>> Speaker A: There are some words in that sentence that I never thought would land in a sentence together, but my goodness, they have. Welcome back to privy. Privy is a podcast about bathrooms recorded in my home bathroom. I am your host, hunter Hoover, and I love bathrooms. Uh, and this week's episode is kind of a different one. Uh, it's one of those that has sat in, um, hunter's mystery notepad file on my phone, uh, of topic ideas that have just kind of come up, and I stashed this one
away a long time ago. This is probably one of those kind of, like, original list privy episodes. And so we're going to visit one this week that, uh, yeah, it's been on deck for some time, but, uh, before we do, I got to say, someone absolutely just decimated the toilet paper dispenser in the staff bathroom where I work. If I didn't know better, I would think somebody was trying to stand on this dang thing. And it's not a big one. It's not
like, one of the big metal ones. It's like one of the small plastic ones in contrast to a big metal one. But, yeah, it is, like half. Well, it was our custodians where I work, they're stellar. Shout out to the custodial staff. They're awesome. Uh, but, yeah, this thing was hanging on by, like, two screws one day when you go in. And what's interesting is you don't realize how accustomed you are to pulling toilet paper when it is oriented a specific way.
Because I would say that this thing was, if a normal thing of toilet paper is at 180 line degree, this thing was probably at a 45 degree angle, and pulling sheet of toilet paper off of that was nigh on impossible. You're getting, like, one sheet at a time, and you don't realize what that struggle is going to be like to obtain toilet paper until the roll is at an angle, because it took me so long to get the paper off the
roll. And then the other people have to be thinking, geez, Hunter is taking a triple flush on the. Huh huh? Because he's been in there for a bit, when, in actuality, I just can't make the toilet paper roll function when it is at an angle. And they also, like. Also they cheap out on toilet paper. They have jank toilet paper. It rips off real easy. So you can't really get any momentum built up on the toilet paper thing. Plus, it's a skew. It's just a mess, to tell you the truth about
it. And then you also. Yeah, it's no great. Anyway, welcome to the pod. Uh, and in the past. Wow, we really crashed into that intro. Uh, and now we're going to crash right out of it. In the past, we have looked at the etymology or the background or history of different words related to bathrooming, uh, and the privy and the potty and things that take place and happen and are affixed in the bathroom. And perhaps an all time favorite.
Today, we're going to look at another of these and perhaps an all time favorite of edgy christian teens and tell it how it is. Midwestern dads everywhere. Here's the word crap. Ah, crap. And I think on the surface, when people hear the term crap, and also if the term crap is, I understand that there's, like, a small swath of people out there to whom the phrase crap is offensive. And if that is the case, be warned, you're going to hear the word crap a significant amount this episode.
Uh, I'm not convinced it's a bad word, and we're going to see why this episode. And I think the surface, when people hear crap, the term crap, they have heard or think of none other than Thomas Crapper or as his. Yeah, but the past name, the last name, and knowing he has something to do with toilets. But what does he really have to do with a. Our favorite home fixture, you. Good old toilet right here. Uh, and even more importantly, what does he have to do with the word
crap? Uh, and it turns out the answer is both a whole lot and very little somehow at the same time. Thomas Crapper was, first of all, and I'm just going to say it, what an unfortunate name. Like, thank God this kid was not born in the year 2022 of our lord, because I watch kids make fun and tease kids for the most nonsense things. Could you imagine your name being crapper and having to be in public high school or middle school right now? What a world. I'm sure there's somebody out
there. If your name's Crapper and you're hearing this, our heart goes out to you. Uh, but Thomas Crapper was born, uh, to a sailor. He, uh, was the son of a sailor, which is almost as good as a son of a shoemaker, which we talked about last episode. Uh, but Thomas Crapper was the son of a sailor born in Yorkshire, England, in 1836. Now, there isn't a lot known about his youth, and there's almost
nothing known about his birth. Uh, all we really have is a baptismal record, and they often baptized within the first year of life. So that's how we're pinning down his age. But when Thomas turned 16 or 17 years old, he went to apprentice as a plumber with his older brother, George.
Thomas learned a trade, and after spending his time as a journeyman plumber, uh, ah, he set himself up not just as a tradesman, but also as a business person, because he went and he set himself up as what is called a sanitary engineer. Now, this is, to best of my knowledge, a person who does engineering in the world of sanitary and hygiene science and
technologies. In this sanitary engineering position, he used his own brass foundry and workshops, uh, as well as the skills he gained as a journeyman plumber, ah, to create and found the Thomas Crapper and company in London, where he engineered and sold plumbing equipment. So Thomas Crapper, he was a sanitary, ah, engineer who opened up a business and sold plumbing equipment. So, so far, we're on track for how Thomas Crapper has influenced yeoldi
porcelain pot. In fact, um, Thomas, Mr. Crapper, if you will. Uh, that's going to be it. Mr. Crapper has got to be the way to go. Uh, he invented, and it will turn out, reinvented, a number of toilets and plumbing parts during his life. And it makes me wonder when was the last big toilet engineering update? Because I feel like things have been mostly the same for the last 50 plus
years. I feel like if you rolled back into the 1950s, they're using the same basic technology that we've got posted up pretty much everywhere right now. I mean, I'm sure there's been some updates, but no real major breakthroughs. You know what I mean? We need a new toilet breakthrough. That's what we need. Actually, these breakthroughs are probably one of these weird bidets that is like a strap onto your toilet. That's probably some new breakthrough thing.
Who knows? Anyway, his, uh, patents that Mr. Crapper had include, um, a redesign for the s bend plumbing trap. Now, the s bend trap was the thing that when your toilet leaves your building, uh, it goes through the s bend trap. But up until now, it had to have, like, a backflow and had to be sometimes cleaned, and it would get dried out, and it have all sorts of weird things that would happen. Um, and so he updated it, and this new one was called the ubend
trap. And we're going to probably do a full coverage of this because the, uh, ubend plumbing trap, uh, may have changed indoor plumbing forever, but, uh, it's an improvement to the S bend in that it didn't require a backflow anymore. But this ubend also trapped unwanted and toxic
gas in the actual bend. So once you flush it and it goes through all the awful gas and harmful toxins and things that could come through the air, up and out of your toilet, like some sort of creepy ghostbusters monster waiting to make you smell and possibly get sick, the U bend stops that. It's the line of defense. The U bend didn't dry out, didn't need an overflow. It's one of those inventions that you have used and interacted with hundreds, if not thousands of times, and probably never thought
twice about it. Mr. Crapper also had this thing called the valveless waste preventer, which is just a fancy way of saying, uh, a valveless flush. This mechanism existed separate from the toilet. So when you turn around, if you're sitting on your toilet, like I am now, and you turn around, uh, you've got like a tank back here. And that tank is filled with water and it's got another friend that Mr. Crapper has invented. We're going
to talk about him in just a second. But this valveless waste preventer would take the tank that is on the back of your toilet. It would separate it from the toilet and it would lift it up above the toilet and attach a chain and the whole thing. Um, so that when you pulled the chain, this allowed the water to move down, thus flushing your toilet. You can see why they attached it to the toilet itself. Mr. Crapper also invented what was called an automatic flushing
toilet. Now, this one might not be a bad thing to try to get revamped. Uh, if you have kids or around people who regularly forget to flush, I don't know how you could. I got dang tell you not to forget to flush. Every ten days on these episodes. It's literally how we say goodbye. So don't forget to flush. Um, but this automatic flushing toilet, essentially what this thing was, it was a spring
loaded toilet seat. Now, if you hear that and say this, hm, seems like the beginning of either a bad comic or like some sort of practical joke, you'd be right. Because you'd sit down, you'd leave your brown, see, it rhymes with down. Uh, but then when you stood, the spring would push the seat up, triggering the flush mechanism. Now. And it would have worked too, if it hadn't been for those meddling kids and they're spring loaded.
Getting stuck. No. Uh, but yeah, this spring would get stuck and you would stand up and then it would let go too late and it would essentially spank the user. So, good. So the thing was scrapped because it didn't flush like it did flush. But people also readily just got smacked in the behind by this spring loaded toilet seat. It's pretty great. And I'll also say there's probably a market for these nowadays, but one's better off not thinking about that.
Another toilet fixture that hails from Mr. Crapper's mind and company was what attached to the end of that chain thing called. It's called the ballcock. Now, listen, I didn't name this. Thomas Crapper named it. I mean, his last name's Crapper, for goodness sake. So he invented this thing, and he called it the ballcock, which, if you don't really get the vowels in that word, you're not really doing it right. Ballcock. And the ballcock is that bloaty air pocket thing at the end
of the rod in the top. Wow. Ballcock, bloaty air pocket rod. There are some words in that sentence that I never thought would land in a sentence together, but my goodness, they have. But it's the bloaty air pocket thing at the end of the spool or rod in the top of your toilet that floats on top of the water that then refills your toilet bowl, but then also cuts off when it is full. As the thing floats, it rises and it triggers the cutoff mechanism.
You've seen this. If you've ever looked in the top of a toilet, you've looked at a ballcock. Could have called it the bladder stop or the floaty pluggy friend. Yeah, I'm going with floaty pluggy friend. Uh, but anyway, the thing is, he invented these things, and many of them have been used, and many of them, when he invented them, were immediately used, and some even invented for use outside of the bathroom. They're used in factories and other places.
Mr. Crapper knew he needed to sell his goods and patents, because besides being an engineer, Mr. Crapper was also a savvy businessman. One of the ways that, uh, Mr. Crapper went about selling his toiletries and fixtures and whatnot and not is he set up the world's very first bath toilet and sink showroom in Marlboro Road. He got his name out there. Uh, and with this showcase room, people could come and they could sit and they could
demonstrate and they could demo these products. Now, they're not naked and they actually taking their clothes off in the shower, but they could come in and sit in the bath with their clothes on and feel how it felt. They could sit on the toilet and feel how the toilet felt they could flush the toilet and see how it flushed. And a couple of things here. This choice to have these bathroom showrooms was viewed as, quote, scandalous as people could go and sit and can
stop and, quote, test the feel. Now, uh, it was a different time because the fact that this was viewed as crass and scandalous. If only the folks who are getting on their high horse about this could have foreseen the Home Depot toilet sections. It's just toilets, um, like woofie. And you can just sit on all of them in a row if you so desire. So imagine that this one is probably at least likely tastefully done, set up to look like a showroom bathroom. But a couple things happened with Thomas's
career. First, as your product gets out there and you put your name on stuff, people begin to notice the name. The Thomas Crapper and company had their logo and brand printed all on all the brass and metalworks that they made. This includes brass fixtures for the city, manhole covers, plumbing fixtures, et cetera. And when you're in England, part of the passive tourist thing to look at is you can go look at these manhole covers that still have Thomas Crapper and company, uh, molded into them.
As the name got spread, the english government got word and commissioned, uh, Mr. Crapper to, uh, supply some plumbing. King Edward VI, at the time of the commissioning, he was merely Prince Albert Edward commissioned Mr. Crapper to fix, uh, and supply the plumbing for his royal, like, living quarters palace. This job included 30 bathrooms with
wood seats and enclosures. Now, I know I've said this before, and when we talked about the porta potty episode, about how og porta potties were probably made out of wood, uh, but, man, we have got to rethink these wooden toilet
seats. And I'm sure, like, 99% of the time it was fine, but then that 1%, when that seat just gets a little randy and it's got, like, a splinter, you don't want a splinter in your butt, and you especially don't want to get a splinter in your butt when you're shimmying and moving about to try to wipe. Stop making wooden seats. The reality is, though, they were the norm back then. Heck, they had wooden teeth, for goodness sakes. They might as well have wooden
toilet seats. Hey, if it's good enough for a toilet seat, it's good enough for my teeth. Am I right? This job, this commissioning from King Edward VI gave Thomas Crapper his first royal warrant. Later, when King Eddie became full fledged king, and not just prince, gonna be king and I just can't wait to be all right. He must have liked Crapper's work because he commissioned Crapper again. He went for it. Round two. King George V. His son commissioned, uh,
him both when he was prince and king. Thomas Crapper made a killing off of the royal family by supplying them sweet, sweet chambers to leave Brown in. Mr. Crapper retired and passed the company to his nephew George and business partner, Robert Hurham. I'm going to get that hurm. Hurham. I'm m going to say waram. Thomas Crapper later passed away six years later from colon cancer. And the Thomas Crapper and company lived on, but not in the way many would have hoped. Robert
Huerem's son, Robert Huerem. Which man, that makes things confusing. This is why the junior senior thing gets real confusing, because when I have to type and read and say sentences like Robert Waram's son, Robert Waram Jr. It's difficult on people like me. But the second Robert Waram, like, we'll call him Waram. The younger, uh, retired in 1966 and in doing so, sold the crapper company, and three years later, uh, the company was sold and liquidated and went out of use. Flash forward to
our modern times. A holding company repurchased the Thomas Crapper and Company in modernity and continues to produce historic victorian era bathroom fittings alongside its other holdings. Other bathroom productions. The current Thomas Crapper website boasts quality luxury British made bathrooms made in Britain from solid brass, just like they were in the 18 hundreds. And if you've ever been in a schwanky bathroom, I guarantee you they're trying to buy this type stuff. Like, that's the
clientele for these things. They're very fancy looking. And in many of Crapper's, uh, old advertisements, he claimed to have invented the flush toilet and water waste preventer. Rather, Thomas Crapper and company mostly just made improvements. And though there are a number of patents awarded, most are for the improvement of toilets and toilet fixtures. But he was an avid businessman and the brand survived him and probably went so much farther than he ever intended.
So much so that for a long time it was believed that he, Thomas Crapper, was the inventor of the flush toilet. But this is not the case. And so we might ask, how did this story come to be? How did people come to believe that Thomas Crapper was the inventor of the flush toilet? It sounds like it could be a thing of really misleading marketing.
But as the tale goes, there were some american military servicemen stationed in England in World War I. They go to the bathroom to leave their bathrooming, and they look on the fixtures and they see Thomas Crapper and company, that old brandings back again, branded on all the toilets and cisterns they were using. And they began to use the term crapper as slang for taking a dump, taking a crap.
But here's the deal. Thomas Crapper didn't invent the flush toilet, and he isn't the reason for the word crap either. The word crap has a 15th century tie, referring to things that are unwanted amongst what is good, such as weeds amongst corn crops or residue from rendering food or
metals. It is likely from the middle English use of another word, the term crappy or croppy, which sounds like crop, food crop, but refers to the not good portions of that food crop, which would be trodden underfoot, the croppy or crappy. This would also often be referred to as shaft. It's the parts you don't want. Likely Thomas Crapper's name is at some point either a misspelling or a purposeful misspelling, uh, of a family name of the
name cropper. C r o p p r p. I said p p p p e r. Likely having farmers at some point in the family. So it could be said that though the word, quote, crap does not come from Thomas Crapper, Thomas Crapper's name may derive from crap. It was not used as a term for defecating until 1846, and even then it was likely used to refer to the stuff in the bowl, the crap itself being the thing you got rid of but didn't want, rather than making it a
verb. The toilet itself is not referred to as, quote, a crapper until the 1930s. The aforementioned, uh, american military servicemen story I shared with you and all this because old Tommy had to leave his name on everything he made, and some Yankee found it and started calling toilets crappers as a joke. And it stuck. Thomas Crapper did not invent the term crap is not the reason the toilet is called a crapper, and he did not invent the flush toilet, but he did make
it better. And some of his improvements are still used widely in home and industrial plumbing today. But as for who invented the flush toilet, that's for another episode. We've talked a lot about Mr. Crapper and his wonderful wares, and I want to pivot briefly to a brief segment of poo in the news. This, ah, this segment of poo in the news is, uh, the product of both the things that pop up on my TikTok as well as turns, uh, out.
CNN had to cover this nonsense. So, um, as we've talked about in the past on privy, uh, access to public bathrooms, free public bathrooms that are clean and good to use can be difficult in any place, especially large cities. And so there is this young lady from New York, uh, who, after having a negative experience, uh, the article is titled the New Yorker is using TikTok to document the best public bathrooms in the
city. And so what happened is this New York girl is going around sharing TikTok videos about public bathrooms throughout New York, and she tells this story, uh, to the inner viewers about how she nearly wet herself trying to find a bathroom that she would be comfortable using in New York. And I've never been to the streets of New York to find a public bathroom, but it seems like it could be feasible that it would be difficult.
She went to a McDonald's where she had to use the restroom, but they made her buy a product first, totally within their right. And so she began to make these videos documenting the free and clean bathroom she could use when needed, uh, throughout New York City. Uh, and essentially what happened is, as most things on the Internet, people watched it and went, huh, huh, that's interesting. And then it just kind of went Kablamo. And we began to share, like,
public door lock codes. Through this, people would get the door lock codes to certain places and share those. So that way, now you're making more bathrooms public. But the problem is those companies have door lock codes for a reason.
Abide by their rules. One of the benefits that has happened from this is it has caused people, uh, to be a little more aware and acutely dialed to some of the accessibility problems, uh, not just in New York City, but in all sorts of cities, when people can't afford to pay the money to use the toilet and they don't have a home to use the toilet in, we now have a problem wherein you either have to find a different toilet or you can't, and you go boom,
boom in the streets. This nonprofit organization called Clear Path, uh, has begun through this work and through, uh, these efforts to provide resources to homeless youth in New York City, also creating a spreadsheet of accessible bathrooms. It's one of those weird things where somebody just makes something kind of short and probably for fun, but also just to document their experience on the Internet. And people gravitate toward it, uh, through shared
experience. It's a cool thing. Quick little story there, new, uh, Yorker using TikTok to document the best public bathrooms. And if you go on the Internet and you start searching, I promise you, because I get the recommendations on privycast social all the time. The Internet's rife with bathroom review accounts and other such things. But anyway, this has been another installment of, uh,
poo in the news. I'm going to keep my eyes out when I'm on the prowl for those old fashioned looking places for the crappy installments, if you will. This has been, this brings us to another end of episode. Thank you so much for listening. Uh, we appreciate you being here. We would love for you to follow us on social media at Privycast. We're on all the social media there. Uh, check out what we got going on. Also, send us an email, privycast@gmail.com. We'd love
to hear from you. Uh, send us a word. Send us a hello episode suggestion story. Whatever you have, we'd love to hear it. Uh, leave us a rating or review. Itunes and Spotify has those. The five star options are preferred and Spotify is easier, but those iTunes reviews, uh, you can even leave a little word in there and maybe we'll try to read some of those one day here on the pod when we get enough built up. As always, we would like to thank Kevin McLeod for the use of bar room ballet as our
intro and outro music. You can find Kevin's music@incompetent.com and his music is licensed under Creative Commons license Attribution 4.0. Thanks, Kevin. We would also like to thank Pottington Bear for the use of camp as the poo in the news intro and outro music. You can find Pottington Bear's music@potdingtonbear.com. Thanks, Pottington. This has been another episode of Privy. Thank you so much for joining us. And now, as always, I'm going to put that good old ball cock to the test.
Don't forget to flush.