One of the more fascinating details surrounding urban archaeology is the wealth of data academics have been able to glean from privvies. You see, especially when London was a soup of smog and half-dead overworked 8 year olds, public sanitation was less of a priority than it is today and you did your business in a very nasty box in the courtyard. As houses were added to the public sewage line, these privies would be filled in with any sort of thing that was close at hand.
Today, excavating stone privy wells are a booming trade and we've learned quite a lot about daily life in Victorian London. Folks in New York City, St. Louis and even Cincinnati are engaging in some of the same sort of 'academic rigor'. So, big ups to privies for making us see the reality beyond what the histories written by well-connected toffs would suggest.
(By the bye? If this were Victorian London, how about this. I wouldn't even use that article to wipe my arse after a good long shit. As someone who has been Registered, allow me to say to you Muggleborns ... don't you dare trust it.)