So Much Fabulousness We Hardly Know Where to Begin

Tally-ho! Life is pretty fabulous at Privy Counsel HQ right now, so we're making the most of it while it lasts. One of many fabulous things that have happened is that Shewee have generously sent us a selection of shewees to make our New Year's party extra festive!  We anticipate this being a legendary occasion, considering it's going to involve Australian Friend, Shewee Fiend Friend, a fuckload of drink and a BARRAGE OF SHEWEES! There will obviously be a blog post recording the results, once the hangover clears. (So most likely the second week in March or thereabouts.)

New Year's is still some way away, though, and there is plenty of work to be done before then, so let us get back to business and, for instance, do a Privy Counsel Book Club post! It's been a long time, but a dear friend of ours recommended a fabulous book called The Crimson Petal and the White! As a consequence, we have some Doulton-related joy to share with you! Enjoy this fabulous description of a Victorian toilet:

The employees' latrine has a much more modern and streamlined appearance, in Sophie's and Sugar's eyes, than the rest of the soapworks. A row of identical white glazed stoneware pedestals, each attached to a brilliant metal cistern bracketed under the ceiling, exhibit themselves like a phalanx of futuristic mechanisms, all proudly engraved with the name of their maker. The seats are a rich brown, glossy with lacquer, brand new it seems; but then, according to the address inscribed on all the cisterns, the Doulton factory is only a few hundred yards down the road. 

(Faber, Michel. The Crimson Petal and the White. Edinburgh: Canon Books, 2002, p. 781.)

You will, obviously, be elated to learn that, following on last week's retro Twyfords nostalgia, we have some amazing pictures of some damn well fabulous Doulton porcelain! Yes, yes, we understand your impatience - let's get on with it!

This spectacular bathroom, dear readers,
can be found at Kronovall Castle,
which we have mentioned once or twice before.

Grand, eh? Handy with a chair, too.
 One can invite a friend to entertain one while one is in the bath.

Woof! Bog-standard, but still. Woof!

This is where it gets exciting:
IT'S A DOULTON SINK!!
Ain't it a beauty!

Posh soap. It smelled delicious!

The pièce de résistance:
HAVE YOU EVER SEEN SUCH A FABULOUS BATH?

Does one get all teary-eyed from contemplating such beauty? One does.

We simply can't recommend Kronovall enough - go forth and drink their wine and enjoy their sumptuous bathroom!

Related Reading
More Doulton fabulousness: A Toilet Mystery
A lovely old-fashioned toilet: Right Up Our Alley
More Victorian toilets: The Mysterious Forbidden Lavatories of Manchester
More retro porcelain beauty: Porcelain Porn and Historical Plumbing - We've Found a Soul-Mate
More Kronovall fabulousness: Kronovall - More Castle Shenanigans
For an example of Shewee Fiend Friend's fabulous antics: SISTERS STANDING UP FOR THEMSELVES
More Victorians

Sixteenth-Century Handwashing

The light of zealous intellectualism is burning so brightly at Privy Counsel HQ this week that we have been receiving complaints from people we can only assume must be actual vampires, so acute is their photophobia. Far from spending our time looking up Toilet Songs and vulgar pictures on Google, we have been reading. Like, proper intellectual, you know, books. Here’s a passage we have, so to speak, perused. It’s from William Ian Miller’s book The Anatomy of Disgust (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1997).

People were plainly not as circumspect about excretion as we are. Some five hundred years after [Guibert of Nogent's description of a monk with lethal dysentery] we see that delicacy regarding excretion had a somewhat uneven progress. Elias, quoting passages from handbooks on manners, shows that even sixteenth-century people were tempted not to take great care about such matters. From 1589:

Let no one, whoever he may be, before, at, or after meals, early or late, foul the staircases, corridors, or closets with urine or other filth, but go to suitable, prescribed places for such relief.

Most surprisingly from 1558:

It does not befit a modest, honorable man to prepare to relieve nature in the presence of other people nor to do up his clothes afterward in their presence. Similarly, he will not wash his hands on returning to decent society from private places, as the reason for his washing will arouse disagreeable thoughts in people. For the same reason it is not a refined habit, when coming across something disgusting in the street, as sometimes happens, to run at once to one’s companion and point it out to him. It is far less proper to hold out the stinking thing for the other to smell, as some are wont, who even urge the other to do so, lifting the foul-smelling thing to his nostrils and saying, “I should like to know how much that stinks,” when it would be better to say, “Because it stinks do not smell it.”

 This is not the behavior of eleventh-century gothic benightedness, but takes place in the brilliant lighting of the Italian Renaissance. [...] The sixteenth-century instances reveal that there were proper places to go to do one's duty, even if people occasionally had to be prodded to undertake the inconvenience of finding them and accepting them as the only permissible indoor places for it. The second passage reveals remarkable warrings of sensibilities. We have people so fastidious that it was better not to wash one's hands after excretion than to remind such people of what one had just been doing by washing them. But we also have people actually picking up disgusting things, presumably turds, in the street and thrusting them under their friends' noses. This behavior already has the air of studied ironical boorishness, parasitical on prior notions of its social unacceptability. The person doing this is trying to shock and he succeeds, shocking the author of the tract and us too who find such facts illusion-shattering about ages romanticized for us in novels and film. (p. 153)

No bloody wonder people didn't want to use them:
16th-century toilet according to Mexicowood

For the diehard OCD cases out there, here's what William Ian Miller has to say on handwashing in a footnote: "Those who will cling hard to the indefensible view that norms of disgust are matters of hygiene and disease avoidance should take note that it is better to suffer dirty hands than to remind the company of what had dirtied them by washing.” Now, if you'll excuse us, Hygeia is showing symptoms of what is either a nervous breakdown or a heart attack. Either way we should probably take her to the emergency room.

Let's all vow to do our best not to arouse disagreeable thoughts in people, shall we?

The sixteenth-century hygienic ideal: so very hard to live up to. Image from Shafe.

Pestilence and Hygiene

We may have mentioned the odd disease in previous posts (for instance here, and here. Then there is, of course, our favourite disease ever). Disease and hygiene are intricately linked - the goddess of health and disease prevention is, after all, called Hygeia (by the way, here's how to pronounce her name). We happened, for nefarious reasons of our own, to be skimming through a cracking work called Svenska folkets underbara öden by Carl Grimberg ("The Wonderful Story of the Swedish People"; full text here), a history book from 1922. This smashing read contains an elucidating passage on the spread of disease. We reproduce it here for your edification and delight.

Hygeia and her father, Asklepios.
They like to hang out, semi-nude, in the Vatican Museum. Image from Theoi

Grimberg writes (translation below),

Alltsedan digerdödens härjningar hörde den orientaliska böldpesten till vårt folks värsta plågoris. Under mer än två och ett halvt århundrade gick man här i landet nästan aldrig säker för att den fruktade gästen ej skulle sticka upp sitt hemska anlete och utandas död och förstörelse. En ansedd forskare från karolinska tiden uppräknar ett tjugutal dylika epidemier.

[...] Varpå berodde det, att det på den tiden var så lönlöst att försöka hejda detta mänsklighetens plågoris på dess väg från land till land? Till stor del därpå, att man hade så ofullkomliga begrepp om hygienens betydelse. Folk levde ganska allmänt i snusk och orenlighet till den grad, att vi skulle må illa bara av de erfarenheter, luktsinnet skulle ge oss i en dylik omgivning. Men framför allt berodde människornas vanmakt i kampen mot den fruktansvärde fienden därpå, att man ej visste, hur det tillgick, när smittan fördes över från ett land till ett annat, och följaktligen ej kunde vidtaga några effektiva skyddsåtgärder. Först genom våra dagars forskningar, framför allt av pestkommissionerna i Indien, har man kommit på det klara med hur pestbacillerna över- föras till nya offer. Det har då visat sig, att största rollen som smittospridare spela två otrevliga smådjur, råttor och loppor.

[...] Här ha vi alltså ett nytt exempel till många andra på hur insekterna behärska världen. Det är myggorna, som sprida frossa, malaria och gula febern. Det är löss och fästingar, som utbreda fläcktyfus. Med sömnsjuka och en hel del andra fruktade tropiska sjukdomar bekriga insektsvärldens små myriader oss människor — för att nu ej tala om allt det elände, som flugorna sprida omkring sig genom att med sina exkrementer överföra tarmtyfus, kolera, dysenteri, mjältbrand och tuberkulos.

Carl Grimberg. Let's hope he'd washed his hands before touching his wife. Image from Wikipedia.

Here's a translation, kindly provided by the Privy Counsellor.

Ever since the ravages of the Black Death, the oriental bubonic plague has been one of the worst scourges of our people. During more than two and a half centuries people lived in constant threat of this fearful guest turning up and breathing death and destruction. An eminent physician in the 18th century counts about twenty such epidemics in his time.

[...] Why was that it seemed so futile to try to hold back this scourge? Largely it was due to the fact that people had an imperfect understanding of the significance of hygiene. People generally lived in filth and squalor, the very smell of which would  make us nauseous. But above all, mankind's powerlessness in the battle against this fearsome enemy was due to the fact that people didn't know how the contagion was spread, and were therefore unable to adopt effective protective measures. Only in our own time, mainly thanks to the work of the plague commissions in India, has it been discovered how plague germs are transmitted to new victims. It has been proved that two unpleasant pests, the rat and the flea, are the main source of infection.

[...] Here is, in another words, yet another example of how insects rule the world. Mosquitoes spread shivering, malaria and yellow fever. Lice and ticks spread typhus. The hordes of the insect world make war on us humans with sleeping sickness and other fearful tropical diseases - not to mention the misery caused by flies, which spread typhoid fever, cholera, dysentery, anthrax and tuberculosis via their fecal matter.

 If you don't already suffer from OCD, try this exercise: imagine all the millions of tiny creatures crawling around on your skin, swirling through the air, and cruising through your blood vessels, all devoted to getting inside your body and buggering up your health and wellbeing. Imagine all the millions of people who regularly sneeze drops of germ-riddled snot into their hands, and don't bother washing their hands after going to the toilet. Feel your eyes beginning to itch, and refrain from rubbing them.

Cute but deadly: germs from Giant Microbes. Image from Firebox.

Moral of the story?

Wash your hands.
Wash your hands.
Wash your hands.

Further reading: A 1911 article, from Scientific American, on plague.

MAD: Answering Your Toilet Paper Needs Since 1952

"A spoof of An Ideal Husband?" ranted our inner critic. "Really? You don't think you overreached your intellectual abilities there, Privy Counsel?"
Actually, no, we don't. We think it was an acccurate and amusing rendition of the classic Wilde comedy. But, to satisfy the demands of our less intellectually stringent readers, we've got something right up their alley. We just received a tip about some more, er, absorbing reading: It turns out that MAD Magazine have published no less than four toilet books! Four! Entitled The Mad Bathroom Companion, The Mad Bathroom Companion: Number Two, The Mad Bathroom Companion: Turd in a Series, and The Mad Bathroom Companion: The Gushing Fourth Edition, they are available from MAD (who else?).

In other news, one of the Google search phrases luring yet another poor, benighted reader to our blog this week included "has any celebrities have chlamydia" (sic). We, alas, have no idea, but very much hope that the answer may be found! Perhaps in one of the MAD bathroom companions?

Toilets! Huh! What Are They Good for?

 For various reasons to do with the obsessions of a close acquaintance, we end up reading a lot of soldiers'  autobiographies and war accounts. We have quoted Andy McNab, that stalwart of the ex-soldier action thriller, on the odd occasion, and have furthermore done one or two reports on military bogs. Today, however, we up the ante by giving you photos of genuine field toilets, not those pansy-arse, toilet-paper-providing garrison toilets!

As much as we'd love to be able to travel to Afghanistan to give you an in-depth report on toilet conditions there, we will have to content ourselves, for the moment, with viewing them by proxy. We came across a most interesting book called Infidel (London: Chris Boot Ltd, 2010) by Tim Hetherington, a photojournalist. Hetherington spent time with the 173rd Airborne Brigade Combat Team of the U. S. Army in Korengal Valley, Afghanistan, in 2007 and 2008, making a documentary called Restrepo.

He says,

"Burning the poop" was even more unpleasant than actually having to use the "shitter". During the summer, when temperatures in the valley could soar, I'd often avoid having to use the facility for as long as humanly possible. Eventually, lower-ranking soldiers would be assigned the task of stirring and burning the tank when it was full. (p. 236)

The shitter

"'Piss tubes' at the main Kerengal outpost" (p. 236)

 We also, for the same various reasons to do with the obsessions of a close acquaintance, recently watched the Ross Kemp Afghanistan documentary. We recall one of the soldiers saying, when asked what he would miss most on going to war: "Bog roll. A nice bog to sit on."

Tap into Pain

 A most interesting book came our way recently. It is called Pain: The Science of Suffering, and is written by Patrick Wall (London: Weidenfeld &Nicolson, 1999). An interesting chapter refers to pain thresholds. Making the point that pain thresholds are higher for experiences with which we are familiar, Wall says,

A very careful Canadian study [...] showed that women had a higher treshold for heat pain whereas men had a higher threshold for electric shocks. In our society, women have far more experience of handling hot plates with apparent impunity while men, with their enthusiastic fiddling with car engines and electrical gadgets, are usually familiar with tingling or stabbing electric shocks. (p. 68)

The dangers of separate taps are manifold

While we don't actually know any men who habitually fiddle with car engines or expose themselves to electric shocks, this resonated with us because we find that, since taking up residence in Britain, we have become far more tolerant to scalding hot water than we were formerly. The bewildering, inexplicable insistence on separate taps in this country means that one becomes used to doing the dishes or washing one's hands under the hot water tap, scalding oneself in the process. This is all the more frustrating because we have noticed that disabled toilets usually have mixer taps, often even functioning ones. How come it's possible to install mixer taps (often functioning) in disabled toilets, but not in ordinary bathrooms and kitchens?

An old favourite: the mixer tap in the disabled toilet at Catterick Garrison; read more about it here

 To calm ourselves down and stop ourselves from frothing at the mouth with frustration, we add a calming picture of Crown Prince Frederik and  Crown Princess Mary of Denmark enjoying some art. Mixer-tap art.

At the Sculptures by the Sea exhibition in Sydney.
(If you like this, you might enjoy our other toilet-related royals; see them here and here.)

Related Reading
A Note on Desperate Measures 
Mixer Taps - The Great Controversy, or, When Will Britain Enter the 21st Century?, or, You Are Not Alone! 
Are You British? Does Tap Sanity Elude You?
The History of Plumbing: A Recap 
Terminator Toilet

World Toilet Day 2011: Taking Our Baths and Our Women

Hooray, hooray, today is World Toilet Day!

Toilets and sanitation are very important, and, believe it or not, lacking in large parts of the world. Taps and toilets save lives! Today we'll be illustrating what happens when you mess around with sanitation.

A Jorvik Viking toilet. Read more about Viking hygiene in Jorvik here

We're feeling not only sanitarily minded but also ever so slightly intellectual today, and so we've decided to treat you all to a riveting story about a Viking toilet feud in 10th-11th-century Iceland! Below are a couple of extracts from chapters 4 and 9 of Eyrbyggja saga, the saga of the people of Eyrr, first in Icelandic, then the English translation. Both versions are from the Icelandic Saga Database.

Chapter 4

Þórólfur kallaði Þórsnes milli Vigrafjarðar og Hofsvogs. Í því nesi stendur eitt fjall. Á því fjalli hafði Þórólfur svo mikinn átrúnað að þangað skyldi engi maður óþveginn líta og engu skyldi tortíma í fjallinu, hvorki fé né mönnum, nema sjálft gengi í brott. Það fjall kallaði hann Helgafell og trúði að hann mundi þangað fara þá er hann dæi og allir á nesinu hans frændur.
Þar sem Þór hafði á land komið, á tanganum nessins, lét hann hafa dóma alla og setti þar héraðsþing. Þar var og svo mikill helgistaður að hann vildi með engu móti láta saurga völlinn, hvorki í heiftarblóði og eigi skyldi þar álfrek ganga og var haft til þess sker eitt er Dritsker var kallað.
(http://sagadb.org/eyrbyggja_saga)

(Now Thorolf called that ness Thorsness which lieth between Swordfirth and Templewick; on the ness is a fell, and that fell Thorolf held in such worship that he laid down that no man unwashed should turn his eyes thither, and that nought should be done to death on the fell, either man or beast, until it went therefrom of its own will. That fell he called Holy Fell, and he trowed that thither he should fare when he died, and all his kindred from the ness. On the tongue of the ness whereas Thor had come a-land he made all dooms be held, and thereon he set up a county Thing.
And so holy a place that was, that he would nowise that men should defile the field with blood-shedding, and moreover none should go thither for their needs, but to that end was appointed a skerry called Dirtskerry.)

 Chapter 9

Það var eitt vor á Þórsnessþingi að þeir mágar, Þorgrímur Kjallaksson og Ásgeir á Eyri, gerðu orð á að þeir mundu eigi leggja drag undir ofmetnað Þórsnesinga og það að þeir mundu ganga þar örna sinna sem annars staðar á mannfundum á grasi þótt þeir væru svo stolts að þeir gerðu lönd sín helgari en aðrar jarðir í Breiðafirði. Lýstu þeir þá yfir því að þeir mundu eigi troða skó til að ganga þar í útsker til álfreka.
En er Þorsteinn þorskabítur varð þessa var vildi hann eigi þola að þeir saurguðu þann völl er Þórólfur faðir hans hafði tignað umfram aðra staði í sinni landeign. Heimti hann þá að sér vini sína og ætlaði að verja þeim vígi völlinn ef þeir hygðust að saurga hann. Að þessu ráði hurfu með honum Þorgeir kengur, sonur Geirröðar á Eyri, og Álftfirðingar, Þorfinnur og Þorbrandur sonur hans, Þórólfur bægifótur og margir aðrir þingmenn Þorsteins og vinir.
En um kveldið er Kjalleklingar voru mettir tóku þeir vopn sín og gengu út í nesið. En er þeir Þorsteinn sáu að þeir sneru af þeim veg er til skersins lá þá hljópu þeir til vopna og runnu eftir þeim með ópi og eggjan. Og er Kjalleklingar sáu það hljópu þeir saman og vörðu sig. En Þórsnesingar gerðu svo harða atgöngu að Kjalleklingar hrukku af vellinum og í fjöruna. Snerust þeir þá við og varð þar hinn harðasti bardagi með þeim. Kjalleklingar voru færri og höfðu einvalalið.
(http://sagadb.org/eyrbyggja_saga)

(On a spring-tide at Thorsness Thing these brothers-in-law Thorgrim Kiallakson and Asgeir of Ere gave out that they would not give a lift to the pride of the Thorsness-folk, and that they would go their errands in the grass as otherwhere men do in man-motes, though those men were so proud that they made their lands holier than other lands of Broadfirth. They gave forth that they would not tread shoe for the going to the out-skerries for their easements.
But when Thorstein Codbiter was ware of this, he had no will that they should defile that field which Thorolf his father had honoured over all other places in his lands.
So he called his friends to him, and bade them keep those folk from the field by battle if they were minded to defile it.
In this rede were with him Thorgeir the son of Geirrod of Ere, and the Swanfirthers Thorfin and Thorbrand his son, Thorolf Halt- foot, and many other thingmen and friends of Thorstein.
But in the evening when the Kiallekings were full of meat they took their weapons and went out on to the ness; but when Thorstein and his folk saw that they turned off from the road that lay skerry-ward, they sprang to their weapons and ran after them with whooping and egging on. And when the Kiallekings saw that, they ran together and defended themselves.
But those of Thorsness made so hard an onset that Kiallak and his men shrunk off the field and clown to the foreshore, and then they turned against them therewith, and there was a hard battle between them; the Kiallekings were the fewer, but they had a chosen band.)

And so a feud kicks off that kills off most of the inhabitants of the entire district - because some dudes couldn't be bothered walking all the way to the very inconveniently located Dirtskerry, and so decided to do their business on some other dude's holy ground, instead!
And so you see, having somewhere clean, private and convenient to go to the toilet is extremely important!

A modern-day Viking toilet

 On a side note, may we add that a Very Special Friend of Intellectual Friend's points out that according to the 12th-century historian John of Wallingford, one of the reasons why the English carried out a foul and treacherous massacre of Danes was - wait for it - that they considered them too clean!
John of Wallingford says, in translation,

[The Danes] had also either seized, or prepared to seize, all the best towns in the land, and caused much trouble to the natives of the land; for they were wont, after the fashion of their country, to comb their hair every day, to bathe every Saturday, to change their garments often, and set off their persons by many such frivolous devices. In this manner they laid siege to the virtue of the married women, and persuaded the daughters even of the nobles to be their concubines. For these and other like causes there arose many quarells and wars in the realm.
(http://www.vikingeskibsmuseet.dk/havhingsten-i-fortid-og-nutid/opgaver/kilder-til-opgave/)

The Vikings were, in fact, "coming over here, taking our baths and our women"!

In case you haven't had enough of Viking toilets (personally, we can NEVER get enough
of Viking toilets!), here's another one, from the Dublin Viking Centre

We would once again like to point out that, with Christmas drawing relentlessly closer, an Oxfam Unwrapped gift might be a planet-friendly alternative to the usual tie and bath salts. Our favourite, naturally, is the Build a Bog. Another good one to contemplate on World Toilet Day is the Safe Water for Ten People gift.

Happy Toilet Day!

Further reading:
Þorsteins Þáttr Skelks: Medieval Toilet Anecdote
Jorvik: In Rude Health