Why do outhouse doors have half-moons on them?
Cecil replies: This is no time for buffoonery, Joyce. Level with me: you’ve never actually seen an outhouse with a half-moon cut into the door, have you? Neither have I, despite several decades of camping trips. I’ll bet the same goes for just about everybody else. The idea that outhouses always have moons on them has been perpetuated largely by several generations of cartoonists (e.g., Al Capp), probably none of whom ever saw one either. The only reference I can find to the practice is in Eric Sloane’s The Little Red Schoolhouse: A Sketchbook of Early American Education. Discussing 18th- and 19th-century schoolhouses, Eric writes: “The woodshed was often a lean-to attached to the schoolhouse, but the most accepted arrangement was to place it between the schoolhouse and the privy, with a fence separating the boys’ entrance from the girls’. The ancient designation of privy doors was to saw into them a sun (for boys’ toilet) and a moon (for girls’ toilet).” Eric has supplied a sketch of
Dear Cecil: Why do outhouses have half-moons on their doors? Perhaps it’s related to the great high school custom of “mooning”? — Joyce K., Seattle Cecil replies: This is no time for buffoonery, Joyce. Level with me: you’ve never actually seen an outhouse with a half-moon cut into the door, have you? Neither have I, despite several decades of camping trips. I’ll bet the same goes for just about everybody else. The idea that outhouses always have moons on them has been perpetuated largely by several generations of cartoonists (e.g., Al Capp), probably none of whom ever saw one either. The only reference I can find to the practice is in Eric Sloane’s The Little Red Schoolhouse: A Sketchbook of Early American Education. Discussing 18th- and 19th-century schoolhouses, Eric writes: “The woodshed was often a lean-to attached to the schoolhouse, but the most accepted arrangement was to place it between the schoolhouse and the privy, with a fence separating the boys’ entrance from the girls’.
