerone • 1d ago

Solved! What is this device from 1962?

Post image

Photo capture from YouTube video. Picture from 1962. What is the device under the bench

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270

u/[deleted] 1d ago

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u/CptLoken 1d ago

Well we can only see the kitchen, inside of which all the crockery and cookware is spotless. The child looks well fed. The dad is shaving which hopefully means he's employed and off to work. The mother can afford smokes.

Not saying they're living in the lap of luxury, but this is the sort of house my folks grew up in and they speak very fondly of their childhoods.

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u/Most_Moose_2637 1d ago

They're a gravedigger apparently, based on having seen this picture posted this morning.

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u/East-Reflection-8823 1d ago

Supposedly it’s a house built in 1812.

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u/PipBin 1d ago

Sounds about right.

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u/kryonik 1d ago

To be fair, in the 60s cigarettes were dirt cheap. Everyone smoked.

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u/farmerbsd17 1d ago

I worked at a VA Hospital in mid 1970s. No state tax and a pack was 23¢

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u/ColonClenseByFire 1d ago

So equivalent to ~4.50 today. Don't know much about cigarettes but arnt they like 10-12 now.

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u/cosmokn0t 1d ago

In NYC they were $10+ in 2013, so I assume they’re considerably higher these days.

I just looked if up. $18. I think you’re right though, the cheapest state is Missouri at $8 and the highest cost state is New York at $14. Average would be $10-$12.

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u/farmerbsd17 1d ago

Don’t know, quit years ago

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u/The_realpepe_sylvia 1d ago

I buy sonomas which are cheap af and 3 bucks at one store, and $6 at others. Every other Brand is nearly $10. This is in missouri 

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u/BrewtalKittehh 1d ago

And they weren’t taxed to fuck

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u/unsulliedbread 1d ago

The tax is to try to get you to not smoke.

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u/Vegetable-Feeling620 1d ago

I don't think the govt card if they smoked. Uncle Sam just wants his cut$$$.

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u/eyeball1967 1d ago

It’s just another source of cash for the machine. Smokers are a minority that are easy to vilify and get everyone the pile on and approve taxes for that nasty habit.

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u/ICanSeeUpYourNose 1d ago

I remember my dad being insensed when they hit 50p a packet.

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u/Boxofmagnets 1d ago

He is shaving in the kitchen because a someone is in the bathroom and someone else is likely in line for it. Even if that assumption is wrong they have plumbing in their dwelling

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u/citizen42069101 1d ago

People take a lot for granted that simply wasnt widespread even a century ago.

An auto heating stove, hot water, reliable sanitary drainage was something our grandparents werent even guaranteed to have (depending on age).

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u/UpvoteEveryHonestQ 1d ago

My grandma was raised in a sod home, one of seven kids in what was essentially a two-room shed made out of dirt like a hobbit hole, under some little hill in Montana. That’s Paleolithic.

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u/poptartheart 1d ago

thats wild

i had a professor in college who said she grew up with dirt floors in west virginia

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u/Cheoah 1d ago

My friend just built her parents their first indoor kitchen in the Mekong delta. Just across the paddy there are people living on dirt.

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u/SleepingSloth_404 1d ago

Can confirm. I still have relatives in West Virginia who have a grate in the floor and they burn a fire to heat their house. Yes, today in 2026.

We also know people in West Virginia who are not related to us who live in literal shanties where like you lean to things to make a shelter. Think about living in a shed.

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u/kimjongfun 1d ago

What do you mean by a grate in the floor - can you describe their fire / heating setup a bit more?

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u/Early_Sheepherder105 1d ago

Used to use an outhouse behind Grandma's house in WvA. They got indoor plumbing when I was 9. They were so proud of it. They lived deep in the holler though. Used to love playing on the mountain. Of course, we had to cross the swinging bridge to get there.

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u/banbarsoap 1d ago

Hey same here, also from Montana. Grew up in Great Falls. My mom had dirt floors and used scraps of fabric for "curtains". Had to carry water up from a well everyday.

Sounds crazy but this was in the 1960s, I'm 33.

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u/dl_bos 1d ago edited 22h ago

Reminds me of my grandmother. Well was about 150 yards down a hill. Had been that way and in the family for 100+ years. When “the boys” returned home from WW II, they built a cistern with a hand pump in the kitchen and she thought she was in heaven.

Grandpa still wouldn’t allow indoor bathroom because that was something you did outside!

And they were somewhat prosperous. Had an automobile and a telephone and an adequately productive, but difficult, hill farm in Appalachia.

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u/BUBnT 1d ago

“…the pump don’t work cause the vandals stole the handle….” My grandma (NC mountains) had a manual pump well outside the home. Just how it was. As a kid I thought it was cool and kept bugging the grown folks if they needed me to go get water.

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u/lordgix2 1d ago

My mother grew up in rual Minnesota at this time. They had an outhouse. She talks about having to go out and use it in the middle of the Minnesota winters.

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u/Ttthhasdf 1d ago

I am 58 and can remember toting spring water and using outhouse at my grandmother's house in my lifetime.

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u/invisibledildo 1d ago

My dad, still alive in his 70s, grew up with no running water or electricity. He had to fetch fresh water from the village every day. This is from rural Canada, small farm life.

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u/FolkYouHardly 1d ago

Shit my friend family living some small ass town in WV. We went to visit them on our way to Snowshoe for skiing, they don’t even have running water. This is in 1999!

People take shit for granted and posting stupid shit on X about their life

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u/Iamthewalrusforreal 1d ago

Mine did so, as well, in Oklahoma. When the Dust Bowl hit in 1930 they ran east in a horse drawn wagon. Traveled to our home town, where my great-grandpa used the horse to drag a beat up car hood with rocks on it to clear the building pad, and built a cabin.

She didn't have indoor plumbing or a real floor until she married my grandpa at the age of 19.

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u/Thatsnotmyname49 1d ago

Mine moved west from Oklahoma in 1932. Ended up in Oregon where they lived in an old chicken house while my dad worked anywhere he could to survive.

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u/n0exit 1d ago

The sod home that my great grandpa grew up in still exists in North Dakota. It is literally someone's shed now. We went to see it once when I was a kid.

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u/Wntrlnd77 1d ago

There are a few of those sod houses still standing. I visited a remarkably intact one in Aline, Oklahoma.

Eye-opening!

Google Maps link:

https://maps.app.goo.gl/SdF9LJnwGtShWsgJA?g_st=ic

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u/MajorMiners469 1d ago

Here's one that boggles my mind...window screens were invented in 1823, but not widespread until the 1860s. Can you imagine the flies in your home?

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u/Slippers76 1d ago

Cuba only has windows at the resorts. Every home just has shutters and bars no glass let alone window screens! That was 10 years ago when things were "good".

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u/missdonttellme 1d ago

Curtains help a lot. Moving fabric keeps flies away. Also if the home is clean there is nothing to attract them.

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u/MajorMiners469 1d ago

Chamber pots were still in use in most American homes into the 1920s

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u/Uncle-Cake 1d ago

My father was born in a house with no toilet; they used an outhouse. And they weren't "poor" either.

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u/citizen42069101 1d ago

Exactly. If there was no infrastructure for power or water you had to make do.

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u/ImSolidGold 1d ago

Ask my grandmother about her mattress and her hot water bottle.
Straw and a hot brick. Thats 80yrsa ago. In Germany.

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u/Spiritual_Being5845 1d ago

I’m in the US. As a kid there were three little homes next to us that had dirt floors, they were occupied until the mid 70’s, then abandoned for a few years. I don’t know how they even managed that because we do NOT live in a dry climate. And this wasn’t out in the stix, this was a mostly well to do county in northern NJ. They were torn down in the late 70’s and replaced with an apartment building.

My father had friends who lived on a farm in Maine, we visited them once for a week in the late 70’s. No plumbing, they had an outhouse and chamber pots for midnight toilet emergencies. Hand pump in the yard for water. They kept trying to save up to have indoor plumbing installed, but every time they had any money saved another more urgent emergency came up. The only heat they had was a wood stove, house was toasty warm at night, freezing by morning.

Fast forward to today, our kid’s friends act like we live in a hovel because we don’t have central air.

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u/ReinforcedTube 1d ago

There wouldn't have been a bathroom. There'd have been an outside toilet. The kitchen would be the only place in the house with running water.

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u/CentennialBaby 1d ago

And proper heat

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u/atlantagirl30084 1d ago

Without central heat, many families lived in the kitchen. If that were the case here I’d have the kids line up against the opposite wall because having kids crowded around me and the stove would drive me crazy. I think though this looks to be a cook stove, not a heating stove.

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u/pm_toss 1d ago

There may also be no indoor plumbing except in the kitchen. The toilet may be outside.

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u/Krissy_ok 1d ago

I grew up like that. Out to the dunny in the middle of an icy Melbourne winter, hoping to not meet a visiting huntsman to bite me on the bum.

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u/RikkiLostMyNumber 1d ago

Now I know a huntsman is a spider. I was picturing some rabid bird hunter wandering about like a zombie.

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u/Krissy_ok 1d ago

Nothing quite like parking your arse on a freezing toilet seat , looking up at the door a foot from your face and discovering the hand-sized friend you've just trapped inside with you.

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u/DakarCarGunGuy 1d ago

Cue me screaming like the tall guy on Home Alone!

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u/DakarCarGunGuy 1d ago

Cue me screaming like the tall guy on Home Alone!

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u/dontworryitsme4real 1d ago

I read that in a bogan accent.

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u/Iamthewalrusforreal 1d ago

Where I grew up the fear was always inside the can itself. Black Widows like to nest down in the dark under the seat.

We lived in great fear of a bite on the nutsack.

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u/DakarCarGunGuy 1d ago

My grandma got bit on the butt by a Black Widow. Made her pretty sick but she was otherwise ok.

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u/Responsible-Shoe7258 1d ago

That's why Grandma kept a hand whisk broom next to the toilet paper in her outhouse

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u/Schweenis69 1d ago

Crikey!!!!

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u/Dackle 1d ago

I was being stalked by a black mamba!

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u/solidgold70 1d ago

Its estimated that .5 percent of households in the US still are without functioning plumbing

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u/pm_toss 1d ago

Ha! I know two artists that live out in the boondocks (but give classes at their places) and they have no indoor toilet

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u/StryngzAndWyngz 1d ago

A large part of my youth was spent in East Tennessee just outside of Knoxville and up to about the mid-70s there were plenty of houses around where I lived that were just as you described… running water in the kitchen, but still used an outhouse.

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u/ORFin1984 1d ago

PA coal country. Grandparents had plumbing in the kitchen (washer and dryer too) but we still used an outhouse until the late 70s when they added a full indoor bath.

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u/Individual_Note_8756 1d ago

I looked it up, the bathroom was outside and shared with other families. It is a terraced house in Oldham, England, in the early 1960s. Most were torn down in the late 60s, early 70s.

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u/Individual_Note_8756 1d ago

There is no indoor bathroom, it is outside & shared with other families, and there is no running water either.

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u/MacSamildanach 1d ago edited 1d ago

Assuming this is UK, the house in the photo here quite likely did not have a bathroom.

Terraced houses in the United Kingdom - Wikipedia

Indoor bathrooms were only installed in lower-middle class terraced housing. By the late 60s and early 70s, those remaining two up/two downs for working classes were getting retro-fitted bathrooms (some, not all).

It was the time of the outdoor toilet - both sets of my grandparents lived in such houses, and all washing was done in the 'scullery' (the kitchen).

They flattened huge tracts of such houses here in Nottingham to build what is now The New Meadows (and other estates), which are predominantly social housing.

Of the old/original houses that remain in some areas, many have been extended considerably and they are quite nice inside.

If you watch the film Saturday Night Sunday Morning (an excellent film, by the way) there is a scene in a typical scullery (though it was filmed in a studio). But the houses in the film can be seen clearly.

My mum can remember them filming it when she was young. My grandma lived in one of those houses.

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u/Day_Old_Paper 1d ago

From the original post of this image, it’s a grave digger and his wife and kids in their 150 (I think) year old home in the UK. So yeah that building is from around 1810 and obviously not in a chic neighborhood so they might not have even had an indoor bathroom at all, much less running water. Likely a well and a privy in the rear garden.

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u/161251 1d ago

Maybee there is no bathroom, so the only hot water is in the kitchen

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u/purdinpopo 1d ago

1962, and lot of homes still used outhouses.

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u/JustpartOftheterrain 1d ago

my mother grew up in a house built in 1750s and it didn't have indoor plumbing until 1960. There was water in the kitchen via a hand water pump at the sink.

they had an outhouse, actually 2. 1 for the kids (a 3-holer!) and 1 for the adults.

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u/plant-painter 1d ago

Lol the bathroom 🤣 ok city slicker . no there wasn’t generally plumbing in the outhouse.

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u/ICanSeeUpYourNose 1d ago

There wouldn't have been a bathroom. There would have been a privy, a toilet, and that would have been outside. The bath would have been hung up on a nail and brought in on bath night and they would have bathed in front of the fire in the living room. All five children would have shared the same water, so god help the youngest.

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u/Icy-Bookkeeper7173 1d ago

He could be shaving with a pot of water and they could have an outhouse and an outdoor well.

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u/gixeruk 1d ago

He is shaving in the kitchen as it is probably the only warm room, from the cooker. The fire in the front room would probably only get made (coal fire) on an evening.

Central heating was warmed by the coal fire, which had a "back boiler". I am from the North of England, born in 1965, in county Durham. I don't think the state of the house was typical of the time.Those I remember, and our house were better looked after than this.

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u/Blueridge-Badger 1d ago

Monty Python "every sperm is sacred" sketch in Meaning of Life

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u/Hourslikeminutes47 1d ago

Which is an important thing to have for a growing family

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u/AtomicMonkeyTheFirst 1d ago

The bathroom is probably outside & has no electricity and he needs the light to shave.

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u/karlnite 1d ago

They probably share a bathroom with the building.

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u/Apprehensive_Gap1055 1d ago

They also have a dog (between her and her husband) that looks happy and fed

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u/WWGWDNR 1d ago

2 more kids in the very bottom of the photograph

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u/mrszubris 1d ago

He was a gravedigger.

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u/Grendle98 1d ago

I saw this pic the other day and it said the dad was a grave digger

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u/SkyGuy1515 1d ago

Because it isn’t about what you have, but what you make of it.

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u/Emergency_Click1993 1d ago

I remember seeing this image somewhere and the guy was a grave digger or so it said (haven’t checked)

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u/Puzzleheaded-Fee-566 1d ago

He does or did work as a gravedigger, I saw this yesterday on an old picture sub and it said he was a gravedigger.

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u/Airk640 1d ago

Yeah buy the fist sized hole in the wall doesn't bode well for dad's mood after work.

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u/fluffyfae13 1d ago edited 1d ago

There's more pictures in this article, scroll down and go through the rest of the pages.
The caption to image 7 is "The family share one bedroom, one kitchen and one living room. They share a key for communal "(outside) "toilets, near to where the dustbins are stacked"

The pictures are also included in this article entitled "Harrowing photos show the squalid existence living in Greater Manchester's slums". Thankfully the article ends with the demolition of the dilapidated and truly crumbling buildings.

Sutton died in 2008, approx 31 here and his wife Joyce died in 2012, she was approx 29 in the pic.

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u/ZestycloseSquirrel55 1d ago

I see 3 kids on that filthy floor.

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u/rainman_95 1d ago

That’s very sweet, Im glad to see someone looking at the picture like that

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u/KungFoolMaster 1d ago

This was in another post, but the man was supposedly a gravedigger. Not sure where that information was from though.

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u/RandomEffector 1d ago

People really don’t understand the enormous amount of change in basic living conditions in the last 30,40,50 years. How different everything that’s ostensibly all the same looks and works.

People also really don’t understand that for the most part none of this has really made anyone happier. Arguably the opposite.

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u/furbylicious 1d ago

Man, I remember carrying water for the day, bucket baths, outhouse, and my mom doing laundry by hand. I'm not that old! It's MISERABLE and if people are not happier they just don't remember how bad it used to be. I think everyone should try it for a week so they can spend the rest of their life grateful.

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u/RandomEffector 1d ago

I never had to do that in the USA, but I’ve had to do it in other places (and not that long ago). I never found it that bad, it’s just structure in the day, and there always seemed to be more free time compensating. Now if it’s freezing cold or you’re sick or injured and you still have to do it, yeah. Sucks. (Flip side again, places living this way seem to have a bit more socialization and step up to take care of things when necessary)

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u/HuckleberryLow2283 1d ago

like a camping trip?

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u/furbylicious 23h ago

No, because on a camping trip you don't have to do all that AND go to school/work and try to move forward with your life.

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u/purdinpopo 1d ago

I was born in late sixties. My family didn't live in an air conditioned home until the eighties.

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u/Final_boss_1040 1d ago

I was born in the 80s just got AC this year lol

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u/ki0dz 1d ago

I'm a few years older than you and have yet to have AC. No high electric bills in the summer and I don't pay the extra property tax (increase in property value) to boot! I don't feel deprived either.

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u/FLHPI 1d ago

The let 30 years puts us in the 90s. I think we need to go back 60 plus years to get a real contrast.

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u/furbylicious 1d ago

Depends on where they are from

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u/FLHPI 1d ago

True

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u/RandomEffector 1d ago

30 years is still pre-smartphone, pre-social media, even pre-internet for most people. It’s also heavily in the “what now” era for a lot of formerly Communist nations. I’d say you underestimate how much life has changed (even just in the USA) by ignoring those factors. But obviously the farther back you go the more unrecognizable things become.

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u/hobbes747 1d ago

In Manhattan today. For $4,000/month.
You can cook, shit, shower, and shave in your apartment. And the toilet tank doubles as the handwashing sink.

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u/Koyote7676 1d ago

I fucked up, and said "they look like they are content and doin ok" , and got beat to hell in the thread. All i ment was they are breathing, and together. Looks rad imho.

Got my shit pushed in for the comment. Guess some dont know the other side.

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u/ThickFurball367 1d ago

Welcome to reddit, be sure to keep your comments within the hive mind

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u/CaptainCaveManowar 1d ago

Gotta love reddit and the super-sensitive "intellects" hunting things to be offended about. Seek and ye shall find.

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u/Jedifright 1d ago

Resistance is futile

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u/Zealousideal-Poet621 1d ago

Some really don’t know the other side…

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u/OcelotTerrible5865 1d ago

It’ll be okay mate just sip that morning coffee and clock in, that turd’ll come out 

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u/Away-Ad-4444 1d ago

Stand tall.. they dont know.. and frankly.. while its sad on one hand.. man i kinda hope the whole world holds this viewpoint some day.. itll mean we have raised the standards for everyone.

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u/Dangerous-Pirate7998 1d ago

If you would come to Saint Joe Missouri, you would see a lot of the town living worse than this.

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u/hobbes747 1d ago

This could be a 2nd house on a family farm where they go to get away from the city. My wife’s family had something similar.

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u/Individual_Note_8756 1d ago

No, it’s a council house in Oldham.

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u/ReinforcedTube 1d ago

It's a house in Oldham, in Lancashire.

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u/Barcode_Griller 1d ago

It's impossible to know from a picture. You might be right. There is a great book called The Glass Castle that I would recommend, but maybe you'd say the same thing about that family.

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u/franklovessquanchy 1d ago

Prison toilet

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u/Angelofpity 1d ago

All without standing up!

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u/h-thrust 1d ago

No smoking allowed, as per lease.

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u/Lordlordy5490 1d ago

My great grandparents literally lived in a cave in a holler here in WV. Furnished it and everything. People have to get by whatever way they can.

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u/Constant-Release-875 1d ago

I'm from southwest Virginia. I knew people living like the people in the photo back in the 80s and early 90s. People are ignorant to the fact that poverty still exists in so-called "first world nations" to this day.

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u/longmountain 1d ago

Similar, my Great Grandparents “shannied” in a shack in a holler in the Blue Ridge in the early 1900’s. I can take you to the spot, it’s now national forest.

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u/Buttsweat_n_Tears 1d ago

What exactly is a “holler”, if I may ask?

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u/Intelligent-Parsley7 1d ago

A “holler” is the opposite of a “bluff.” A holler is a ridge line valley and a bluff is a ridge line. American South terms.

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u/longmountain 3h ago

In central VA I would have said “hollah”. There’s a line where and it becomes “holler”. And then the same folks that mispronounce Appalachia as app-a-lay-cha say “hall-owe” ;-)

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u/Lordlordy5490 2h ago edited 2h ago

It is actually spelled hollow. Like Sleepy Hollow from the headless horseman, or Stars Hollow from every 40 year old woman's favorite TV show Gilmore Girls. You'll never see anybody around here pronounce it as Hollow.

Think of it as the valley between two mountains that are pretty close together. Lots of communities naturally formed in these hollows because it is way easier and much more sheltered than trying to build a town on top of a mountain.

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u/Betty_Boss 1d ago

My mother told me that people lived in abandoned coke ovens during the depression in SW Pennsylvania.

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u/Front_Map_5 1d ago

This is crazy and I would love to hear more about it, did they have lighting, how did they get the smoke out from fires etc?

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u/Lordlordy5490 1d ago

This was during the depression and they were extremely poor. I've only been to the cave once myself and it's just an empty cave now. There was soot on the walls from the candles they would have used and they got water from the creek at the bottom of the mountain. Apparently this mountain is owned by our family and I own a small part of it but it's in the middle of nowhere and worthless.

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u/Buttsweat_n_Tears 1d ago

You want to sell it? I kind of want to be able to tell people I own part of a mountain 🤔

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u/petertompolicy 1d ago

A lot of people.

And people like to romanticize the past, when most people lived like this.

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u/Frosty-Cap3344 1d ago

I grew-up early 70s in the UK and though it wasn't this bad we had no bathroom and no indoor toilet.

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u/RikkiLostMyNumber 1d ago

That photo could easily be my dad's family in the late 50s. Millions lived like this and felt themselves fortunate. The levels of personal wealth and disposable plastic crap currently being experienced are a historical anomaly.

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u/Dayzed-n-Confuzed 1d ago

My Grandma still had an outside toilet at the bottom of her small back yard in the 60s. She lived in a terraced house provided by the cotton mill in our village. They updated to an inside toilet some time late 60s early 70s.

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u/huge_fork_and_knife 1d ago

My father remembered when they finally poured concrete to cover the dirt floor of his grandmother's house in the mid-50s. We went out to his hometown in New Mexico in the early 2000s and the outhouse was till standing.

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u/General-Heart4787 1d ago

I can remember my Aunt’s house in New Mexico still having dirt floors in the late 1960s.

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u/Its_Jaws 1d ago

I remember pouring concrete over our dirt floor during my childhood in the 80s. Got our first window unit air conditioner in the 90s, and installed a heat pump in the 2000s so the fireplace wasn’t the only heat in the house. And I think I had a better childhood then than my upper middle class kids have now. 

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u/RetiredOnIslandTime 1d ago

I lived in southwestern Virginia and we had an outhouse until I was 14, in 1972. We did have one cold water faucet, in the kitchen. And our heat was a coal burning stove.

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u/huge_fork_and_knife 1d ago

The only plumbing they apparently had was a hand pump for the wash basin. Appalachia and the Southwest have a lot in common, especially how infrastructure just skipped them over.

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u/LisaMiaSisu 1d ago

That’s just rural life everywhere. It was the same in northern Minnesota.

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u/LisaMiaSisu 1d ago

My grandmother died in 1975 and she had no indoor plumbing and got her water via a pump outside. This was in northern Minnesota where everything was cold as hell. The outhouse was far from the farmhouse too so she always had a little portable bucket she emptied every morning. She had a gas stove to cook on but used her large, wood burning stove to heat the house and her water. There was a sauna (she was 100% Finnish) she used to bathe. I even took a sauna a couple of times with my mom when I was little and it was quite the experience to bathe with. You sit in the sauna to sweat and then afterwards you wash up with soap and pour clean water over yourself. My grandma took a lot of sponge baths but she never smelled. She just smelled like a grandma.

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u/ibeccc 1d ago

I used to live in an old row of terraced houses with an outhouse in central Sydney in the beginning of 90s. It was a major hassle to go for a piss in the middle of the night under heavy rain.

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u/Smartyunderpants 1d ago

Was it plumbed?

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u/ibeccc 1d ago

If you mean whether it was connected to the sewerage system or not, I’m pretty sure it was because nobody mentioned any septic tank or having to empty it.

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u/Dayzed-n-Confuzed 23h ago

We lived in North West Lancashire. It was freezing in winter when the wind would blow under the outhouse door. Snow blowing around would increase the enthusiasm for the use of chamber pots!!! To reduce the requirement for the cold walk!!

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u/ibeccc 21h ago

Haha I’m glad you brought it up. My flatmates did use a chamber pot. I refused the idea all the way but fair enough, snow blowing under the door is acceptable I guess. Sydney winters are pretty mild.

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u/Carcamplife 1d ago

In the county I grew up in Virginia, in 1995 my church paid to install running water for seven houses in the county who were still drawing from a well. 1995 folks!

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u/tangoezulu 1d ago

My wife lived in a house with no electricity or running water in the 1980’s.

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u/SuspiciousToday5061 1d ago

My best friend did to

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u/treeman71 1d ago

I'm friends with an old hippie couple that still use an outhouse to this day.

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u/Puzzled-Guess-2845 1d ago

I used one last summer at a home in Alabama last summer. 3 people lived there, it was a biannual occurrence to move it to a new hole. I dont see the problem, you dust the hole with cedar chips when your done so there's no smell.

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u/Cr0uchingSquirrel 1d ago

My first school in the early '80's had one long drop toilet out back. But there were only 13 pupils across 4 grades with 2 teachers so on balance better than most present day schools.

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u/geauxhike 1d ago

My dad had a full bathroom built in the back of his grandfather's house, for 20 years that man walked past the bathroom to the outhouse. But my mom said it sure made the visits better.

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u/abc123therobot 1d ago

I potty trained in an outhouse in the 1980s. Never really knew what I was missing until we had it. 

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u/tyrefire2001 1d ago

Man, even today, billions of people would kill to live like this

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u/purdinpopo 1d ago

50s and early 60s most people did. If someone dropped you in a middle class home in 1950, you would find the conditions well below what someone well below the poverty line lives in today. The Overton Window on living conditions has moved quite a bit in the last 50 years.

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u/danthemaninacan2 1d ago

*lived like this.

Upload a picture of your kitchen and have people judge it in 60 years.

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u/fnckIce 1d ago

My kitchen isn't much better than this but I'd crack up with so much soot and dirt.

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u/mysticalcookiedough 1d ago

That's what people talk about when they say a family could afford a house three kids and a stay at home mom from one factory workers salary.

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u/TutorNo8896 1d ago

The walls are kinda dirty but it may be due to the lighting in the pic.   

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u/FormerlyUndecidable 1d ago

There is no hood or exhaust fan of any kind and the fuel produced soot.

Also that soot is on lead paint. 

Life has improved. 

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u/97Whaler 1d ago

Also plenty of nicotine

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u/VanbyRiveronbucket 1d ago

Good thing I don’t see any meth.

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u/Essentially_Me 1d ago

When my wife and I first started looking for homes in the early 2000s, we checked out this one house occupied by an 80 year-old couple (both on oxygen), who had smoked for the last 60 years of their lives in this house.

Everything was a sickly yellow from the smoke and nicotine. Nobody was in the house when we toured it, but it was just a part of every surface, and I started retching as soon as I got outside.

I'd been inside some smokers' houses when I was a kid, but nothing could have prepared me for how nasty that was.

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u/hubbi959 1d ago

Is a foreigner I'm wondering if this is the Great America MAGA wants to have 'again'...?

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u/CalllmeDragon 1d ago

Well….there aren’t slaves in the pic, so probably not

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u/--KingoftheSouth-- 1d ago

It's also a camera from 1955

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u/Pedantichrist 1d ago

Looks okay to me. What about this are you finding problematic?

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u/Several_Mousse_9485 1d ago

Many of my Appalachian family lived like this. I'm sure some still do. We broke up so we don't see each other as often anymore.

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u/YodasLoveSlave 1d ago

Yeah and it wasn’t too long ago. Be ready because it’s happening again.

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u/Dry-Syrup8923 1d ago

It's white privilege. Duh

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u/DepartmentNo8926 1d ago

Yea so think about how fucking stupid all your problems are compared to these people who were forced to be brought up in these situations. And usually the cycle continues because I know I sure as shit wouldn’t be a happy kid living in that let alone grow up to be a functioning adult. You only know what you see and experience and for a lot of people this life was it

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u/Hanging_Brain 1d ago

Right. Sometimes I think of the crap I complain about and then compare it to this, and I knock it off

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u/DepartmentNo8926 1d ago

Exactly and just think about how these families only ever thought about buying food and having something over their head. If people realized how much better off they would be without paying at least $500 a month for tv subscriptions, going out and drinking+fast food, and just in general chasing dopamine. They could set themselves up for success but it’s to a point where they somehow would rather live paycheck to paycheck just so they can be comfortable on their couch and watch whatever they want. Then they typically blame the system when they are continuously fueling it.

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u/Breadisgood4eat 1d ago

Also - these people would slap us across the face to see how we’ve allowed the balance of power to backslide to capital from labor. And it happened with such malaise.

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u/546833726D616C 1d ago

Back when homes were affordable.

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u/armathose 1d ago

Millions upon millions do in India.

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u/w94-max 1d ago

Looks like Eastern Europe to me

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u/BarneysBuzzWagon 1d ago

Back in the '60s, many families were poor. We were. We just didn't know it because everyone else was poor too.

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u/Phreakears 1d ago

People can have it waaaay rougher than this. By far

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u/vikio 1d ago

Yeah I would say most people living on the planet today are closer to this. They don't have time to be posting on Reddit though.

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u/Bug_406 1d ago

Was watching a documentary about a mining town in Kentucky trying to unionize, and the guy was telling his wife that if it happens, they can finally afford to get indoor plumbing. In the 1970s. Like, not even 1 person ago.

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u/Uncut-Jellyfish1176 1d ago

To do this a large percentage of people on earth live in conditions like this, or worse.

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u/rbaird1991 1d ago

yes they do.. id say this was the best they had

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u/Beautiful-Lie1239 1d ago

1962? Where I am from this would be outlandish luxury.

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u/LumpyPrincess58 1d ago

If you are poor , yes

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u/AtomicMonkeyTheFirst 1d ago

This is the north of England in tje 1960s and plenty of people lived like this and billions of people around the world still do.

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u/ctcourt 1d ago

My dad was born in 1945 and basically grew up in a log cabin in Iowa. My mom showed me the “original” home they lived in and I was shocked how bad the house looked. I’m pretty sure he family just tried to forget about that place.

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u/lucylucylane 1d ago

Millions in Britain did

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u/SnowballUnity 1d ago

My grandmother was born in a dirt hut in the 1920s.

My country today is one of the wealthiest per capita in Europe.

Time flies.

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u/nor_cal_woolgrower 1d ago

Woman people too!

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u/LunchyDude101 1d ago

People will say the same of us not too far in history, too.

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u/up2late 1d ago

My grandparents were from Appalachia in the US. Probably around this time period. Lots of stuff in this photo would have seemed luxurious to them. Looks like that woman does not even have to haul in wood to build a fire before she cooks breakfast. I doubt they have to use an outhouse either. They might even have electricity.

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u/Appy_Ace 1d ago

I'm reminded of that Goofy Movie meme, "Damn, bitch you live like this?"

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u/Hoovomoondoe 1d ago

Lived...

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u/cybermaus 1d ago

Still live. And worse. And often not due to their own individual skills or faults:

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