Toilets, Loos, Privies, Earth Closets, etc
by S. L. Carlson
I’m not one for bathroom humor. Toilets, on the other
hand, are a different matter.
Roman engineers were brilliant sewer-builders.
Fountains, public baths, public latrines, and important buildings were all
hooked up to the system. Water washed the muck away into ditches, rivers, or lay in cesspools.
Roman men and women went together in the same, open, many-seater
latrine. With no toilet paper, they used sponge sticks to wipe their bottoms.
Although wealthy people had servants to do this job for them.
A stercorarius had the opportunity to collect muck
from cesspools and slop buckets. He’d take them outside the city and sell this black
gold to farmers to use on their crops.
In the 1400’s Sir Richard Wittington left money to
build a 64-seater latrine in London.
In the countryside during Victorian times, your privy
would be a hole in a plank of wood overtop a bucket, called an Earth Closet, as
dirt was tossed in between uses. When the bucket got full, the contents went onto
the garden or field.
In the 1830’s thousands of people died in London from cholera
from the sewage, dead animals, chemicals, etc dumped directly into the Thames,
the same water used for drinking.
In 1858, London, a heatwave caused the Big Stink. With
100 ordinary citizens using the same privy, it overflowed into the streets and
river. It was so bad that Parliament met away from the Thames. That same year,
they started a new sewer system with over 83 miles of sewers.
In the 1860’s USA, Clara Barton climbed into a hole
next to a “death bed” – every soldier getting that bed died. She discovered the
hole led directly to the cesspool, which fumes were causing the deaths.
Today, there are millions of people who do not have a
toilet system with chain or flusher to wash away our muck. Some travelers discover
they are unwilling to “go native” over a hole in the floor, and request the
location of a “western toilet.”
Bathrooms aren’t mentioned in many of our fictional
stories. However, knowing what, where, how, when, and with whom your characters
need to do their necessities may get you more into your character’s mindset. Or…perhaps
not.
