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The Bathroom Before Indoor Plumbing

 

Early sanitation systems
In earlier times, sanitation was very different story to the indoor plumbing of today’s modern cities. There are still places in parts of the world where you can see remnants of this. You may have noticed when walking down some ancient cobbled street, that the road sloped down slightly from both sides towards the center. Right in the center of the road was a shallow sunken drainage channel. Sure enough, this helped to drain away the water after heavy rains, but centuries ago, that was not its primary purpose! It was there to ‘flush’ away every variety of household waste, including human waste!

Disposing of garbage and waste water, was pretty much uncontrolled. It was simply thrown out into the yard or the street, and left for the rain to wash it away. This included human waste, something we would find horribly repulsive today! Indoor plumbing hadn’t been dreamed of! One had to walk carefully! If you were lucky there were stepping stones down the sides of the streets to save you tramping into the muck. There are still places today, where one can see strategically placed sole ‘scrapers’, that they would use to clean off the soles of their boots before stepping indoors!

 

Where did all this waste go?
As all human habitation needed a ready source of drinking water, most ancient towns grew up alongside rivers and other natural water sources. It was directly into these rivers that the waste from the streets discharged. If the rivers were large and swift flowing, the waste was carried somewhere downstream, but inevitably the waters became polluted killing off the fish and plant life. The smell of decomposing garbage and waste was ever present in the air. That was simply a fact of life!

 

The little house in the back yard
Much more recent, and still not completely unknown, is the outhouse. The first step up the ladder in devising a more acceptable way of disposing of human waste. Initially simply a covered pit, the waste that was placed there remained there, and one often had to air out one’s clothing after making use of the facilities!

 

Before the days of indoor plumbing
Can you picture what is was like on a cold winter night or morning, putting on a coat and trudging out into the freezing weather when nature called? Our great-great-grandparents were accustomed to using the ubiquitous chamber pot, which could be placed after use, into a special cupboard, until it was convenient to take it out and empty it. How grateful we have to be for modern indoor plumbing!

 

The great breakthrough
The solution to the waste disposal problem was ultimately achieved through the development of underground sewers and, in modern times, sewage treatment plants. At the same time, indoor plumbing became available on a wide scale and the bathroom as we know it today was born.

Today it is almost inconceivable that it could ever have been different, but our ancestors never dreamed of indoor plumbing. The ability to simply turn on a faucet to obtain clean fresh water, is something that even royalty didn’t have, not that long ago!

 

How grateful we should be for a flushing toilet!
So next time you flush the toilet, releasing a strong stream of fresh water, swirling around the bowl, picture how different it was in those days! How grateful we need to be for the modern systems that we take for granted today!

So if you are unfortunate enough to have a toilet that isn’t working exactly the way you’d like it to, give us a call and let us sort it out for you! We are here waiting to be of service.
Atlantic Mechanical Baltimore Plumbing, Heating and Cooling