A history of the world in 10 1/2 inches: 12 Lavatories

The 1996 Beijing City Toilet Construction Exhibition opened last week in the Museum of the Chinese Revolution on Tiananmen Square. "Toilet" is currently the most popular word for the little boys' (or girls') room, being used by over half the population. "Loo," on 33 per cent, comes second, though its derivation is obscure. Some claim a French connection, from l'eau, and the chambermaid's cry of gardez l'eau! to warn that a chamber pot was about to be emptied from a window. Others maintain a link via water closet and Waterloo, or derive it simply from lieu, the place.

The OED lists 39 euphemisms for lavatory (from the Latin: lavatorium, a place for washing). Neither Shakespeare nor Jane Austen used the word at all, and the entire Dictionary of National Biography mentions not a single "lavatory", though two plural "lavatories". Longfellow, in his Hyperion, produced the memorable line: "On a lavatory below sat a cherub."

The earliest known lavatory - a hut built above a pig pen - dates back to around 3000BC and was un-earthed in the ancient city of Xian in China. The water closet, however, dates back only to 1589 by Sir John Harrington. The flush, overflow pipe and cistern all form part of his design as described in his lavatorial treatise, "The Metamorphosis of Ajax", published in 1596 and thus celebrating its 400th anniversary this year.

The invention, however, fell into disuse, largely because there were no sewers yet built to carry away the waste. The real toilet revolution had to wait for the estimable Sir Thomas Crapper (1837-1910) to improve Harrington's design in the 1880s with the invention of the boxed flush lavatory. He did not, however, give his name to a common expletive, which had already been around for four centuries by the time he was born.

Among other less celebrated lavatory pioneers, we should mention the following:

William Henry Cornfield (1843-1903), professor of hygiene and public health, whose "Disease and Defective House Sanitation" (1896) was translated into French, Italian and Hungarian.

John Nevil Maskelyne (1839-1917), stage magician, plate-spinner and escapologist, whose patented inventions included a cash register, a typewriter and, in 1892, a coin-operated lock for public lavatories which was used in England until the 1950s.

A Ashwell of Herne Hill (full name and dates un-known), who on 17 February 1883 patented the Vacant/Engaged sign for public lavatories.

This must have come as a considerable relief, since the first public conveniences had been opened in London in 1852, on 2 February, in Fleet Street, for men, and on 10 February, in Bedford Street, for women.

The Custer Battlefield monument in Montana boasts the world's first solar- powered toilet.

"Public Toilets should be the concern of every civilisation," said Professor Wang Gung, at the opening of the 1995 International Symposium of Public Toilets in Hong Kong, "because the cleanliness and standards of hygiene they do or do not set are truly a measure whereby the standards of a society can be gauged."

Recent inventions registered with the European Patent Office include a large number of designs for lavatories for cats and dogs designs, mostly from France, as well as the following:

"Explosion-proof electrical incinerator toilet" (Germany 1981); "Personal weighing device on toilet seat" (France 1987); "Hot water spraying lavatory seat" (Taiwan 1988); "Toilet chute for railway carriages" (Germany 1988); "Apparatus for detecting a person seated on a toilet seat" (Japan 1992); and finally "Coreless toilet paper" (Japan 1992).

WILLIAM HARTSTON