All the Modern Conveniences

Until 1840, indoor plumbing could be found only in mansions and first-class hotels. Then, in the decade before mid-century, Americans representing a wider range of economic circumstances began to install household plumbing with increasing eagerness. Ogle draws on a wide assortment of contemporary sources - sanitation reports, builders' manuals, fixture catalogues, patent applications and popular scientific tracts - to show how the demand for plumbing was more by an emerging middle-class culture of convenience, reform and domestic life than by fears abour poor hygiene and inadequate sanitation. She also examines advancements in water-supply and waste-management technology, the architectural considerations these amenities entailed and the scientific approach to sanitation that began to emerge by century's end.