Toilets in World History

Toilets in world history

Where did people ‘go’ in the past...and did Thomas Crapper invent the flush toilet?

The United Nations estimates that 2.4billion people today do not have access to a toilet. Why is that an issue? Throughout time, people have had to go to the toilet. When there are only a few people living in one place it is not a real difficulty, but once people started living together in towns and cities, disposing of waste became a big problem!

The Ancient Greeks and Romans placed great emphasis on fresh water and toilets. In Mohenjo-daro in the Indus Valley, 2,500BC, water and sewers ran through every house. Even the Ancient Egyptians had toilets – though admittedly they were sand trays and slaves had to shovel them out and dispose of the waste.

In Vindolanda, near Hadrian’s Wall in Northumberland, there are the remains of Roman toilets where several people could sit and chat side by side while going to the toilet. Running water flushed away the waste down to the river. The Romans built miles of aqueducts to make sure each town had plenty of running water.

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The Anglo-Saxons, Vikings and Normans lost the skills of the Romans. Toilets became simple holes in the ground, like this one at Mountfitchet Castle in Essex. Bottoms were wiped with hay, or grass, and the hole had to be cleaned out and carted away from time to time. Often, the waste was stored in big pots near the castle walls to be tipped down on enemies attacking the castle! Otherwise it might have been composted to use in the kitchen,garden, or in the fields.

Toilet at Mountfitchet Motte and Bailey Castle, Essex; photo by the author.

In theMiddle Ages, stone castles each hada room called the garderobe, with a hole that simply projected out from the walls of the castle. These rooms were also used as storerooms for clothes–hence the word ‘wardrobe’–because the smell was thought to keep moths away from stored clothes. Waste simply fell down the hole into the moat surrounding the castle and piled up there!

At Portchester Castle, on the Hampshire coast, monks devised a system where the tide flushed away the waste. In fact, many medieval monasteries had water running through the site, and monks often used water that had already been used for washing and cleaning to flush away toilet waste.

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Some towns had toilets that were built overhanging a river, in the hope that it would clear away waste. There was no way of making sure drinking water was taken out of the river before waste fell into it. Streets were gently sloping,with the intention that rain water would flush away the remains of chamber pots emptied out of upstairs windows. You needed to be careful when you walked through a medieval town!

Some houses had cesspits, or holes in the ground, and these needed to be emptied from time to time – a messy business. It was said you could smell a medieval town long before you could see it. To enter Exeter, for example, you had to cross a stream called ‘Shitebrook’, because that was where the night-soil men dumped all the waste from cesspits!

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Occasionally, towns made an effort to clean up their waste. In the 14th century, for example, Coventry charged every house one shilling a week to pay for waste to be removed. Residents were supposed to sweep the filth away from in front of theirhouses every Saturday. Despite this, going to the toilet and disposing of the waste was a very haphazard affair. No wonder medieval towns and villages were such unhealthy places to live.

The first ‘modern’ toilet, orat leastthe first self-emptying toilet, was invented by John Harington in 1596. He installed one in his own home and, when Queen Elizabeth I visited, she was so impressed that he built one for her too. But most houses, even those of the rich, didn’t have running water, so very few of these toilets were built.

The 18thand 19thcenturiesbrought change, with the fast growth of cities, and especially the ‘Great Stink’ in London in 1858, helping to bring this about. Human waste from the city flowed straight into the River Thames. Hot, dry weather made the smell so horrible that the city nearly came to a standstill. At last the government acted, and Sir John Bazalgette was employed to build a new system of sewers for London, which flushed away most of the waste when completed.

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These problems weren't just in London, and the conditions in many other industrial cities were appalling too. Hundreds of people had one toilet between them, and cesspits often overflowed or were rarely emptied. Diseases like typhoid and cholera were common. As late as 1905, at least 130 people died in the city of Lincoln in a typhoid epidemic. This was largely caused by drinking water taken from a river full of toilet waste dumped into the river 30 miles upstream. Lincoln Council thought the waste would be diluted by the time it reached Lincoln, and would not spend money on cleaning up the city’s water supply.

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Thisbrings us nicely on to Thomas Crapper. He was a London plumber in the 1860s. His firm still exists today. He invented the ball cock, making it easier to flush toilets, and it made him a fortune. Rich people queued up to have his toilets fitted in their homes, but poor people still often had an outside loo, not so very different fromthose used by the Anglo Saxons and Vikings, until the 1960s. Public toilets were built in the cities and connected to the new sewers, like this one from Lincoln in the early 1900s:

10-man public urinal, Museum of Lincolnshire Life; photo by the author.

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In the 20thcentury, though it is hard to believe, as late as the 1960s some homes had an outside ash closet at the bottom of the garden as a toilet, using ash from the coal fire to absorb the waste, before it was emptied and carted away. Now all homes haveone or more indoor toilets, often with a dual flush to save water. But what happens if there is no running water? When NASA wanted to put a man into space they had to develop a toilet – how might you do that?

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Modern waterless toilets may be the way forward. Toilets like these are producing rich compost for farmers in developing countries, like this one in Kenya:

To think about:

Make a list of types of toilets, and which people in history used them.
If ancient civilisations had running water and flushing loos, why didn’t the Anglo-Saxons and Vikings?
Why were towns such unhealthy places to live in?
What part has disease played in improving toilets?
What part has technology played in improving toilets?
Why might today’s waterless toilets be better than Viking and Norman waterless toilets?
Why does it matter that 2.4 billion people don’t have access to a toilet?
In 19th century Britain, cities like London and Cardiff were growing rapidly. What is the link with rapidly growing cities in developing countries today?

This resource was created by Alf Wilkinson of the Historical Association for the GLP.