Singapore is a gleaming, modern metropolis with some of the cleanest and fanciest toilets in Southeast Asia. However, the journey to get where we are is far from glitzy. In fact, did you know that the whole of Singapore didn’t actually get proper wastewater treatment until 1997 – the year that the British handed Hong Kong back to China? And up until 1987, there were still men whose jobs it was to literally cart buckets of effluence out of everyone’s toilets! These men were known as “night soil carriers,” and they had one of the most important jobs in Singapore despite being shunned for their profession.
Human waste was called “night soil” for 2 reasons: firstly, the contents were normally gathered at night, and second, to make it easier (and less stinky) to carry the poop around, sand/soil would be put into the buckets.
The path to modern sanitation
If you think the toilets at coffee shops today are awful, then imagine living in Singapore in the 1800s – back when the British were still running things. Sure, some fancy colonial buildings, villas or bungalows probably had fitted toilets with running water. But the average folk didn’t have access to any of that – in fact, the suburban shophouses and rural villages of Singapore had a totally different sanitation system: the night soil bucket system.
Before we get to that: have you ever wondered what “WC” means? Meaning “water closet,” it’s a toilet what uses water to flush waste away into a sewer. The opposite of a WC is the “pail closet” – which is basically a dry toilet without a flushing system. Most of the toilets in Singapore back in the water-scarce 19th century were pail closets, which used the night soil bucket system.
You can imagine how this system works. Instead of flushing the toilet like we do today, people pooped into wooden buckets which were fitted under the squatting toilet, aka the hole in the floor. This is why toilets back in the day were elevated. Once you’ve done your business, you simply leave it in the bucket. So imagine if you lived in a shophouse with an entire family – back in the day you could have 10 people in a single shophouse – it would contain the effluence of everyone! By the end of the night, it would’ve been beyond stinky; it could also spread diseases like dysentery.
So where would all the crapulence go? Turns out, there was a job category called a “night soil carrier” – a Chinese coolie (employed by Chinese syndicates) who’d be paid by residents to go around collecting these buckets of poop from house to house.
It’s a dirty business
Back in the 19th century, plantations in Singapore needed fertiliser – and lots of it. So up until the 1880s, market gardens and plantations would actually pay night soil carriers to bring the night soil to their farms once every 3 days. But as the population grew so rapidly, the value of the night soil was so depreciated that it was only the residents that paid the night soil collector to get rid of their waste instead.
Needless to say, the collection of human waste in the early years was dirty and unregulated. So to prevent the spread of disease, a law passed in 1889 to ensure that night soil collectors would only be allowed to operate at night. So these night soil carriers had to wake up early in the morning (around 4am to 5am), and knock on the backs of houses at around 6am and collect the contents of the full buckets. They would be done collecting within their designated areas by around noon.
The use of wooden buckets was strangely preferred by the night soil collectors, even though the buckets weren’t able to be covered properly and were extremely stinky. They were replaced with galvanised iron buckets in 1891, when the British government made it mandatory.
Old shophouses, spiral staircases for night soil
For much of the 20th century, night soil carriers would carry out this essential and backbreaking job – and were paid poorly for it. So how did they go about collecting all the waste?
If you’ve seen the design of old shophouses, the toilets were always built right at the back of the house along the exterior wall to the back alley. There would be a tiny door (about 2 feet high, close to the ground) that’s accessible from the alley – it leads directly to where the night soil bucket was placed in the home’s toilet. The night soil carrier would grab that bucket and empty the house’s full bucket into the one he was carrying.
In the case of multistory shophouses, the carrier will access the toilets from the rear. He’ll use the spiral staircases – yes, the pretty stairs that adorn everyone’s Instagrams these days – to access each floor’s toilet.
Once he’s got all the buckets, the night soil carrier will transport them on shoulder yokes which allow him to carry 2-4 at a go. There would be a collection point nearby.
Before motorised vehicles, the collected excreta would be emptied into bullock carts to be transported to plantations. However, from the 1970s, carriers would empty their buckets into motorised 36-door trucks (18 doors on each side), nicknamed “honey wagons.” Up until the 1980s, these honey wagons would then transport the waste to collection centres to be pumped into the sea.
The “honey wagon”
It wasn’t until the 1911 that Singapore had its first central treatment and disposal works at Alexandra Road, which treated waste to be discharged into the Singapore River. However, night soil carriers were still in use by the time the 1970s rolled around, as Singapore was still largely rural and unsewered. Hundreds of night soil collection workers worked daily to clear the buckets from the villages and shophouses’ toilets.
Over the years, Singapore built additional sewage treatment plants in Bedok, Kranji, Seletar, and Jurong between 1979 and 1985.
In 1984, 90% of Singapore was served by modern sanitation so the government began phasing out the night soil system. The last night soil disposal station at Lorong Halus was closed in 1987, and all of Singapore had access to modern sanitation by 1997.
Not unique to Singapore
The night soil system persisted till the late 20th century, becoming the most common method of sewage disposal in Singapore. By all means, the night soil system wasn’t unique to Singapore – our neighbour to the north, Malaysia, also used the same system, owing to the same colonial past.
In fact, the night soil system was a common method of human waste disposal across the world before modern sewage infrastructure was developed. In Asia, countries like China, Japan, and Korea collected night soil for agricultural fertiliser.
In Japan, owai (night soil) were collected by owai-ya – considered the class of “untouchables” who were relegated to the most grim jobs – who were employed from the Edo era to pre-modern Japan. In India, night soil workers – from the lowest cast Dalit who were forced to carry human excreta on their heads – were working till the 2000s in some poor areas, despite the job being banned in 1993.
In Europe, cities like London and Paris relied on night soil collection before sewer systems were introduced in the 19th century. Similarly, in the United States, urban centres such as New York and Chicago used the system before widespread indoor plumbing.
While modern sanitation has transformed public health and hygiene, the path to clean cities was far from spotless. Like the Samsui women, the night soil carriers, who toiled in the shadows, played an essential yet often unrecognised role in keeping Singapore progressive. Their work was physically demanding, hazardous, and deeply stigmatised, yet without them, outbreaks of disease and unbearable living conditions would have been inevitable.
As we enjoy the comforts of modern plumbing, it is important to acknowledge and respect the labour of these men, whose thankless duty laid the foundation for the sanitation systems we take for granted today.
