Sharing a loo with rats makes it hard to concentrate….

I came across a story somewhere recently about a guy in England in the fourteenth century who was killed when he fell down the toilet.

Turns out the toilet was in a castle, three or four stories above ground, and was little more than a hole in the floor attached to a large drain that went all the way to the ground. The waste went down the chute and was collected at the bottom and taken away.

A plank of timber straddled the opening of the hole inside the castle and while the unfortunate guy was attending to business, the plank broke and he fell to his death. Now, when I first read that, I thought it was a bit far-fetched but then I remembered something.  

Many years ago, I spent some time travelling around eastern Europe with my Chernobyl buddies delivering humanitarian aid to various places in Belarus and Western Russia. One time we came across a picnic area at the edge of a forest and decided it was the perfect place for a rest and a cook up.

In amongst the trees, we spotted a wooden hut which had all the appearances of a toilet which made us very happy. Finding a functioning toilet in that part of the world in those days was tricky. A regular toilet bowl wasn’t always available either so you would often find just a hole in the floor. That’s why we celebrated whenever we were lucky enough to find a decent one.

In this case, our celebrations were a tad premature. I walked over to this shed and as I got closer, I could tell from the stench that I was not heading for a pleasant experience. It was dimly lit inside but I could see a square cut out of the timber floor and a deep pit beneath it. I didn’t need a manual to show me how to use this contraption.

One piece of advice we got very early on in our travels to those parts was to never go anywhere without a supply of toilet paper in your back pocket. I was grateful for that little nugget on more than one occasion.

As my eyes adjusted to the darkness, I could see the ground moving beneath me and I assumed there was a little stream running below. When I looked closer, I could see it wasn’t water that was moving but the floor of the pit was covered with rats. Trying to concentrate of the task in hand suddenly became very difficult. Falling into that mess could have ended as badly as it did for our friend in the 14^th century.

According to allthatsinteresting.com, toileting in medieval times wasn’t such a pleasant experience either unless you were lucky enough to live in a castle and even then, toilets were just openings that led into a latrine or the castle moat.

The waste shafts of some medieval toilets ran down the exterior wall of a fort into moats or rivers, while others were designed with internal channels that funnelled waste into a courtyard or cesspit.

Others protruded out from the castle walls with openings that hung in the open-air, allowing gravity to do the rest. Usually, a wooden bench separated the stone-carved hole from a user’s rear and while sitting there they also had to be alert for the enemy who could try to sneak through the hole in the privy chamber.

That was almost impossible when castle toilets were built to hang out over a steep cliff. That also made disposal of the waste much easier when it fell directly into the ocean where no one had to deal with it.

For the common people, things were more complicated. It was forbidden to go in public spaces and dangerous too. In 1339, a beggar was killed by a cart in London while squatting to relieve himself in the street.

Houses with privies were rare so it was common for families to use chamber pots or buckets to relieve themselves at home and empty them into pits afterwards. With such a lack of facilities for dealing with sewage, the smell was everywhere.

Public latrines were scarce and served more than one customer at a time. They were often built over bridges and on quays to facilitate the evacuation of human waste directly into water. In medieval public lavatories, people sat next to each other to do their business and one London latrine had no less than two rows of 64 seats each.

Royal toileting was better. A man was specifically employed to wipe the king’s behind, and he was known as the “Groom of the King’s Close Stool”. His job was to carry around the portable toilet and clean the royal rear.

We’ve cleaned up our act a lot since then, or have we? Medieval toilet paper consisted of a fistful of hay. This was rarely an issue when it came to clogging or cleanliness even though it did go on fire occasionally, but it seems it was less hazardous than our modern toilet paper.

Toxic ‘forever chemicals’ have recently been found in toilet paper around the world. Research found this paper flushed down toilets and sent to sewage plants is probably a significant source of water pollution. Might be time to bring back the hay.

Closer to home, Cork City councillors have called for City Hall to better advertise the locations of their public toilets, after it emerged that a clean, supervised loo had opened its doors next to the city library and they didn’t know about it. Several city councillors said they didn’t even realise it was there.

Maybe they should count themselves lucky. There was a time when the smell would have left them in no doubt where the nearest toilet was.