The Toilet:
How We Got There
& Why We Still Use It Today
There was a time when man would venture 50 to 100 yards behinds his establishment to do his business, and the term shithouse was not considered derogatory. There were many small “engineering” improvements that enhanced the quality of the outhouse throughout its long history. They needed to keep it far enough away so that the odor wouldn’t enter the house, but close enough so that you wouldn’t have to walk far on cold, dark nights. I’m sure with the knowledge we have today on gas diffusion we could calculate the exact distance, but back then it was about 50-100 yards. Sometimes a crescent moon or heart was added on the door to shed starlight in, and perhaps old paper articles were used for wiping, but there were still many improvements to be made to the olde biffy. With all these things to consider, man had plenty to keep his mind occupied when taking a late night stroll to the shitter. It wasn’t until one man finally pushed (his mind) hard enough to realize that doing his business indoors was more convenient after all–and no, it wasn’t John Thomas Crapper.
There he sat, same as ever
Went to flush, but seen no lever
He hates this smelly little shack
And dreads the long, cold walk back -ASE
The flush toilet, as we know today, was actually created in 1596 by Sir John Harrington of England. He was a poet and writer under Queen Elizabeth I, and also one of her 102 godchildren-- “the Saucy Godson.” He had fifteen children, most of whom died. Two of them were named James, so it seems he was playing his cards wrong thinking that the first James would die.
Harrington spent his time translating poems and novels for the Queen. One day the Queen told him to go translate Ariosto's Orlando Furioso and not to come back until it was done. Five years later he came back with the world’s first flushing toilet, the Ajax. The Court never liked Harrington. It seemed that he was quite a quirky and politically aware fellow. During the year of the toilet, he wrote a book to go along with it so people would have something to read while testing his new invention. A New Discourse upon a Stale Subject: The Metamorphosis of Ajax was published under the pseudonym of Misacmos. The book made political allusions to the Earl of Leicester that the Queen picked up on, but she ultimately wouldn’t try (or kill) him because he was her Godson.
So you see, Harrington was a true artist; he was best known for his poetry during his life. He loved writing and poetry, and this is seriously how he had the mind to think of something as clever as a flusher. Most scientific breakthroughs in history are never socially accepted at the time of their birth, whether it’s because the science is too hard to explain to the layman, or because it’s not socially accustomed yet (or sometimes it’s the work of the devil.) The reason he wrote the book was because taking a crap indoors, at the time, was considered risqué. The only place an Ajax was installed was at his manor in Kelston.
After Harrington died, the Ajax watercloset began to catch on amongst the elitist. The name was changed to avoid sharing credit. What Harrington had physically done was find the missing link between the medieval privy shaft and the Victorian valve closet. It had three functions: suppress the smell, clean the bowl, and help remove the content. Removing the content was the trickiest part at the time, as Harrington’s makeshift model was his own, and he never studied fluid mechanics.
As our knowledge for fluid mechanics expanded, tidbits of science crept up during the next two centuries that made improvements on Harrington’s original design. The next big name in early fluid mechanics was Alexander Cummings. He was the one who came up with the idea of a water trap. The water trap is what you see in the toilet today; that little bit of water on the bottom of the bowl that prevent the smell of feces from creeping back up the pipe. The water would drain until a certain hydrostatic pressure was reached to close the trap. This was made in 1775, but there was this war going on at the time so no one really gave a crap about where they took a crap.
By the late 1800s, waterclosets were catching on and spread widely throughout Europe. The British were still bitter about losing the war, so they left the United States in the dark outhouses about the latest hygienic breakthroughs. The culture would undergo a change as the watercloset became more affordable and installable.
The last big breakthrough was by the infamous Thomas Crapper. The trick here was a siphon system that allowed for emptying the tank without leakage. This was merely an improvement of Harrington’s masterpiece, yet he gets full credit for the entire toilet just because of his name. Crapper was merely a coincidence (and marketing scheme.)
The Americas would see their first British Invasion before The Beetles in the early 1900s when toilets became popular with the kids. When the Victorian Era came to a close in England, hygiene was all the rage and like most fads, they catch on overseas. The United States was lucky that this hit us at a perfect time—the Second Industrial Revolution. Among engines, industrial workers, & communications; toilets were right in line for being mass developed and installed in new buildings. Had it been any later, the United States would be consumed by untoileted households and apartments. Think of it as a university buying 30,000 copies of Microsoft ME, just to be informed one year later that a new operating system, Microsoft XP, actually doesn’t contain viruses.
Speaking of viruses, indoor plumbing and the hygiene movement started by toilets prevented American culture from many casualties of filthiness. Constipation is less common as bowel movements are no longer regulated by the weather. Strings of Cholera and other diseases caused by unsanitary condition are avoided. The soils are kept cleaner because of contained sewage. Dingleberries were common from using rough newspaper to wipe. This isn’t exactly related to fluid mechanics, so you can read more about it in my other essay: Toilet Paper: How Material Science has shaped The United States.
The most fascinating facet about the toilet is that it wasn’t invented in one full swoop. The advancements from a handful of different minds with the artistic creativity to fathom such a device and the science of fluid mechanics, turned a once strange and hard to comprehend device into a twice a day visit.
In the 1600s, everyone smelled. If you were to go back in time, people would nauseate you. The thing was, the culture was used to it (chemically) so they had little need for soap or anti-persperant. It wasn’t until rich people started using deodorant and commoners started realizing how good they smelled. This triggered a psychological urge to change their hygienic traditions, and take it a step further.
The toilet was truly an odd turn for American Society. A society of rugged men, working in factories, trying to build a country—and in the middle of it all, a handful of higher-ups decide that pooping indoors is now polite, if not preferred. This didn’t have to happen to America. About half the world still uses some form of outdoor plumbing. They value different traditions and routines then we do, but who am I to say what’s best.
By now, you’ve probably asked yourself, “but how do toilets affect me?” The truth is, they no longer affect you—they control you. They control you at parties when trying to hit on some hottie in the corner. They control you in class when you’re taking an exam. They control they way you think about what is a socially accepted norm, and if one were to break those norms, society will govern itself by laws to enforce these norms. That’s right—in most places not only should you use the bathroom indoors, but it is illegal to do so otherwise. A little over a century ago, if there wasn’t an outhouse around, a bush was a perfectly acceptable place to park. This was all because one poet had too much free time on his hands, and a few fluid engineers (as we would call them today) had the balls to support him with science.
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