Privy, lavatory, convenience, the small room…whatever you call it the toilet is one part of life that we couldn’t do without. In the UK we enjoy excellent ‘facilities’ (with the possible exception of certain pubs – you know who you are!), and it doesn’t take too far a trip to have us all reeling at the many different offerings of our continental neighbours.
Often under-acclaimed the modern toilet is a miracle of design, arrived at through a long and distinguished history. Here are some interesting ‘Loo Facts’
- A commonly cited urban myth, the flush toilet was not actually invented by Thomas Crapper – it was invented by the Ancient Chinese;
- The modern english toilet is more accurately accredited to Sir John Harrington who invented and built a convenience similar to those we know today for his godmother – Queen Elizabeth. Ridiculed by his peers, however, he never built another.
- Thomas Crapper did actually file several patents, however, not one of them was for a flush toilet, and it seems we can’t even credit the word ‘crap’to the estemmed Mr Crapper – this word first appeared in the dictionary in 1846, some 16 years before Mr C. even thought of plumbing!
- The average person spends 3 years of their life on the toilet.
- World toilet day is the 19th November.
- Only 7% of homes in Afganistan have a flush toilet, yet 19% have a television!
- The first time there were separate male and female toilets was at a posh party in paris 1739.
These are just a few of the myriad facts that we could find about our porcelain friends. Try google-ing for yourself and feel free to email us on info@prettyprivies.co.uk if you find anything you think we should include here!