Thomas Crapper Day Greetings from Winchester!

How do you intend to celebrate Thomas Crapper day? This important day falls, Wikipedia tells us, on 27 January, and clearly requires some sort of festiveness. Though he didn't - as every educated person knows - invent the flush toilet, Crapper did invent other useful things like the ballcock, and innovate the hell out of existing inventions.

Never hesitant when it comes to a chance to celebrate, we thought we'd honour the inventor of the valveless water waste preventer by posting some photos from our recent jaunt to Winchester!

Shewee Fiend Friend, having spent large amounts of time in this venerable city, guided us confidently and efficiently through the pubs of Winchester, paying special attention to the weird and the wonderful, and ensuring that by the end of the night we were not only thoroughly hammered but had seen some truly amazing toilets. This is why we make such a big deal of our friends - they're so goddamn awesome!

We started our Winchester pub crawl by wending our way to the Wykeham Arms, a truly great pub, filled to the rafters with atmosphere and mind-bogglingly excellent local ale.

The toilets were behind this charming door

You know how we feel about non-mixer taps, so we won't distress you with more ranting.
The soap was good, though!

We do love it when one gets not only lovely soap but lovely lotion, too!
You can get more of this soap-and-lotion combo, as well as an exciting toilet,
at Grays Court in York!

Admirable paper towels!

Here's a random drunken shot
of the toilet interior, for your delight and edification.

The excitement starts here!
IT'S A CRAPPER TOILET!

Fire-engine red! With an amusing lever!
Rather too hot to handle!
(Pun, as always, intended.)

This placard was helpfully displayed above the toilet.

Personally, we can't get enough of beautiful sinks with soap AND hand lotion!
We end up so giddy with joy that we don't even know how many points to award.

Ain't it a beaut!
Sanitan don't appear to have a website, but you can check out
their Facebook page if that kind of thing rocks your boat.

Last but not least - this fancy watermark really made our day!

 As far as we remember, our day in Winchester was festive to a very high degree. There was, apart from excellent pubs (more reviews coming!), homemade ginger beer. And cats. And a nunnaminster. The kind of stuff, in short, that makes life worth living!

So how many points do we award this bog? We're fucked if we know. But we really enjoyed it and can't recommend it enough!

Related Reading
Halloween Horror - Drunken Graffiti and Mindless Lurching in Winchester
Posts related to Thomas Crapper:
Thomas Crapper: The Silence of the Toilets
Right up Our Alley
Gleeful Antics at Grays Court
Toilet-Related Celebrities
New Year's Musings
Historical toilets:
Historical Toilets, Baths and Kitchens - a Useful and Humbling Lesson

A post related to Thomas Crapper only tenuously, or indeed not at all:
The Old Ballcock and Chain, or, An Open-and-Shut Case, or, The Long Tap Lever of the Law

Right Up Our Alley

You'll be delighted to know that we received a spanking cool picture from Medievalist (with a Side Interest in Roman Archaeology) Friend! The image is described as "A fancy toilet in a fancy alleyway pub in Leeds".
It seems to us that these fancy toilets come out when the nights start drawing in and nor'-nor'-easter winds tickle one's sensitive skin with sharp, icy fingers. (Sudden poetic streak worrying: must be effect of the weekend's alcohol consumption. Making mental note to consider better class of beverage than rum out of a plastic bottle for future antics.) There was, for instance, the mystery of the sideways toilet at Grays Inn Court in York, which intrigued us back in 2011. This toilet turned out to have been manufactured by a company called Doulton, which has since fallen on hard times and been reduced to making porcelain cats and similar vulgar artefacts. (Read all about the thrilling sideways toilet here!)
The toilet in the picture below is, however, a genuine Crapper, says Medievalist (with a Side Interest in Roman Archaeology) Friend, adding, "I pissed in it". We do enjoy these frank discussions with our Friends!

Fancy toilet in a fancy alleyway pub in Leeds

It seems our creative powers are so feeble at the moment that all our posts are based on correspondence with friends. Since, in our experience, one can always sink lower (as, for instance, when, severely hungover, one has to get off one's bike and throw up at the side of the road in broad daylight, thinking, "it is surely not possible to sink lower than this", then finds that it is when, half an hour later, one has to stoop to throw up in the bin on the train, and the bin liner comes loose), we might as well go the whole hog and mention an article in the Telegraph that was recommended to us. It concerns a well-educated Spaniard cleaning toilets in London due to being unable to get a job befitting his qualifications. The clever toilet-cleaning man says, "I'm not ashamed of what I do. Cleaning is a very worthy job. What embarrasses me is having to do it because no one has given me an opportunity in Spain. There are many Spaniards like me, especially in London." Having worked in this place, we sympathise on many, many levels. Still, having a shitty job can be enjoyable as long as one has festive colleagues and gets some kind of intellectual stimulation. Like, to mention an example at random, writing a toilet blog. Ahem.

Related Reading
A Toilet Mystery
Gleeful Antics at Grays Court
Thomas Crapper: The Silence of the Toilets
Historical Toilets, Baths and Kitchens - a Useful and Humbling Lesson

The Privy Counsel Book Club: At Home

Everything You Always Wanted to Know about Toilet Roll Holders (But Were Afraid to Ask)

Leaky Pipes - A Tale of Cold Weather and Incontinence

The Crazy World of Doll's House Toilets

Like doll's houses, anyone? We can't say we do, particularly, but we happened to visit a doll's house shop with a friend recently, and were fairly gobsmacked by the sheer variety of miniature toilets!

The going rate for a two-inch toilet: twenty quid

This looks like a proper Crapper toilet, and we will admit that it's pretty classy

The flush unit is apparently sold separately...

 

...and has "Hearth and home - the thunderbox" written on it.
We have no idea why.

The bath towel is more affordable

We thought this was pretty,
although one despairs a fairly large amount when one sees the non-mixer taps

Look how happy this man is with his bathroom and his pyjamas!

Toilet-Related Celebrities

We've been rather wholesome lately, and now have an itch for some celebrity toilet images. Our recent forays into Google hyperspace have luckily given us a fine harvest of weird and disturbing pictures and facts, for your edification and delight.

The night before her wedding, Kate Middleton stayed in a disturbingly vulgar and tasteless suite in some hotel or other. Poor Kate didn't even get mixer taps in the bathroom! However, she at least had the comfort of being able to do her business in a genuine Crapper toilet, the Venerable! Lucky, lucky girl! The Sun did a revolting, sycophantic reportage on the suite and its toilet which you can, if you wish, read here. The pictures are copyrighted to the fifth dimension, but luckily we are rather resourceful and found you a picture of an identical toilet here!

The Venerable - fit for a princess

In other, related, news, Tori Spelling has been promoting Thomas Crapper Day, nobody seems entirely sure why. But here she is, posing with her husband and some puppies. Read all about this exciting event here.

Squeezing out some enthusiasm

We found this picture funny.

Well, that scratched our celebrity itch nicely!

A Toilet Mystery

The Tornado toilet looks so exciting, but what the dickens does the stamp say on the porcelain?

  It is one of those spooky November nights, when one desires nothing more than to settle down with a glass or five of one's favourite drink and snuggle up to a good whodunnit. We sincerely hope that you, our readers, are comfortably ensconced in the sofa right now, with no intention of getting up in the near future. We ourselves are going to expose ourselves to all sorts of bad humours and cold, unpleasant night air, in order to photograph some toilets for your benefit. However, be that as it may.
   We don't pretend to any literary panache and couldn't dish up an Agatha Christie-style mystery for you if we tried. (Correction: Yes, we can! Not to blow our own trumpet with undue enthusiasm, but do check out our very own Poirot Mystery!) However, we are currenlty twirling our metaphorical waxed moustaches and purring with delight at being able to present to you a solution to a little problem that has been bothering us.
In a recent update, we were distraught not to be able to decipher the porcelain stamp on a toilet at Grays Court, despite Intellectual Friend's 57th-generation space phone. However, despair no more - modern technology has sorted it for us! We cunningly enlarged the photo until the stamp was visible. Voilà:

Modern technololgy has not yet made it possible to turn the picture the right way round.

 Our keen eyes make out the name Doulton! Doulton, we learn, nowadays make little china figurines, but once upon a time they made toilets! Let's see what the Doulton website says:

  Royal Doulton is a classic English brand name in tableware and ceramics with a pedigree dating back to 1815, when John Doulton used his life's savings to launch a partnership with Martha Jones and John Watts at a stoneware factory in Lambeth, London. Today, Royal Doulton is a world-class brand in quintessential British tableware, collectable figurines, crystal, glass and giftware.
  Yet it had truly down to earth origins. Thanks to stoneware, the business that subsequently focused on the Doulton family name took full advantage of the revolution in sanitation during the reign of Queen Victoria (1837- 1901). It established the world's first stoneware pipe factory and went on to become Britain's top Victorian manufacturer of sanitary ware [that means toilets]. (http://uk.wwrd.com/en/uk/page/heritage_rd1/)

Exciting, eh? We're still none the wiser as to why the wrought-iron sides of the seat say "Tornado", as the Tornado was a Crapper-brand toilet, but maybe one of the components was once changed. We are feeling benevolent today, and so give you the chance to feast your eye on this splendid toilet once more:

It's a beaut, n'est-ce pas?

  Alors, one rather fancies a sirop, eh, Hastings?

Related Reading
Gleeful Antics at Grays Court
Right Up Our Alley

Gleeful Antics at Grays Court

 We hoppeted (Old English hoppetan, to hop, to leap for joy) along to Grays Court the other day, in the company of our eminently intellectual Intellectual Friend, to partake of tea, scones and toilets. Our final verdict is somewhere along the lines of "Hot dog!" This dignified old building is simply bursting with panelled walls and mullioned windows, providing a highly cosy and venerably historic atmosphere. We seated ourselves in a nook, or cranny, one moody autumn afternoon, and passed a delightful hour or so discussing toilets, and also sometimes academic matters.
 We are pleased to be able to show you both the ladies' and the gents' toilets, thanks to a collaborative scholarly effort. The only drawback is that, due to the uncooperative attitude of Intellectual Friend's 56th-generation space phone, some photos appear sideways.

Intellectual Friend happily showing off a delicious cream- and jam-laden scone at Grays Court

A beguiling entrance

Sink with awful taps and splendid soap

A really exciting old toilet...

...with a lovely/horrifying (depending on your viewpoint) cistern

Alas, uncovered toilet roll!

We can't decipher the stamp on the porcelain, but the Tornado was a Crapper toilet model

Lovely, lovely soap and lotion!

Sturdy, unpretentious and reliable: everything a coat-hook should be

Eek! Eek! Eek! Eek! Separated taps!

This lovely stuff deserves another close-up

Amusing prints on the wall

The ladies' toilet isn't nearly as exciting as the gents'

Alas!

 Due to the air-dryers, disability-unfriendly flush handles and separate taps, these toilets receive only 7 points. However, the scones and tea were highly scrumptious, and the Grays Court staff were probably the friendliest and most helpful we have ever come across anywhere!

Grays Court
Chapter House Street
York YO1 7JH
01904 612613
http://grayscourtyork.com/ 

Related Reading
A Toilet Mystery
Right Up Our Alley

The Privy Counsel Book Club: At Home

It is time for another Book Club update, and this time we choose a quote from Bill Bryson, that entertaining yet informative author. In his book At Home (Doubleday, London 2010), Bryson devotes a chapter to the history of the bathroom. Explaining the resistance the idea of having a bathroom could sometimes meet in Europe, he writes,

  Until quite late in the nineteenth century many houses had plumbing to their kitchen and perhaps to a downstairs toilet, but lacked a proper bathroom because there wasn't enough pressure in the pipes to get water upstairs. In Europe, even when pressure allowed, the rich proved unexpectedly reluctant to bring bathrooms into their lives. 'Bathrooms are for servants', sniffed one English aristocrat. Or as the Duc de Doudeville responded loftily when asked if he would be putting in plumbing in his new house: 'I am not building a hotel.' Americans, by contrast, were much more attached to the satisfactions of hot water and flushing toilets. When the newspaper baron William Randolph Hearst bought St Donat's, a Welsh castle, the first thing he did was install thirty-two bathrooms. (pp 397-398)

A genuine Crapper toilet at St Donat's castle. (Image from myonethousandthings.blogspot.com.)

The reluctance of those able to afford to have their water and bodily excretions carried by servants, to install plumbing, is further described by Judith Flanders in her excellent book The Victorian House, an old favourite of ours which we may have mentioned once or twice before. Does this, in fact, explain some of the many plumbing-related peculiarities still dogging Britain today?

Related Reading:
Victorian Servants Have Taken over the Book Club
Lucy Worsley and Jane Austen: Historical Toilet Etiquette

Everything You Always Wanted to Know about Toilet Roll Holders (But Were Afraid to Ask)

We have received queries regarding our fierce obsession with covered toilet roll holders.  “Why,” the cry goes, “must they be covered?” “At home,” it goes on, “I just leave my bog roll lying around – is that wrong?”

Is this wrong?

 To explain our viewpoint on this matter, we shall once again escort you into the realms of literature, and reach for our favourite book, Flushed with Pride: The Story of Thomas Crapper by Wallace Reyburn (Pavilion Books, London, 1989).

“An interesting thing to note is that Crapper and other plumbers of his day lay themselves open to infection not only by direct contact during the course of their work [more on this in an upcoming blog update].  Crapper, perforce, spent a great deal of time flushing toilets, and one learns from a recent issue of Lancet that the water closet is a fine example of an aerosol.

Not visible to the naked eye, the spray sent out by a toilet has given hospitals cause for concern and in 1966 The Lancet carried a report on tests made in connection with the fact that ‘flushing a wash-down water closet produces a bacterial aerosol’.

[...] After the slit-samples were incubated for 24 hours, not only was the disturbing fact revealed that the average wash-down closet had sent out 37.5 colonies of bacterial contamination per 100 cubic feet.  Tests made with the seat cover down resulted in ‘a rather surprising finding’.  Far from the seat cover blocking the spray, the number of bacterial colonies jumped from 37.5 to 46.9.  Apparently the spray was forced out through the gap the rubber buffers create between the seat and the rim of the pan and this made the toilet into a much more efficient aerosol, like turning the nozzle of a hose to ‘jet stream’.

All of which makes a nice new thing for anyone with a contamination complex to worry about.” (p. 28)

Our favourite work of literature

Mr Reyburn’s is not the only brain to tackle this problem.  An online article by Sarah Tan gives us more information.

“[The aerosol effect] seems to have first been brought to light by University of Arizona environmental microbiologist Charles Gerba when he published a scientific article in 1975 describing bacterial and viral aerosols due to toilet flushing (2). He conducted tests by placing pieces of gauze in different locations around the bathroom and measuring the bacterial and viral levels on them after a toilet flush, and his results are more than just a little disturbing.
First is the confirmation of the existence of the aerosol effect, even though it is largely unrecognized. 'Droplets are going all over the place—it's like the Fourth of July,' said Gerba. 'One way to see this is to put a dye in the toilet, flush it, and then hold a piece of paper over it' (8). Indeed, Gerba's studies have shown that the water droplets in an invisible cloud travel six to eight feet out and up, so the areas of the bathroom not directly adjacent [to] the toilet are still contaminated. Walls are obviously affected, and in public or communal bathrooms, the partitions between stalls are definitely coated in the spray mist from the toilet (1). Also, toilet paper will be cleanest when it is enclosed in a plastic or metal casing; after all, it's subject to the same droplets splattering on it, and its proximity to the toilet bowl makes contamination potential obvious.

[...] There are also greater implications from the study of the aerosol effect than [the] simple grossness factor. Most obviously, bathrooms should be cleaned even more meticulously than before, with emphasis not just on and around the toilet, but equal emphasis on all areas of the bathroom because all areas are equally affected by the spray. Using the right cleaners is important because all-purpose cleaning solutions are not necessarily antibacterial, whereas most cleaners made specifically for restrooms are referred to as disinfectants or germicidal cleaners (1). Given that the sink area teems with bacteria, one must now be more careful about washing hands properly after walking into the bathroom for any non toilet-related purposes like washing your face and brushing teeth. Using a hair dryer can potentially be problematic in regard to bacteria counts because the effect would be largely the same as hot-air hand dryers, which actually increase the bacteria on hands by 162 percent, as opposed to paper towels, which decrease them by 29 percent (7). If you're still not convinced that bacteria exist in any significant quantities on your hands, consider that [the] kitchen sink actually harbors the most fecal matter in the average home, carried there by unwashed hands after using the bathroom (5). A tablespoon of bleach in a cup of warm water on the offending sink will fix the situation ... for the day.
To limit the scope of the aerosol effect, the simplest method is to close the lid on the toilet every time before flushing (5). This would also provide the peace of mind that while you are washing your hands for 30 seconds, microscopic, bacteria-laden water droplet[s] will not be descending upon your person. Unfortunately, most public toilets, including the ones in Bryn Mawr's dorms, don't even have lids for that option. Besides, given the large number of people who have used the toilet before you, it probably wouldn't make much difference. After washing your hands, use a paper towel to turn off the faucet and to open the door to leave, in order to avoid being recontaminated (4). And today, get a new toothbrush and always, always keep it in the medicine cabinet or some other enclosed place after use (2).” (http://serendip.brynmawr.edu/exchange/node/1839)

 We imagine that quite a few of you, dear readers, are now paralysed with fear, and vow to a) have a colostomy pronto and never, ever, ever go to the toilet again, and b) ditch your best friend and start a deep and meaningful relationship with your hand-sanitizing gel.
However, there is no need to panic!
Hygeia, our patron goddess, has several handy hints and tips for dealing with your increasing toilet paranoia. We shall attempt to outline them in a handy list, easy to read even for hyperventilating, panic-stricken recent hygiene-obsessives.

Print This out and Put It on Your Fridge 
(Or, even better, have it tattooed on your forehead for the benefit of the hygienically challenged)

1) Wherever possible, put down the lid when flushing.

2) When installing a toilet roll holder, make it a covered one.
3) If possible, keep your toothbrush in a bathroom cabinet.
4) Don't bloody use hand-dryers!!! (Unless, of course, they're of the hygienic, Privy Counsel-approved variety (see below).)
5) Wash your hands.

6) Wash you hands.
7) Wash, and we really can't stress this enough, your hands.

(Information on how to wash your hands properly is available here.)

So what kind of toilet roll holder should one go for? Some of our personal favourites come from the Lake District, parts of which are laudably hygienic. For instance, Café Treff, home of the best toilet in England, has a toilet roll holder from the Swedish company Katrin, whose products have been awarded both the Scandinavian eco-label The Swan and the EU Ecolabel.

The Café Treff bog: a pattern toilet!

 Another good toilet-roll holder is situated not far from the best toilet in England, in the Hiker's Bar toilet at the Old Dungeon Ghyll pub, Langdale, which we reviewed the other day. It is the hygienic Smart One holder.

A commendably hygienic toilet roll holder

We also recommend, as an alternative to traditional air-dryers (paper towels are great but not particularly tree-friendly), the new hygienic, energy-saving ones. Two examples that we have come across are the Dyson Airblade and the Veltia Hand Dryer.

Woof! Fancy getting your hands on this one? Enjoy the toilets at Kennedy's in York!

To rub against this baby, get yourself down
to the Berrick Saul building at the University of York!

We hope that you now feel informed, reassured and hygienically competent. (If not, don't hesitate to e-mail us at theprivycounsellor@gmail.com.)

Related Reading
Thomas Crapper: The Silence of the Toilets
Thomas Crapper Day Greetings from Winchester
A Study of the Correlation between the Extremely Scary Toilet Aerosol Effect and Acute OCD in Toilet Bloggers

Café Treff, Ambleside: The Best Toilet in England
All OCD-Related Links
The definitive say on the air-dryer-vs-tissue debate: AAAAAAAAAAAAARGH! AIR-DRYERS!

Thomas Crapper: The Silence of the Toilets

A most amusing little book called Flushed with Pride: The Story of Thomas Crapper, by Wallace Reyburn, has come our way.  It is a real joy to read; full of the most delectable anecdotes.  We don't believe in selfishness when it comes to interesting information regarding toilets, and so we have resolved to share little snippets with our dear readers every now and then.  Today we bring you information on flushing.

Akin to the problem of the recalcitrant chain is the noise associated with the W.C.  A question frequently asked, particularly by women, is:  ‘Why can't there be a really silent toilet?’

Sensitive females, such as maiden ladies and girls entertaining a new boy friend, know it is no good announcing, ‘Excuse me a minute, I'll see if the scones are done’, merely to have the sound of the flushing toilet proclaimed to everybody in the house [...] ‘I have been to the loo.’

Crapper had this problem very much in mind and in those pioneer days of the modern toilet he knew that the noise broke down into these four basic components:

       (a)     The sound of the flush itself, the down-rush of water into the pan;

       (b)   The gurgle which occurs at the end of the flush;

       (c)    The hissing sound of the water coming in to refill the cistern;

       (d)   The noise of water coming under high pressure to the cistern through copper pipes which, to quote an old plumber, ‘ring like a peel [sic]of bells’.

 When Crapper was confronted with the problem of what to do about it all, this water concerto was really con brio.  Thanks are due to him for building in silencers which cut down much of the noise and to which modern water closet makers have added little more in the way of noise elimination.  Crapper's improvements to what became the ‘Marlboro’ silent Water Waste Preventer’ at the turn of the century incorporated two refinements which, if they didn't ‘prevent the hissing and the gurgling’ as claimed, at least minimised it.  Modern inventors have got rid of some of the gushing noise down in the pan, by developing the siphonic trap.  But truly Silent still eludes them and it was cause for worry on a Royal level.
(Pavilion Books Limited, 1969, pp 21-22)

We're afraid we really must leave you at this stage of the story. If you can endure this cliffhanger and live to see another day, you'll get the next instalment soon.


Related Reading
Everything You Always Wanted to Know about Toilet Roll Holders (But Were Afraid to Ask)

Thomas Crapper Day Greetings from Winchester