Toilets of one form or another have always been a crucial element of domestic design. You don't want to eat and sleep where you crap, do you? Or I don't think so. Let me know if you know different. For nearly all the time we have had toilets they have been outside the living area. For obvious reasons (see above). However, we tended to use cess pits or piles where the stuff could be collected and carted off to be spread on farmers' fields as fertiliser. Never waste good fertiliser when it's cheap. Things changed in the mid 19th century.
Then the water closet was invented. I don't care whether it was Thomas Crapper who did the deed or not. The swirling beast was invented. It meant that the toilet was brought indoors. Durham City, where I have some knowledge, was no doubt typical of many other towns and cities in the realm. The owners of houses built on one of the city's bridges installed water closets. They worked a treat. The only trouble was that the outshot was not a treat for passers-by as the water closets simply emptied their contents down the face of the bridge pier. The resultant stinking, clinging mass was only removed in the winter when the River Wear flooded.
Away from the bridge, other well-to-do residents of the City also installed fashionable water closets. In one part of the town they instructed the installers of the water closets (plumbers?) to lead the discharge beyond the end of their back gardens in pipes. They didn't care what happened after then. The result was that Durham Racecourse got waterlogged - or should that be shit-logged? - and led to complaints. Eventually, after inspections by the Board of Health, mains sewers were installed throughout the City. Householders were required to connect their houses to the mains at their own expense.
What has led to this fertile discussion? An entry in Michell Symons 2010 Diary which says that Most toilets flush in E flat.</
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