Who invented the flush toilet?

“Who invented the flush toilet?” Now there’s a question that doesn’t get asked often! 🙂

One of the maintenance items I do in my home every winter, because there are so many large, old trees around my home (and their roots might be growing under my home), is that I flush a root-killer liquid down both of the toilets in my house in order to prevent damage and blockage from tree roots. The liquid I use claims it removes all sorts of other debris, not just tree roots, before the debris becomes a blockage, so that’s good too. My home is on a concrete slab and has no crawl space underneath, so I sure do want to prevent the need to find and fix a drainage blockage underneath my home.

But this winter, as I was pouring that stuff down one of my toilets, I wondered, “who invented the flush toilet?” Yes, I think of really serious questions at times like this. 🙂

And then I went to my computer and the internet to find the answer. I found four fascinating websites, each of them with pertinent information.

First off, here’s a photo (below) of old Roman toilets. Gosh, what a great way to meet your neighbors! Or not!

By some accounts, the flush toilet was invented in 1596 by Sir John Harington, an English courtier and the godson of Queen Elizabeth I. Harington’s device called for a 2-foot-deep oval bowl (the toilet bowl) that was waterproofed with pitch, resin and wax and then it was fed by water from an roof-top cistern that was filled by rain water. Flushing Harington’s pot required 7.5 gallons of water, a huge amount of water. Harington noted that when water was scarce, up to 20 people could use his commode between flushes, but he reassured everyone that the toilet would flush eventually. As soon as it rained?!

Since Sir John Harington designed the first flush toilet, British people (and others since then) often said they were “going to the John.” Sir John also wrote poetry. But his legacy would be his work on the lavatory, not his poetry.

The next improvement came in 1775, when Scottish inventor Alexander Cumming was granted the first patent for a flush toilet. His excellent innovation was the S-shaped pipe below the bowl that used water to create a seal preventing sewer gas from entering back up through the toilet, and that design is still used today.

And then, in the late 1800s, a London plumbing impresario named Thomas Crapper (note the name!) manufactured one of the first widely successful, commercially sold, type of flush toilets.

Crapper did not invent the toilet, but he did develop the ballcock, an improved tank-filling mechanism still used in toilets today.  Although the word “crapper” has become synonymous with a toilet, the English word “crap” actually predates Thomas Crapper. But Crapper’s name became synonymous with toilets during WWI when US military folk were stationed in England and saw the name “Crapper” stamped on toilets.

And yet, even with one website claiming that the 1547 date was the beginning of water-flushed toilets, one of the earliest examples of the modern flush toilet was found in Greece, on the Island of Crete, in the palace of Knossos. That toilet system used water from a collection system to wash the waste into the palace sewer systems. That toilet is dated to at least 1450 BCE, a long time ago.

So who gets credit for inventing the flush toilet? Most websites give credit either to the Scots (also with known water-flushing toilet systems BCE) or to the Greeks. Those websites give examples of those two groups of people using cisterns to collect water that then flushed their toilet systems thousands of years ago (that would be the Scots).

But not all of Scotland enjoyed those systems. A friend of mine and I stayed in the restored five-story Hay Castle in southwestern Scotland several years ago, at Glenluce. This castle was built in the 1500s. Here’s a photo (below) of me entering a doorway off the main living room.

Obviously, people were shorter back in the 1500s, aye?

With the door open, here (below) is what I saw. I kept going in, and ducked so not to hit my head, and then turned to the left.

Here’s what I saw …..

Yikes. A “toilet”?

Indeed, it was a toilet. In fact, every floor of the castle had these original toilets in them. Of course, none of them still functioned as toilets. Modern plumbing had long since been installed. But this was what those folks back in the 1500s used.

In the photo below, you’ll see a red ring around the back portion of the floor under the toilet “seat”. That portion of the floor (in that red ring), was originally a hole, nothing there, a hole that opened all the way down to the very bottom floor of the castle, where the “servants” lived. And of course, the servants were required to keep the areas clean down there, and keep the toilet rooms upstairs clean too. The servants lived on that bottom floor sure, but I’d bet they lived at the other end of the castle! That’s how life was back then.

Well that was fun, wasn’t it?

And then, also … related to toilets … is the question of who invented toilet paper?

When the recent COVID scare began a few years ago, so many people bought all the toilet paper they could find, thinking that there would be no more, or not enough. I went to the store for weeks/months and found no toilet paper on the shelves. But, hey, what did people do before toilet paper was mass-produced? Humans have been on this planet for thousands of years, but we’ve had commercially produced toilet paper for only the last hundred years or so. So what did people use before?

I can tell you what my mother told me they used during the depression years in the USA … the Sears catalog! Paper! And people used cloth that they washed out afterwards.

Here’s one website that talks about the options that we humans have used for thousands of years.

When Was Toilet Paper Invented? The History of Toilet Paper

Again … in the end, so to speak … I learned a lot from my research.

Here’s a photo of some gorgeous toilets made in Mexico. I like that black one, second from the right, how about you?

Today there are all manner of moden toilets that do not use water to flush them. Here (below) is an example of a vaccum toilet on a train in Switzerland.

As well, composting toilets are getting more popular because they do not use water to flush them. Water is more and more in short supply in many areas around the world. As well, another benefit of composting toilets is that they produce “waste” that can safely be used as garden fertilizer. Composting toilets are also more and more popular in boats and in RVs/trailers (and in campgrounds) since that means we don’t have to carry/use as much water. So the fascinating world of toilets is changing. At first, we wanted LOTS of water to flush them … these days, we want to conserve water. So it seems we started out using toilets that did not use water, then the “modern” inventions came to be where the toilets did use water, and now we’re getting back to where we were to begin with … toilets that do not use water. Maybe we’ll soon be seeing composting toilets in homes.

On the other hand, the newest of toilets do use water but are computer/digitally controlled. I sure hope no one has to sign in with a password before that lid opens … crap!

So … what’s the next invention? And will you’re name be on it? 🙂