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Page 1 of 2 Alma Williams goes in search of a public convenience and flushes out the story of its sad decline in the UK since the glory of Victorian days. Urgent demand from small American child to granny: "Please can I go to the bathroom? Now!"She was standing cross-legged in the middle of Ripon market square, still with its underground Victorian public convenience. A bathroom. What a misnomer in a market place - and what an understatement! But we all use such euphemisms as this, from the formal to the friendly. Words such as "convenience" or "toilet" are just delicate descriptions that avoid describing the real function. "The ladies'' is a possessive noun with its adjunct suppressed - "The ladies' what?" a Martian might well ask. "Lavatory" is another misnomer because it refers by origin only to washing. "Spending a penny" relates to a long-outdated price: the going rate in 2004 is 20p here, with local councils still hanging on to their right, established in the Public Health Act of 1936, "to charge such fees as they think fit". Even our modern "loo" is a French corruption going back to the times when people emptied chamber pots into the street, shouting out "Gardez l'eau!" The most accurate and functional name remains that of the water-closet, abbreviated to WC. My grandmother even managed to abbreviate that to "the double-you" Social changeVisits to the smallest room have gone from public performance to personal privacy.It is strange that we still take such action to avoid embarrassment - in deeds as well as in words. Historically, there was much more openness about physical needs: the monks at Fountains Abbey, like the Romans before them, had rows of communal seats; Louis XIV announced his betrothal from his commode; 18th-century newly-weds had dual outdoor earth-closets with a cut-out heart in the wooden door. So why did this openness move on to discretion, reticence and secrecy? Could the reason be the great advances in public health in Victorian England - the provision of sewage systems, pumping stations and separate domestic access to clean running water? The great motivation here was the 1849 cholera epidemic that killed 55,000 people, leading to that crucial link between lack of sanitation and spread of disease. So cesspits and raw sewage in the streets gave way to networks of pipes and drains and the delivery of uncontaminated water to homes. It was changes like these that made possible personal privacy and the preservation of dignity. It is also strange that, at a time when men's trousers were called "unmention-ables", when piano legs were concealed from public view with lacy frills and ladies discreetly asked for "curl paper" instead of toilet paper, the Victorians built bold, blatantly obvious public conveniences in their cities. These were solid monuments of glory intended to last for 100 years, with fancy brickwork, elaborate tiling and willow-patterned closets, brass fittings and wrought-iron railings. Often underground and sited in the middle of carriageways, these Victorian institutions are now being dismantled - and only sometimes replaced because Local Authorities do not have a statutory obligation to provide public toilet amenities. A Private Members' Bill in 1994 and a further attempt in 1999 both tried and unfortunately failed to improve things. The WI, too, has had a go in the past at rectifying the situation, with resolutions in 1946 and another in 1956 that urged the abolition of turnstiles in all women's conveniences. Technological progressAny new facilities we get do not show many signs that the basic design of the lavatory pan or the works behind the scenes have changed much since Queen Elizabeth I's godson, Sir John Harrington, who invented the first flush toilet with cistern, overflow and waste pipes. His idea didn't catch on, even though the Queen was an ardent supporter of personal hygiene and had a bath every month "whether she needed it or not". |
