Crapper – The Name, The Man, The Toilet…

The follwoing was written by John Lienhard, at the University of Houston. It gives us a glimpse into the invention of the flush toilet. The story goes that Thomas Crapper created the toilet, hence the name, Thomas Crapper. Is this really true? A good informational read…

Every time I teach my course in the history of technology, some student informs me – often with a salacious grin – that the flush toilet was invented by a 19th-century Englishman named Thomas Crapper. Well, he didn’t really invent the flush toilet, but his name is indeed a cloud that hovers over its history.

The flush toilet was actually invented in the 18th century. It was an important landmark in the Industrial Revolution – closely tied to the new technology of steam-power generation. In the mid 18th century, the important concept of automatic liquid-level control arose – both in steam boilers and in the tanks of these new water closets.

Thomas Crapper was a real enough person. He was born in Yorkshire in 1837 – long after the first flush toilets came into use. His biography by Wallace Reyburn is titled Flushed with Pride. It’s all very tongue-in-cheek, but it’s nevertheless quite complete. Thomas Crapper apprenticed as a plumber when he was still a child. By the time he was 30, he’d set up his own business in London. He developed and manufactured sanitary facilities of all sorts until his death in 1910. He held many patents and was in fact an important and extremely inventive figure in creating modern water-closet systems.

But did he really give his name to these systems? Reyburn claims that many American soldiers in WW-I were off the farm – that they’d never seen anything like the classy English water closets – that they called them by their brand name, much as the English call a vacuum cleaner by the brand name Hoover.

The problem with this explanation is that the word almost certainly derives from the 13th-century Anglo-Saxon word crappe. It means chaff or any other waste material. The modern form of the word was certainly in use during Thomas Crapper’s life. So not only was he not the inventor of the flush toilet – it’s also unlikely that he really gave it his name, either. What he did do was to carry the technology forward.

This business points out something historians have to guard against. Now and then a really good story comes along – one so well contrived that it should be true, even if it isn’t. Who wants to admit that no apple ever fell on Isaac Newton’s head – or that George Washington didn’t really chop down the cherry tree? What humorless pedant wants to insist that Thomas Crapper didn’t really invent the flush toilet!

I’m John Lienhard, at the University of Houston, where we’re interested in the way inventive minds work.

https://www.uh.edu/engines/epi157.htm

Gary Kunkel

Gary started working at All Comfort Services in 2000. Gary says he learned everything he knows about plumbing from his father, Irenus. Gary’s earliest memories are of him following his father around learning the art of plumbing. Gary retired from All Comfort Services in 2022.