Before sewers were a common thing in city's how would people get rid of there "waste"?

by saintscanucks
Searocksandtrees
hannibal72

I won't speak for everywhere, but I know that London in the mid 1800s had a system of Cesspits.
People would shit in a bucket, and either dump their waste in a gutter that flowed to the cesspit, or dump it in the cesspit itself. It was then someone's job to clear the cesspit.
A lot of the waste ended in the Thames, which caused severe public health problems in the 1850s and onwards because people were drinking from the river too. Cholera outbreaks were regular, and 1858 was known as the year of "The Great Stink".