Toilets Through The Ages - A Show Me Guide To The Loo
Graham Spicer
21/06/2007
Ok, so we're not actually going to tell you how to go the loo, hopefully if you can read this you've cracked that one. But have you ever wondered what people did before the days of the modern, flushable toilet?
Did you know that Romans used to go to the toilet to discuss the news or that the word 'wardrobe' comes from medieval loos?
Roy writes:
We all use toilets of one type of another,those who use loos with seats with pear shaped holes on them may never know why they became the shape they are,many will never even know that in Victorian days all waste from water borne toilets just went straight into the local river without any treatment at all! My Gran had a loo like that in Rock Ferry,Birkenhead,Mersyside,England.The loo was outside in a brick cubical in a corner of the yard,the inside of the cubical had a wide wooden plank seat that went right across the small room,in the center was a round wooden hole,which had a lid with a hinge.Where the hole went I never thought about but it would not be a great place to fall into,you could see running water below,its was of course an open entry to the sewer below!
Why the pear shaped hole we have in most modern type seats? Word in the building trade takes us back to post Victorian times when a modern type lady of the house is discussing fittings in her new home,the forman was asked what could be done about the plain round hole in the toilet seat? With a florish he removes his bowler hat and says,What about this shape madam? of course the bowler hat inside rim is of course not round but oval,from there the can be assumed to have reached the stage when it became pear shaped?
A message on the subject from my friend Notty:
My grandma on my Dads side had one of these loo's in a place called Awdenshaw Lanc's now part of Greater Manchester, her job was to take in washing from the streets around which she did on an old slop-stone sink, that was a large shallow stone trough with only a cold tap above it, this emptied into that loo so all the clothes washing water went down there as well. It was a cold damp place with bits of News of the World tagged on to a rusty nail on the door to wipe your bum on. God I cant believe I'm so bloody old?
I too remember that type of loo, it was like a brown ceramic tube that joined the sewer, when you lifted the lid you could see water at the bottom but just below ground level there was a type of counter balanced pan on a hinge. This held the crap and liquid until water from the kitchen sink poured into the pan, which then overbalanced and tipped the lot down into the sewer. Kittens often fell down and most were rescued from that pan ledge after people heard their cries, others must have made it to the river maybe?
The Day of the Long Shovel
One memory of my childhood days in Delacour Street still
brings a smile to my face. In our double tenement house
there two familes, five people downstairs, and seven upstairs.
There was only one outside toilet for all of us, and this was a
water closet type toilet.
One winter, when the water pipes were frozen making the
toilet unusable, a family friend allowed us to use her ash
midden toilet. This type of toilet was known locally as
"The Netty".
This brick built building was in the yard next to the coalhouse.
with the outside wall facing the back street. Inside, was a
wooden, oblong shaped box toilet. In the top of this box
was a round hole covered with a round wooden lid. The idea
was you would lift the lid and sit on the hole just like a normal
toilet. There was also a small candle, unlit, and a tin of white
powder, some sort of disinfectant or lime.
The principle of an ash midden was that ashes from the fire
were tipped into the hole, thus covering the toilet deposits
for want of a better explanation. Few of these toilets had the
luxury of toilet paper, and the norm was to cut a newspaper
into squares and place it on a nail on the wall. This is where
most people learned of the news of the day. It was quite dark
in this toilet due to there being only a very small window, plus
the light coming in through the air vent.
One day, when I was using this toilet, I was sitting there in
the semi dark, reading the paper, when all of a sudden, there
was a great rush of air up my backside. I jumped up off the
seat, my trousers arond my ankles, I turned to peer down into
the ash midden toilet. I saw before me, what I can onley
describe as a beam of sunlight shining upward through the hole
in the wooden toilet seat like a ray from heaven. Flying around
in this beam of light were many small flies
I peered down before me into the ash midden, and there before
me was a great long handled shovel. cleaning out the waste
from the midden, It was of course the council refuse man. They
came around once a week to remove the waste from the middens.
What an awful job,and what a fright.
Jack Hair
Toilets Through The Ages - A Show Me Guide To The Loo
Graham Spicer
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