Yes, this fellow was real- he lived not a mile away from my home in South London, at 12 Thornsett Road London SE20, and only reluctantly and belatedly has a Blue Plaque been erected outside the house. Just round the corner from my current home, is a Blue Plaque to Sergeant Bourne, the quartermaster at Rorke’s Drift, scene of the film ZULU. A pioneer not in the invention of the U-bend, or the water closet itelf, Crapper was a manufacturer in a large way of the whole catalogue of vitreous enamel/porcelain pipes and sanitary ware. He is buried at Elmer’s End Cemetery, not far away, also in South London, in the company of Dr W.G.Grace, ace cricketer (an English pastime, I’m told), and Frederick Wolseley, inventor of the sheep shearing rig that made Australia famous, and owner of the subsequent Wolseley Car Company.
You can easily spot Crapper’s tomb amongst all the Victorian angels, cement urns, granite Celtic crosses of his neighbours: for his tomb may not be that imposing or large- but it is unmistakable: it is bright white, shiny vitreous porcelain, no doubt made by the lads at his own factory. A fitting tribute to a master of the sanitary world.
If you were to go down to the new Jamie Oliver Italian restaurant in West London , at the gigantic new shopping mall of Westfield, there in the men’s toilets you will see wonderful modern examples of Thomas Crapper’s sanitary ware: both the pan and the high water closet, are authentic copies of the Victorian originals. All working wonderfully. Jamie has a good sense of humor and taste, but we all knew that.
This the column?
Looks like white marble to me.
Grave of Thomas Crapper, Beckenham Cemetery and Crematorium, Elmers End Road, Beckenham, Greater London.
Yes, but amid a sea of sad gray, it does stand out.
I wonder how many have pissed on his grave…
: The modern flush toilet was invented by a 19th-century British plumber named Sir Thomas Crapper.
Status: False.
Analysis: Thomas Crapper (1836-1910) did exist and is credited with improving the functionality of the early flush toilet (or “water closet,” as it was then called), but he did not, contrary to popular belief, invent the pseudo-eponymous bathroom appliance from scratch.
Credit for that goes to 16th-century author Sir John Harrington, who not only came up with the idea but installed an early working prototype in the palace of Queen Elizabeth I, his godmother. The first patent for a flushing water closet was issued to Alexander Cummings in 1775, sixty years before Thomas Crapper was born.
The son of a Yorkshire steamboat captain, Tom Crapper’s destiny was fixed when he was apprenticed to a master plumber at the age of 14. He owned his own plumbing shop in London by the time he was 25. Crapper was awarded nine patents for plumbing innovations during his lifetime, three of them consisting of improvements to the flushing water closet. Though he made his name as a sanitary engineer to bluebloods, Crapper himself was lowborn and never knighted, so it’s a mystery why storytellers consistently award him the title “Sir.”
He is sometimes erroneously referred to as “Sir John Crapper.”
Resources
•The History of Toilets
•The Flush Toilet: A Tribute to Ingenuity
•Sir Thomas Crapper: Real or Myth?
Found this online
Rather depends on one’s definition of “modern”, don’tcha know?