# Public\* bathrooms (i.e. toilets, restrooms, lavatories) before sewer pipes and flush toilets **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [June 23, 2013, 1:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/public-bathrooms-i-e-toilets-restrooms-lavatories-before-sewer-pipes-and-flush-toilets/661674 "2013-06-23T01:32:38Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 8\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [June 24, 2013, 6:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/public-bathrooms-i-e-toilets-restrooms-lavatories-before-sewer-pipes-and-flush-toilets/661674/21 "2013-06-24T18:49:37Z")
> [@Broomstick](#): > > ETA: yes, the “generic Ben Franklin” really was expected to “amble off” to do his business in the outhouse. Or use a chamber pot. I’ve seen thrones whose seat had a hole (specifically, it was in Stirling Castle); a chamberpot could be inserted and removed from the back. That way the king didn’t need to leave the room to attend the kind of business one cannot delegate. ---
**Author:** ![Slithy\_Tove](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slithy_tove/32/18248_2.png) [@Slithy\_Tove](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Slithy_Tove)\ **Post date:** [June 24, 2013, 9:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/public-bathrooms-i-e-toilets-restrooms-lavatories-before-sewer-pipes-and-flush-toilets/661674/22 "2013-06-24T21:11:29Z")
Rio de Janero had no sewer system: human wastes was scooped into baskets and carried on slaves’ heads to be dumped at the beach. The porters were called tigres from the streaks that were bleached on their skin. ---
**Author:** ![Claverhouse](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/13edae/32.png) [@Claverhouse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Claverhouse)\ **Post date:** [June 24, 2013, 10:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/public-bathrooms-i-e-toilets-restrooms-lavatories-before-sewer-pipes-and-flush-toilets/661674/23 "2013-06-24T22:05:35Z")
Last year there was a BBC documentary on the history of such sanitation, from Rome to the golden lavatories of today’s far east; including outhouses, but connected to the sewers, of the back-to-back housing of the poor in the recent past of Britain. **[Google](https://www.google.com/search?num=100&safe=off&client=firefox-a&hs=IDG&rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-US%3Aofficial&q=bbc+toilet+unspoken+history&oq=bbc++toilet+unspoken&gs_l=serp.1.0.0i22i30l3.5575.17226.0.21122.32.24.6.2.2.0.368.3898.2j17j4j1.24.0...0.0...1c.1.17.serp.pJYUlxqaj18)** **[Review](http://www.theyorker.co.uk/arts/tv/britishtv/11953)** ---
**Author:** ![bob\_2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bob_2/32/3341_2.png) [@bob\_2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bob_2)\ **Post date:** [June 24, 2013, 10:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/public-bathrooms-i-e-toilets-restrooms-lavatories-before-sewer-pipes-and-flush-toilets/661674/24 "2013-06-24T22:22:55Z")
In the days before flush toilets the ‘honey wagon’ would come round ever night to take the soil away. If you go back to the 17th century then places like London must have stunk. From Pepys Diary: “Saturday 20 October 1660 This morning one came to me to advise with me where to make me a window into my cellar in lieu of one which Sir W. Batten had stopped up, and going down into my cellar to look I stepped into a great heap of turds.” [http://martinfrost.ws/htmlfiles/great\_stink.html](http://martinfrost.ws/htmlfiles/great_stink.html) > [@](#): > > During the 18th century, a new invention, the flush toilet, or water-closet, became more and more popular; the handy chamber-pot kept in the sideboard was no longer socially acceptable. By one of those curious paradoxes that occasionally embarrass the reformer, however, London at the beginning of the 19th Century was more dangerously polluted than ever due to the increase in the provision of these water-closets. The new WCs were so arranged that they discharged into the old cess-pits, which consequently overflowed into the surface water sewers beneath the streets. As these had been earlier designed to collect rainwater only, and to discharge into the rivers and ditches connected to the Thames, the improved domestic arrangements unaccompanied by improvements in the sewerage system brought London to the verge of disaster, a giant step forward for personal hygiene and two steps backward for public sanitation. ---
**Author:** ![APB](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/8e8cbc/32.png) [@APB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/APB)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2013, 9:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/public-bathrooms-i-e-toilets-restrooms-lavatories-before-sewer-pipes-and-flush-toilets/661674/25 "2013-06-25T09:19:03Z")
> [@bob\_2](#): > > In the days before flush toilets the ‘honey wagon’ would come round ever night to take the soil away. > > If you go back to the 17th century then places like London must have stunk. > > From Pepys Diary: > “Saturday 20 October 1660 > This morning one came to me to advise with me where to make me a window into my cellar in lieu of one which Sir W. Batten had stopped up, and going down into my cellar to look I stepped into a great heap of turds.” Not so fast. The full sentence reads, > [@](#): > > This morning one came to me to advise with me where to make me a window into my cellar in lieu of one which Sir W. Batten had stopped up; and going down into my cellar to look, I stepped into a great heap of turds, by which I find that Mr. Turners house of office is full and comes into my cellar, which doth trouble me; but I will have it helped. In other words, Pepys did not usually have heaps of shit in his cellar, he regarded it as a serious problem when he discovered that he did and he then thought it necessary to do something about it, probably as a matter of urgency. So he viewed this in exactly the same way that we would a broken pipe from a toilet. The less obvious point is that properly maintained cesspits, which Turner’s clearly wasn’t, usually didn’t smell. Which is precisely why most people did make an effort to maintain them properly. ---
**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\ **Post date:** [June 26, 2013, 11:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/public-bathrooms-i-e-toilets-restrooms-lavatories-before-sewer-pipes-and-flush-toilets/661674/26 "2013-06-26T23:10:08Z")
> [@Nava](#): > > Or use a chamber pot. I’ve seen thrones whose seat had a hole (specifically, it was in Stirling Castle); a chamberpot could be inserted and removed from the back. That way the king didn’t need to leave the room to attend the kind of business one cannot delegate. Exactly what I was going to ask. Why not use a chamber pot, and have one of your many, um, servants dispose of the contents for you? ---
**Author:** ![Grateful-UnDead](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/ccd318/32.png) [@Grateful-UnDead](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Grateful-UnDead)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2013, 3:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/public-bathrooms-i-e-toilets-restrooms-lavatories-before-sewer-pipes-and-flush-toilets/661674/27 "2013-06-27T03:38:49Z")
> [@alphaboi867](#): > > In case anyone’s wondering about those round holes in the front of the toilets; Romans cleaned themselves with wet sponges attached to sticks. At the public toilets you rented one from the attendant. Oh. I had just assumed that the Romans were really, really, really well hung. ---
**Author:** ![clairobscur](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/839c29/32.png) [@clairobscur](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/clairobscur)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2013, 7:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/public-bathrooms-i-e-toilets-restrooms-lavatories-before-sewer-pipes-and-flush-toilets/661674/28 "2013-06-27T07:44:40Z")
> [@Ludovic](#): > > It’s where you put the three seashells. What? I must be dense, I still don’t understand. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/public-bathrooms-i-e-toilets-restrooms-lavatories-before-sewer-pipes-and-flush-toilets/661674.md?page=1)