Who Invented the Toilet?

Myth: Thomas Crapper invented the toilet - although Thomas Crapper was a master plumber he had little or nothing to do with inventing the water closet (nor is the word crap derived from his name).

The earliest toilets so far found are those at Skara Brae in the Orkneys, which was occupied at about 3000 BC. In ancient India and parts of the Middle East public toilets that used water to wash away the waste have been known for over 4,000 years.

While toilets date back to ancient times, the modern toilet can be more accurately traced back to Sir John Harrington, godson of Queen Elizabeth I, and his invention called the Ajax (i.e. "a jakes"; jakes being an old slang word for toilet) - an indoor water closet. In 1596, Harington wrote a book called A New Discourse upon a Stale Subject: The Metamorphosis of Ajax (catchy title) about his invention, but at the time his water closet was universally ridiculed by his peers for being a rather useless invention. By all accounts Sir John and Queen Elizabeth were the only owners of a WC in their day.

The idea of a flushable toilet never completely disappeared, and in 1738 a valve-type flush toilet was invented by J. F. Brondel. Between 1738 and 1852 a number of designs were invented and patents registered, including the silent siphon discharge system and the s-trap (preventing the escaping smell of sewers) - a design that is basically the same as modern toilets with few modifications.

A London plumber by the name of Thomas Crapper bought the rights to manufacture a toilet design in the late 1800s and stamped the words ‘T Crapper & Co’ on the bowl of his toilets...

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