What better month then January to write about toilets. January 27 is Thomas Crapper Day! Yet, Crapper, whose been given the credit for inventing the toilet, actually didn’t. He was awarded nine patents, three of which were for water closets. Yes, he was a plumber in England from 1861 to 1904 and owned a plumbing company, Thomas Crapper and Co. Even though the “silent valveless water waste preventer” device is attributed to him, it was patented to Albert Giblin, an employee of Crapper. According to Ken Grabowski, a researcher on Crapper, Giblin either allowed Crapper to use his product, or he sold him the patent. Grabrowski also states the term “crapper” took hold through World War I soldiers, who saw T. Crapper-Chelsea on tanks and came up with “crapper,” meaning toilet.
I’ve always liked to delve into a bit of history on the subjects I write about.
Our modern flush toilet, which disposes of human waste, came about through a long history of improvements as well as names for the contraption. No one individual is truly the inventor.
The first known flush toilet, or seat closet, with a sewage system was built in the 26th century B.C. by peoples of the Indus Valley, now mainly in modern-day Pakistan.
The ancient Romans had a sewer system. Outhouses or latrines were built over these running waters which emptied into the Tiber River. Smelly!
Queen Elizabeth 1, of Britain, had a flush toilet, invented by her godson, installed in her palace. Legend tells us she was too embarrassed to use it for fear the staff would hear the loud noise when flushed, and would know what she just did.
Another Queen, Victoria had her “water closet” installed in her Ehrenburg palace in Germany. Her only stipulation: No one else may use it!
Our second president, John Adams, and his wife, Abigail, moved into the White House in 1800. They were privileged to use an outhouse privy. A few years later, under Thomas Jefferson, the privy was replaced with two custom-made water closets. Indoor plumbing was installed during Jefferson’s tenure also.
The outhouse or the privy (brivvy) name probably came from another earlier sense of the word, referring to private chamber room for person(s) who didn’t wish to be disturbed. Later privy was defined as a small building that had a bench with holes in it for a person’s waste. Privies had a one-or-two holer, sometimes a large hole and a smaller one for children. They were built in the back yard. The outhouse was used by city folk as well as rural people. An outhouse originally was an out-building, or small structure, built away from the main building and used by city and country folk..
Some say that the crescent moon, sun, or stars carved in or on a door came about for mostly public places, like inns and churches, to note different genders. Actually, the main purpose of a hole was for venting and light.
The chamber pots, found under the bed, were bowl-shaped with a handle. Mostly they were used during the night and were common until the 19th century.
And now my own, family, and friends’ stories:
Pop didn’t build a bathroom in our Monterey farmhouse until my brother David was born in 1935. That meant that seven of the ten children, plus two adults, had the privilege of sitting on a pot!
My sister, Anita, told me, “Pop had a big bucket, with a toilet seat setting on top, on our enclosed porch. It was for night use only. We all hated emptying it, but we did it daily.”
Another sister, Jannetta, stated, “We had chamber pots under each bed. Once we were old enough, we had to empty our own pots. Mom told me that when she was young, the last one on the pot in the morning had to empty the pot.”
Anita added, “The Sears Roebuck Catalog served two purposes – one for reading, the other for wiping.”
Of course, there were always pranks that went with the outside toilet.
For my family newsletter, my sister Gladys wrote, “Carole and I drilled holes in the back of the toilet so we could see what was going on inside. Alas, I can’t recall ever seeing anything!”
Also from the newsletter, Anita wrote about a story Mom told her: “Mom said when we were in church one Sunday I had to go to the bathroom. She felt I was old enough to go by myself. Everything was fine until I came back with a huge bouquet in my arms for Mom. She quickly grabbed me and we took the beautiful flowers back to the gravesite.”
Gert, a friend of mine who also lived on a farm, said that her brothers always teased the sisters so much: “I had always been afraid of furry animals. When I was inside the outhouse, my brother placed a corn cob on a long stick, opened the back, and poked it through the opening, yelling, ‘Rats! Rats!’ I ran out of that toilet so fast, I still had my pants down!”
My friend JoAnn had a brother who was ten years older. As kids, she heard him get up to go outside to the toilet. Since he didn’t turn the outside light on, she knew that he was urinating in the yard as usual. In order to tease him, she turned on the outside light and yelled, “Let there be light!” There’s something ironic in that this brother became a minister in his adult life.
Our smokehouse was quite close to our outhouse. My friend Agnes and I had a club going. We had to pay a penny every time we met above the smokehouse, our feet resting on the outside toilet roof. We never once complained about the odor mixture from the toilet and the cured meat from the smokehouse.
Anita said that Mom grew Jerusalem artichokes behind both the toilet and the smokehouse. She testified to the fact that they were delicious.
Aside from outside toilets, my friend, Gert (mentioned earlier), and I had some snow-pants experiences in the early ’40s. As a youngster, Gert was sledding with her older brother. After sledding awhile, she begged her brother to take her home to go to the bathroom. He refused, saying, “You can pee right here in the snow.” Even though it was freezing cold, she did just that. In the midst of going, she lost her balance, fell, and slid down the crusted snow hill. She said that her behind was sore for days.
I had a similar experience walking home from the school bus on a cold, wintry snow day. I had thick, ugly snow pants on. I could not hold it any longer, but didn’t wish to place my behind in the icy cold air. So I urinated in my pants. Mom did her best to wash them out by hand that evening and dry them on the radiator. But next day, I had to wear those snow-pants to school, stinky or not.
Although I never had to sit on a pot as a youngster, I did get to try my behind on one as an adult. Since my sister Dorothy’s husband died, I’ve been traveling with her to visit her son, Mike, and his wife, Nancy, and their daughter in New Hampshire every summer. Nancy teaches school and is an herbalist, while Mike does carpentry and writes organic farming books.
At Mike and Nancy’s farmhouse, the bathroom happens to be downstairs. Dorothy and I, and everyone else, sleep upstairs. Before we retired that first night, I was told that if I didn’t wish to go down the steps at night, there is a potty under the dresser.
It just happened that I had to go to the bathroom around 3 a.m. Not wishing to disturb the rest of the household, I decided I’d sit on the potty by night light. As stated earlier, I had never sat on a pot before.
First, I pulled the potty out from under the dresser and thought, Gee, how do I do this? I considered placing the pot on a chair and sitting on it. No, I said to myself, I might slip off and fall. Back to the floor stance. It’s so far down there, I reasoned, that I’m not sure I know how to do this properly, and there’s no newspaper to place under the pot.
Finally I decided, Why not just sit on the pot while it’s on the floor? I did one thing at a time. I held onto the bed post with my right hand. With the left hand, I made sure that the pot stayed steady as I aimed my behind. On top of these maneuvers, I had to bend my legs and keep them steady till I managed to get “way down there.” I made it all right. What a relief – in more ways than one, I thought. How does one get off a pot? Does the suction of the weight of my rear bring the pot along up with my behind in it? I eased off the pot, little by little, and by golly, I did it! I just felt that I should pass this useful information on to anyone reading this. After all, one never knows when one has to use a pot.
I have one more story. My husband has his very own bathroom, furnished with photos of outhouses, chamber pots, calendars, and outhouse night lights, next to the TV room in the basement. In his younger days, he never had the privilege of using an outhouse, and I wanted him to have the closest experience he could get to using one.
Have a great Thomas Crapper Day to all!
Carole Christman Koch grew up in Berks County and has been published in numerous publications. She has a passion for writing and has many stories from growing up on a farm to raising children to humorous stories about her and her husband to everyday stories to season stories and more.
