0 a large underground hole or container that is used for collecting and storing solid waste, urine, and dirty water
1 a large, underground hole or container that is used for collecting and storing human waste and dirty water:
fig. He described government there as a cesspool of corruption.
Yet the substitution of a public drainage network for the private cesspool was perceived by some as an attack on domestic autonomy.
Good systems included either the municipal sewer or a septic tank with leach field, and poor systems included cesspools and portables.
Until the mid-nineteenth century, such refuse was generally collected in cesspools (enclosed pits dug into the ground) which were periodically emptied by manual labor.
The artificial light, shining into the dark filthy-looking cavern or cesspool, threw the adjacent houses into a deep shade.
While the cesspool appears simple, manageable, the sewer is represented as a source of confusion and complexity, as the image of the labyrinth suggests.
As a result, cesspools and privy vaults often flooded; cesspools had to be emptied far more often.
The idea of sewerage as a chaotic and unwieldy system of waste management emerges clearly in those tracts which compare the sewer unfavorably to its predecessor, the cesspool.
Although the island is "a great cemetery" lying "under the hot sun of the tropics" (124), it is not the cesspool of pestilence and poison that it should be.
