Outhouse over the Schuylkill near Pottstown

In 1898 the Philadelphia and Pennsylvania Boards of Health published a picture book, Sources of Pollution—Schuylkill River, which documented this outhouse near Pottstown, built on a bridge over a tributary to the Schuylkill River. Besides outhouses, household sewage and industrial waste poured into both the Delaware and Schuylkill rivers from towns upstream of Philadelphia, despite the city’s best efforts to prevent it.