American Revolutionary Toilets
At top, the toilet from Ben Franklin's house
in Philadelphia.
Below that, a nearby sign saying:
This brick-lined, circular "necessary" (privy)
pit was probably built when
Franklin expanded his house in 1786-1787.
A stone drain connecting to a vertical brick
pipe conveyed waste into the pit either from
Franklin's "water closet", "bathing room",
or "run-off" from the sunken areaway outside
the cellar kitchen.
This is a remnant of areaway foundation
retaining wall. Vertical brick pipe.
[all those calling out areas on a floor plan]
And also:
"... [Dr. Franklin] is obliged to use the warm bath
every day to ease the pain of the gallstone.
His bathing vessel is said to be a curiosity;
it is copper, in the form of a slipper;
he sits in the heel and his legs go under
the vamp, on the instep he has a place to
fix his book, and here he sits and
enjoys himself ..."
Rev. Belknap to Rev. Manasseh Cutler,
Nov 18, 1785
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Elsewhere on the same property you find
another privy pit and a nearby water well.
While Benjamin Franklin was clearly a genius in
some areas, the very close spacing of a
drinking water well and privy pit on his property
makes you wonder what he was thinking...
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Rose George's
The Big Necessity: The Unmentionable World
of Human Waste and Why It Matters
is a fascinating description of sanitation conditions
around the world.
"2.6 billion people don't have sanitation. [....]
Four in ten people have no access to any latrine, toilet, bucket, or box."
In September 2009, Morna Gregory and Sian James published a book titled
Toilets of the World.
It's pretty much the same theme that you find here — photographs
and commentary on other people's plumbing.
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A Sani-Flush blue border indicates a toilet that I've used.
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How long have my Toilets of the World pages been around?
I'm not exactly sure, although I'm pretty sure they started in the
mid 1990s as a single page on a Purdue University server.
The Internet Archive Wayback Machine lets you see
what that looked like as far back as January 17, 1999.
My cromwell-intl.com domain appeared in September, 2001,
although the Wayback Machine didn't notice the one enormous
toilet page until
January 17, 2002.
Some time soon after that it was split into categories, and they
have grown ever since.
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If you're not bored yet, you might be interested in
(or at least tolerate):
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