# How did people wipe on chamber pots? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [December 29, 2007, 11:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-people-wipe-on-chamber-pots/431649 "2007-12-29T23:48:21Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Cluricaun](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/bb73d2/32.png) [@Cluricaun](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cluricaun)\ **Post date:** [December 31, 2007, 2:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-people-wipe-on-chamber-pots/431649/21 "2007-12-31T14:25:45Z")
[QUOTE=Broomstick] Anyhow, why do you think things like potpourri were invented? To help cover objectionable smells. [/QUOTE] I suppose that you’re right, I just have a really hard time wrapping my mind around this one. Thank god for indoor plumbing. ---
**Author:** ![Zsofia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/7bcc69/32.png) [@Zsofia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zsofia)\ **Post date:** [December 31, 2007, 2:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-people-wipe-on-chamber-pots/431649/22 "2007-12-31T14:32:26Z")
[QUOTE=EJsGirl] Why are people assuming that there was no toilet paper? [/QUOTE] Well, was there? There wasn’t in the country when my dad was a kid, but then they were poor. ---
**Author:** ![Chez\_Guevara](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/aeb1de/32.png) [@Chez\_Guevara](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chez_Guevara)\ **Post date:** [December 31, 2007, 3:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-people-wipe-on-chamber-pots/431649/23 "2007-12-31T15:09:16Z")
[QUOTE=Miss Purl McKnittington] That all said, if we don’t know exactly what women did for their periods, it might prove difficult to nail down a concrete answer as to what they wiped with for midnight calls of nature. Unless they happened to have, you know, a [goose](http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/rabela.htm) lying around. [/QUOTE] Thanks for this: > [@](#): > > “Afterwards I wiped my tail with a hen, with a cock, with a pullet, with a calf’s skin, with a hare, with a pigeon, with a cormorant, with an attorney’s bag, with a montero, with a coif, with a falconer’s lure. But, to conclude, I say and maintain, that of all torcheculs, arsewisps, bumfodders, tail-napkins, bunghole cleansers, and wipe-breeches, there is none in the world comparable to the neck of a goose, that is well downed, if you hold her head betwixt your legs. And believe me therein upon mine honour, for you will thereby feel in your nockhole a most wonderful pleasure, both in regard of the softness of the said down and of the temporate heat of the goose, which is easily communicated to the bum-gut and the rest the inwards, in so far as to come even to the regions of the heart and brains.” (from _Gargantua_, 1534) My own technique now seems decidedly unimaginative. Thanks also for motivating me to look up _Gargantua_ in [Wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gargantua_and_Pantagruel), where I discover this concise synopsis of the 5th book in the Pantagruel/Gargantua series: > [@](#): > > At the end of the fifth volume, which was published posthumously around 1564, the divine bottle is found. The epic journey ends with Pantagruel producing a large piece of shit… Sadly, the synopsis fails to record whether our hero used a chamber pot as a receptacle for his produce, or indeed which unfortunate beast was employed by him to wipe away the detritus from his nether regions. ---
**Author:** ![Moirai](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/96bed5/32.png) [@Moirai](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Moirai)\ **Post date:** [December 31, 2007, 4:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-people-wipe-on-chamber-pots/431649/24 "2007-12-31T16:04:24Z")
[QUOTE=Zsofia] Well, was there? There wasn’t in the country when my dad was a kid, but then they were poor. [/QUOTE] Well, it’s been around in it’s almost-current form for about 150 years (first factory-made TP was produced in 1857), but I guess not everybody used it… ---
**Author:** ![jjimm](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ba8739/32.png) [@jjimm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jjimm)\ **Post date:** [December 31, 2007, 4:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-people-wipe-on-chamber-pots/431649/25 "2007-12-31T16:13:53Z")
“Nockhole”. Heh heh. ---
**Author:** ![Philster](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/13edae/32.png) [@Philster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Philster)\ **Post date:** [December 31, 2007, 4:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-people-wipe-on-chamber-pots/431649/26 "2007-12-31T16:22:07Z")
Go to a slum in a third-world country, where many millions of people live. They eat and sleep in filth. They share the filthy spaces with animals, fleas, rats, wild dogs and their stinky bodies, all packed into tight quarters. The children play in it. The whole place stinks like something you can’t imagine. You don’t need to time travel to answer questions spurred by the OP. ---
**Author:** ![Tully\_Mars](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/7ab992/32.png) [@Tully\_Mars](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tully_Mars)\ **Post date:** [December 31, 2007, 4:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-people-wipe-on-chamber-pots/431649/27 "2007-12-31T16:33:43Z")
[QUOTE=Miss Purl McKnittington] Unless they happened to have, you know, a [goose](http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/rabela.htm) lying around. [/QUOTE] I’m laughing my ass off imagining someone trying to catch the goose the second time around. The first time, the poor, unsuspecting goose might be easy enough to catch, but the second time …? ---
**Author:** ![dangermom](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e274bd/32.png) [@dangermom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dangermom)\ **Post date:** [December 31, 2007, 5:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-people-wipe-on-chamber-pots/431649/28 "2007-12-31T17:37:09Z")
[QUOTE=Cluricaun] Why would anyone poop in a chamber pot? Sure people may have been used to hardier living back then, but nobody wants to sleep in a room that has shit sitting around in it. [/QUOTE] Further information: in early to mid-Victorian London, it was the practice for nightsoil men to come around and take people’s poop for a fee, which would then be carted to the edge of town and sold. It was quite common for a house to have a cesspit underneath, which was essentially a basement you filled with poop until you had someone come and take it away by the ton. Eventually, however, London grew to the point that the nightsoil men had to charge unacceptably high prices for their services (because it was such a long way to the edge of town), and many landlords stopped paying for it. In the poorer areas (and I don’t mean just slums, I mean the lower middle classes as well), human waste just piled up in cesspits, courtyards, and streets. In a house with several flats, poor people lived on the bottom floors with the filth, and middle-class types lived on the upper floors where it was cleaner. Between the piles of filth and the elderly water pipes, the results were that most Londoners were in the habit of consuming poop on a daily basis. Poor people frequently dipped their water right from the pits, since there wasn’t anywhere else to get it, but the ordinary water pumps situated every few blocks were frequently contaminated too. Even wealthy people couldn’t avoid it, really. And so when someone brought cholera to London, it spread easily. The story of the cholera and how London eventually dealt with its sewage problem is a fascinating one. It took decades, and even the Great Stink didn’t spur immediate action. ---
**Author:** ![chowder](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/977dab/32.png) [@chowder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/chowder)\ **Post date:** [December 31, 2007, 5:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-people-wipe-on-chamber-pots/431649/29 "2007-12-31T17:47:01Z")
[QUOTE=Tully Mars] I’m laughing my ass off imagining someone trying to catch the goose the second time around. The first time, the poor, unsuspecting goose might be easy enough to catch, but the second time …? [/QUOTE] …and an attorneys bag… “C’mere ya bastard lawyer, I’m, gonna wipe my nockhole on yer bag” ---
**Author:** ![Annie-Xmas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ecc23a/32.png) [@Annie-Xmas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Annie-Xmas)\ **Post date:** [December 31, 2007, 6:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-people-wipe-on-chamber-pots/431649/30 "2007-12-31T18:05:51Z")
[The Straight Dope](http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a2_373.html) ---
**Author:** ![Chief\_Pedant](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/a6a055/32.png) [@Chief\_Pedant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chief_Pedant)\ **Post date:** [December 31, 2007, 6:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-people-wipe-on-chamber-pots/431649/31 "2007-12-31T18:08:56Z")
[QUOTE=Zsofia] So I was watching the BBC _Pride and Prejudice_ and wondered - okay, I get that in the outhouse when my dad was a kid there were some Sears Roebuck catalogs and a bin of corn cobs. But when you kept a pot under your bed, how did you, you know, go about your business? In the Indian fashion, with a pitcher of water? Surely you didn’t use toilet paper, right? [/QUOTE] Where I grew up, in an undeveloped country, water is used for washing more that toilet paper or cobs. A pot with a snout is kept next to the chamber pot. ---
**Author:** ![Cluricaun](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/bb73d2/32.png) [@Cluricaun](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cluricaun)\ **Post date:** [December 31, 2007, 6:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-people-wipe-on-chamber-pots/431649/32 "2007-12-31T18:30:45Z")
[QUOTE=dangermom] Further information: in early to mid-Victorian London, it was the practice for nightsoil men to come around and take people’s poop for a fee, which would then be carted to the edge of town and **sold**. [/QUOTE] This thread is fun and it’s making me think, but who on Earth \*purchased \* poop?!?! For what reason? I have this horrible scene in my mind now of a farmers market shop stall with all sorts of turds strung up like sausages. “Poo here, get your poo here, all shapes, all sizes, get your poo here!” ---
**Author:** ![Spit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/76d3ee/32.png) [@Spit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spit)\ **Post date:** [December 31, 2007, 6:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-people-wipe-on-chamber-pots/431649/33 "2007-12-31T18:38:35Z")
[QUOTE=Miss Purl McKnittington] That all said, if we don’t know exactly what women did for their periods… [/QUOTE] My Grandmother owned (which has since passed to her sister) a diary that her Great-Grandmother (Maybe Great-Great) kept when they first moved west. One of the entries was that (and I summarize here) she had, in the rush of packing, forgotten her extra cloths for menstruation, and had to borrow from her sister-in-law. (whom apparently she did not care for that much) That would only have been 30 years or so from the setting of P&P, so I would assume most women did the same thing? ---
**Author:** ![monstro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ba9def/32.png) [@monstro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/monstro)\ **Post date:** [December 31, 2007, 6:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-people-wipe-on-chamber-pots/431649/34 "2007-12-31T18:47:17Z")
[QUOTE=Cluricaun] This thread is fun and it’s making me think, but who on Earth \*purchased \* poop?!?! For what reason? [/QUOTE] Fertilizer, is my guess. ---
**Author:** ![Cluricaun](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/bb73d2/32.png) [@Cluricaun](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cluricaun)\ **Post date:** [December 31, 2007, 6:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-people-wipe-on-chamber-pots/431649/35 "2007-12-31T18:59:31Z")
[QUOTE=monstro] Fertilizer, is my guess. [/QUOTE] Which is the only thing I could think of, but surely there was enough crap around from animals and the like that nobody would have that great of need for a few human turds. ---
**Author:** ![gaucho](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/c67d28/32.png) [@gaucho](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gaucho)\ **Post date:** [December 31, 2007, 7:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-people-wipe-on-chamber-pots/431649/36 "2007-12-31T19:00:11Z")
[QUOTE=Cluricaun] This thread is fun and it’s making me think, but who on Earth \*purchased \* poop?!?! For what reason? I have this horrible scene in my mind now of a farmers market shop stall with all sorts of turds strung up like sausages. “Poo here, get your poo here, all shapes, all sizes, get your poo here!” [/QUOTE] Tanners. Not a good job. ---
**Author:** ![Cluricaun](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/bb73d2/32.png) [@Cluricaun](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cluricaun)\ **Post date:** [December 31, 2007, 7:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-people-wipe-on-chamber-pots/431649/37 "2007-12-31T19:05:38Z")
[QUOTE=gaucho] Tanners. Not a good job. [/QUOTE] Tanners? As in animal hides? I’ve seen it done on deer hide and I don’t recall having to smear poop on them. What purpose would human feces serve in the process of making leather? ---
**Author:** ![Broomstick](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/broomstick/32/246_2.png) [@Broomstick](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Broomstick)\ **Post date:** [December 31, 2007, 7:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-people-wipe-on-chamber-pots/431649/38 "2007-12-31T19:42:23Z")
[QUOTE=Cluricaun] I suppose that you’re right, I just have a really hard time wrapping my mind around this one. Thank god for indoor plumbing. [/QUOTE] Well, if you think poo in the chamber pot is bad, people used to save urine until it went “stale” (turned to ammonia) and _use it as a cleaning agent_. Particularly for things like sheep fleeces (I’m mean, a _sheep_ has been living in that wool, and they don’t use toilet paper…) Inuit were known to use it as a shampoo. It’s a great degreaser ---
**Author:** ![dangermom](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e274bd/32.png) [@dangermom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dangermom)\ **Post date:** [December 31, 2007, 8:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-people-wipe-on-chamber-pots/431649/39 "2007-12-31T20:00:46Z")
It’s my understanding that the poo was sold to farmers. As it happens, I’m reading a nice little autobiography by a woman who grew up in my area 100 years ago. I just read the part about chores, and here is part of what she wrote about ironing day: > [@](#): > > If, by the time I came home from school, the ironing wasn’t finished…I was given the assignment of doing the table napkins and handkerchiefs. Once I had reached the age of menstruation, this was the time for me to do up my bundle of sanitary napkins. Mother or Grandmother stood guard to make sure my brother, his friends, or a boy cousin didn’t burst into the kitchen while I was taking care of this monthly chore. I assume Mother took care of hers while we were in school because I never saw her ironing her own sanitary supplies. So it seems that each woman was responsible for caring for her own personal supply of cloths, right up until the paper ones were developed. Here, it would have been about 1910. ---
**Author:** ![Spit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/76d3ee/32.png) [@Spit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spit)\ **Post date:** [December 31, 2007, 8:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-people-wipe-on-chamber-pots/431649/40 "2007-12-31T20:00:54Z")
[QUOTE=Broomstick] Well, if you think poo in the chamber pot is bad, people used to save urine until it went “stale” (turned to ammonia) and _use it as a cleaning agent_. Particularly for things like sheep fleeces (I’m mean, a _sheep_ has been living in that wool, and they don’t use toilet paper…) Inuit were known to use it as a shampoo. It’s a great degreaser [/QUOTE] …and it makes a handy coolant when the Russians shoot a hole in your radiator. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-people-wipe-on-chamber-pots/431649.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-people-wipe-on-chamber-pots/431649.md?page=3)