He didn’t actually invent them, they’d been around for about 50 years. Crapper was apparently the biggest producer and installer of “water closets” in Britain, and he did make some refinements that made them work better than prior ones.
54light15: “Also, regarding flush toilets- they were invented by one Thomas Crapper in England.”
wjstix: “He didn’t actually invent them, they’d been around for about 50 years. Crapper was apparently the biggest producer and installer of “water closets” in Britain, and he did make some refinements that made them work better than prior ones.”
This British company is still in business and highly sought after by people restoring fine houses.
As Tessio said, 'They have the old fashioned toilet, the box with the chain thing. We could tape the gun behind that."
I actually ran into one of those! About thirty years ago I was repairing a copier in one of Virginia Commonwealth University’s offices, it was in an old mansion on West Franklin Street here in Richmond.
Finished the job and needed to wash up, went into a men’s room and there it was! “Wow!” I said to myself, “Mom told me about those! They had one in the apartment she grew up in in Manhattan!”
Needless to say I didn’t pass up a chance to experience a bit of history. [;)]
Hey, Teddy Roosevelt might have used that thing!
Remembering an old Bill Cosby routine about pull-chain toilets before I pulled the handle I muttered…
“Torpedo los!”
Living history, you can’t beat it!
Remember the Maine! To hell with Spain! And don’t forget to pull the chain!
Back in 1948, when I went to the wedding of one of my brothers, in West Virginia, I found, in the bride’s home, one with a plunger that you pushed. The water was supplied through a ram a hill or two away. No, the ram was not one of the sheep that they raised.
Nor was it a Dodge truck with a pump belted to a raised wheel.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydraulic_ram
My 1976 Eldorado had an analogue of this for its ride leveling: engine vacuum rprovided thrust for a simple reciprocating air pump. It could produce surprising pressure, if you gave it long enough to run … until the little rubber dome diaphragm in it went bad.
Back to the original post/issue, I have to wonder if someone from c.1920 were brought into the present day, if they wouldn’t be amazed at how sloppy and unkempt people are today. My parents were teenagers in the 1930’s, and recalled how boys wore shirts and ties to schools, and of course girls only wore outfits with skirts. I was just reading where someone was talking about how in the 1940’s his grandfather wore a suit and tie to ride the streetcar to his job as a steelworker. At the plant, he changed into work clothes, then took a shower and put his suit back on for the trip home. Many railroaders did something similar.
Schools taught classes covering things like manners and behavior. Our ideas of ‘do your own thing’ and asking your kids to pretty please stop doing whatever they doing wrong didn’t exist.
Regarding steelworkers, I’ve seen in movies how workers didn’t have lockers for thier street clothes but would hook them onto a chain thing and hoist them upwards to hang. Was that for real? Are there any places like that? Maybe it was in “The Deer Hunter” I saw that, I don’t really recall but I did see more than once the chain arrangement.
In the movie, “I Am a Fugitive From a Chain Gang,” near the end, Paul Muni is not just playing a criminal bum, but a tie-wearing criminal bum.
I’m old, but not that old!
In the 1950s and early 60s, girls in my school wore skirts. On very cold days, they would wear pants under their skirts! If I remember high school, by the late sixties, girls had switched almost completely to pants.
Quite true, about those hanging “lockers,” at least in one case.
Several years back “Weird New Jersey” magazine published an “urban explorer-industrial archeology” photo essay of the abandoned Bethlehem Steel works in Bethlehem PA, and sure enough in the men’s locker room there were steel “cauldrons,” for lack of a better term, suspended on chains from the ceiling. And that was the drill, street clothes went into the cauldrons and were hoisted up out of the way. Remarkable.
Continuing with the personal hygene thoughts…
One of the things we like to do while traveling is pick up local real estate brocures, you know, the ones they give out at supermarkets? It’s a fun thing to see what homes are selling for in the vicinity.
A while back we were looking at some brochures in the southeast Pennsylvania region, and in the town of Phoenixville there were a number of homes for sale built in the 1910-1920 era. Nice houses too, well-built and substantial, and going for VERY reasonable prices, much less than you’d think. We wondered why until we saw the specs, most of which were “Four bedrooms, one bath,” or “Five bedrooms, one bath.”
“Aha!” we thought, “No wonder they’re so cheap!” Then we realised that even thou
Let’s not forget that change is often evolutionary, not revolutionary. Somewhere between that little shack out back, and indoor plumbing, was a wooden base cabinet called a “commode” that typically had a tight fitting door to put that chamber pot inside of, and which typically sported a pitcher of water, a wash bowl, and a towel rack on the top side.
And of course the well-to-do victorian ladies had servants to service their commode. Talk about your “dirty jobs”.
Running an image search for “antique wooden commode” will produce a bounty of creative thinking once employed towards that “end”…ahem!
Question, the OP mentions the crude conditions imposed upon rail travelers back in the day, but what options for bathing exist today for someone traveling coach long distance via Amtrak?
In London across the pond there is a museum at Kew Bridge that is all about water and sewerage. It well describes what life was like in the early 19th century and in previous years. You’ve heard the expression, “I ain’t got a pot to p*** in or a window the throw it out of.” That was the usual way of disposing of what was in the chamber pot and makes you realise just what a benefit indoor plumbing and flush toilets are. It also make you realise that if you ever travel back in time to that era, make sure you have all your vaccinations. And wear a wide-brimmed hat.
And don’t drink the water!
True as well, although as a matter of courtesy and good form you were supposed to shout a warning to the street below before the toss!
And THAT reminds me of something they left out of the movie from General Patton’s address to the troops…
“When we get to Europe DON’T drink any water unless you get it from our engineer water points! ALL the water in Europe is p***! You wouldn’t drink p***, would you? Of course not!”
54light45 – " Regarding steelworkers, I’ve seen in movies how workers didn’t have lockers for thier street clothes but would hook them onto a chain thing and hoist them upwards to hang. Was that for real? Are there any places like that?
What you are describing is a ‘dry’ and they are very much still around. All Mines with no exceptions have drys for your work clothes. They are hoisted high up into the heat, usually heat fans up there that blow the air around and dry out your work clothes,socks, boots, underwear, the works. Also cakes all the mud and dirt and it flakes off real easy. Steel mills have the as well.
There are still lockers for your street clothes and valuables and usually a large shower for multiple people in between the two areas.
At the older dorms of MSU in East Lansing, all facilities down the hall is still standard.
Those spartan dorm rooms of the 1950’s & 1960’s helped keep the price of a college education down.
But college kids could be spoiled all through history. I once read of a rich businessman from the South who had two sons attending Yale University around 1900. He had his private car sent up to New Haven, presumably fully staffed, because he “wanted his sons to have Thanksgiving dinner under (their) own roof” and not in some hotel or stranger’s house.
Wonder if someone at Yale was bribed to permit the kids to enrole.