If you were unpopular in the past, chances are your face would end up at the wrong end of your neighbor's business…
Before the 1900s, most people did not have access to indoor plumbing. At night and during the winter, leaving a locked home to use an outhouse could prove uncomfortable and potentially dangerous to one’s health and wellbeing. The solution came in the form of the chamber pot. A chamber pot is a simply a bowl or bucket designed for one to do their “business" in when one couldn’t or didn’t want to leave their house to take care of it. Some were fancy and built into stools. Some were decorated to fit the atmosphere of the house it occupied. Most were just plain utilitarian items. Think of a child’s potty.
This hand painted pearlware chamber pot from Fort Stanwix National Monument dates to c. 1790 - 1835. While exterior decoration suggests that the chamber pot was stored in a bedroom. The practice of including portraits inside chamber pots became popular during and directly following the Colonial period in America, specifically portraits of kings.
During the final years of the Revolutionary War, infamous Green Mountain Boy leader, Ethan Allen, was kept prisoner in England. A story, that circulated for nearly a century after his return to the U.S., involves a portrait of George Washington that Allen found hanging in an English outhouse. When Allen posed the question as to why the great father of the American Nation’s likeness was found in such an unflattering location, the response (to paraphrase) was: Nothing causes an Englishman to lose their bowels quite like the sight of General Washington!
The veracity of this story may be questionable; but the sentiment, that the faces of unliked individuals were regularly adorned with excrement, holds true. Therefore, the image of Captain Basil Hall on the interior suggests that the owners were not fond of the same Captain Basil Hall.
Source: U.S. Department of the Interior, National Park Service
