Using the study of material culture and historical documents, this project seeks to answer questions regarding the practices and standard of living of households of Quebec City’s lower town during the late nineteenth century.  To this end, ceramics found in trash deposits linked to the occupation of a dwelling between 1875 and 1920 in a mostly industrial and diverse area of Quebec City, at the time, are being studied. Historical documents such as archive papers and censuses are also used to generate a realistic portrait of the families who lived there. The more specific aims of this project are twofold. The first objective is to determine if the households who produced this trash lived and consumed similarly to the inhabitants of the neighbouring St-Roch Ward. The second objective is to find out if the studied household’s practices matched the norms of the social, economic, and cultural groups to which they could have belonged. Preliminary ideas and results on these questions will be discussed during this presentation.