Violence in the most unusual of places.
Thomas Crapper lodged a patent for a cantilever toilet (Reyburn, 1989 – Flushed with Pride). For those of you to whom, like me, this means nothing, a cantilever toilet is one where the bowl projects out of the wall, but all of the essential working parts are hidden within it.
A cantilever toilet in all its austere glory.
Having searched for patents after 1890 on the espacenet database, I can only assume the patent was registered before this date. (And, for those of you interested in defining search windows, sometime after Crappers birth in 1836).
The reason for his designing the toilet was not to test his engineering skill – that had already been certified by the development of his “water waste preventor” and several royal appointments. It was far more down to earth.
As the flushing toilet became more common towards the end of the 19th century, great institutions such as prisons and mental asylums were interested in joining the sanitary revolution. Victorian toilets, however, were rather sturdy.
The gigantic, wrought iron cistern. The length of brass or copper piping which connected it to the bowl, the chain with the “pull and let go” china weight on the end. Even the ballcock – which in those days were all brass. The flushing toilet presented a weapon based buffet to these institutional guests who were violently inclined.
If you looked at either of these things and your first thought is “that would make a good mace under the right circumstances” you may have anger management issues.
I have yet to find any records of a flushing toilet actually being weaponised, though I have no doubt the potential was there. Sifting through court records it is not uncommon to find that people are assaulted with chamber pots or toilet jugs. The Old Bailey, for example, records the trial of Thomas Henry Williamson, who tried to murder a man whilst armed with a toilet jug and fire poker.
The fact that chamber pot assaults were not uncommon, combined with the added insult of being assaulted with a scatalogical implement would seem to offer a strong incentive for prisons especially to install flushing toilets. But the necessity of concealing the architectural gubbins and protecting prison warders from riots of toilet armed criminals fell to the brain of one of Britains greatest plumbers.
It is nothing new to say that prisons are designed to control potentially violent people, and that the architecture will have the prevention of violence built into its functionality. It is, perhaps, a nice reminder of the thoroughness of this approach that saw Thomas Crapper make an overlooked architectural contribution to the history of violence.
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