Poo, eww!
Long drop toilets
You probably don’t think much about when you poo, because once you have finished, it is just flushed away. But how did people get rid of poo before toilets were invented?
Until Victorian times, it was very rare for anyone to be able to flush away their poo. Instead, going to a ‘toilet’ meant doing a poo (or wee) over a hole in the ground.
For many people, the “drop” or distance into the hole wasn’t very far. For others, the sort who lived in castles, the “drop” was much longer, this is because the long drop went all the way down the castle into a pit or moat below. For them, fear of splashback was never an issue!
Did you know...
All of these toilets were stinky. Some people believed that the smell of these toilets would protect their clothes from mites.
This is why the toilets in castles were called “garderobes”.
Of course, sometimes these pits needed emptying. The people who did this were called “night soil men,” they collected all the poo, and it was recycled to be used as manure.
Where did the poo go?
Send poo on an adventure!
But why were these loos so long?
Imagine throwing a brick into some water – it’s likely you’d see a splash. Now imagine sitting directly over that… you’d get a very wet bum!
The longer the loo, the further away you are from potential splashback.
Garderobes (loos) come in many shapes and sizes. Some were like a small box on the outside of a castle – often to let poo splash into a moat – and others were enclosed to catch the “night soil”.
To stop poo hiding in the corners, most enclosed long drop toilets had a curved edge.
How long is your loo?
Let’s make a loo – the long turret kind of loo that is often found in English castles.
Check out Activities4Home and the lesson plan for more fun activities.
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