Where there was no convenient moat or stream, people dug a pit, or used a removable barrel. In either case the sewage had to be removed in due course. In 1281, 13 men took five nights to clear the cloaca at Newgate Prison---on triple pay! At Hampton Court in Henry VIII's time the gongfermors had a formidable task.
See also history, nightmen.
I have seen a few that have amused me; for example in a university biochemistry department GOD IS ALIVE AND WELL AND WORKING ON A LESS AMBITIOUS PROJECT. And along the bottom of a partition between cubicles in the office loo BEWARE LIMBO DANCERS!
The habit of writing on the walls is far from new. On a loo wall in the city of Herculaneum, buried by ash from the eruption of Vesuvius in AD79, is written APOLLONIVS MEDICVS TITI IMP. HIC CACARIT BENE. In other words, ``Apollonius, physician of Emperor Titus, had a good crap here.''
A survey by the London Regional Passengers' Committee in the stations of the London Underground and British Rail found that 77% of men's cubicles were adorned with graffiti, and 79% of women's. An anonymous spokeswoman said ``The answer is simple---we sit there longer, write faster, and have dirtier minds!''