Toilets, Loos, Privies, Earth Closets, etc by S. L. Carlson

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.