The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 64, July 1960 - April, 1961 Page: 59
574 p. : ill. (some col.), maps, ports. ; 23 cm.View a full description of this periodical.
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Railroads Come to Houston, 1857-1861
bathed in the bayou, an old custom,106 nor in Hudgpeth's Bathing
Saloon near the Houston and Texas Central depot107 used wash
tubs in their kitchens. Sanitary facilities were confined to privies
that were periodically emptied by the city scavanger, whose occu-
pation was kept well within the public view by a lack of alleys.
What the scavanger did with the waste is not specified, but prob-
ably he dumped it in some depression near town, thereby pro-
viding a certain and constant supply of typhoid germs for the
ubiquitous flies that infested town. The fastidious, particularly
those with servants, used chamber pots or toilet seats in their
bedrooms. Candles and whale oil lamps provided illumination,08
and fireplaces and wood burning stoves, including no doubt
Stuart's celebrated cooking stoves, offered for sale by J. R.
Morris,0O were used for both cooking and heating. To reduce
hazard of fire, the kitchen was as a rule a separate building at a
distance from the dwelling house.110
Sidewalks in the business district were planked, bricked, or
shelled, with sheds built over them from store fronts, while side-
walks in the residential areas were likely to have been no more
than lanes through grass and weeds. In 1857 the streets were as
they had been in 1837, dust troughs in dry weather and hog
wallows in wet. Toward the end of the 185o's, though, the city
council contracted for the shelling of downtown streets. In 1858
the lower end of Main Street was shelled,x11 and in the following
year San Jacinto and probably other downtown streets were sim-
ilarly topped.112 At the beginning of 1860, the city council con-
tracted with Edward F. Williams, city marshal, to provide eighty
loeMorning Star, July 23, August 8, 1839; April 27, 1841; August 12, 26, 1848;
Max Freund (trans.), Gustav Dresel's Houston Journal ... (Austin, 1954), o101.
107Deed Records of Harris County, Texas (MS., County Clerk's Office, Houston),
X, 465.
lOsHurly and Aiken ran the Houston Lamp Depot next to the post office.
-Houston Tri-Weekly Telegraph, June 6, 1859.
lo9Houston Weekly Telegraph, December 4, 1860.
loThe writer's great-grandparents, who lived on the southwest corner of Smith
and Rusk, had such a kitchen. Inspection of the existing William Marsh Rice
house shows no place on the ground floor where a kitchen could have been.
11Writers Program of the Work Projects Administration (comp.), Houston, a
History and Guide (Houston, 1942), 69.
112Houston Tri-Weekly Telegraph, July 20o, 1859.
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Texas State Historical Association. The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 64, July 1960 - April, 1961, periodical, 1961; Austin, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth101190/m1/77/: accessed April 19, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Texas State Historical Association.