Piss poor is from the chamber pot. If one did not own a chamber pot, one would have to get up and go outside to relieve oneself at night.
There’s an addendum: “or a window to throw it out of”.
In towns, chamber pots were typically emptied by simply throwing the contents out the window. The streets also served as sewers.
One who had no home at all was that poor, not a pot to piss in or a window to throw it out of.
I think the chamber pot was also called a thunder mug.
” The streets also served as sewers.”
Hence the term, zuccoti park is a cesspool of despair.
I remember as a kid using chamber pots at grandma’s farm..each bed had one under it. You learn real quick that in the middle of the night if you had to go, don’t tip the pot when you take it out from under the bed. Beds slept 3 kids each. Thank goodness we only visited the farm didn’t live on it..
I read recently, here I feel certain, that at some point in England urine was collected and the people would actually sell their piss.
Someone reduced to selling piss was “piss poor”. A much worse condition was being so poor there was no pot to piss in. Such desperate souls “had no pot to piss in”