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Thursday, April 24, 2014

Toilets For Home and Travel In The Old Days

In the late 1940s and early 1950s in England in cities and suburbs in homes and in hotels beside every bed in a home or hotel you had a bedside cupboard housing a potty.
The bedside cupboard had a small drawer for your spectacles and watch. Underneath was a large cupboard with a door big enough for the potty.

In a house, if no potty cupboard, the potty went under the bed and a piece of cardboard or large plate covered it to prevent smells and keep off flies. Your mother or grandmother or the maid or hotel chambermaid emptied the potty in the morning.

Council houses in Edgware had a downstairs toilet which was outside the kitchen door to the side at the top of the indoor steps leading down to the garden.

You went in the woods only if you were on a motorway, or camping.  On a day out with children you took the potty in the boot of the car. Some potties were designed with lids.

Wikipedia shows chamber pots from Greek times, people throwing the contents of pots out of windows into the streets in medieval times, and modern chamber pots.


Nowadays you can buy devices for men and women which look like funnels. Some people keep them in their cars.

A quick hunt around the internet reveals folding toilets, like camping stools, for camping and travelling.

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