Who invented the toilet? Was it really a guy named Thomas Crapper?
Sir Thomas Martin Crapper was my Great great great Grandfather and according to my Nana, who likes to keep up to date with family history, tells me that while the flushing toilet had previously been invented it was Sir Thomas who perfected the toilet and brought forth the invention to Queen Victoria. As a result of this the Queen gave him the title of ‘Sir’.
If I had a nickel for every time I’ve been asked that, I’d have, oh, about seventy-five cents actually. The fact is, nobody knows exactly who invented the toilet, but the general consensus is that it was not Thomas Crapper. While toilets date back to ancient times, the modern toilet can be more accurately traced back to Sir John Harrington, who described a waste disposal system in the Metamorphosis of Ajax in the 16th century. Some accounts of Thomas Crapper’s life indicate that he patented the flush toilet in 1861, but Adam Hart-Davis, author of Thunder, Flush and Thomas Crapper, discovered that, while Thomas Crapper filed for a total of six patents, the earliest being filed in 1881, not one of them was for a flush toilet. It’s quite possible that we can thank Sir Thomas Crapper for giving us the word, “crap,” but even that is questionable, as Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary indicates that the term dates back to 1846, a full sixteen years before Thomas Crapper established hims
