Toilet in the 18 and 18th centuries

Long dresses covered a multitude of sins- think of a hole in the ground or any receptacle to hand and you could pee without anyone hardly noticing!

Knickers are a very recent invention!

I don't think they wore bloomers - probably didn't wear anything - and if they did they were open crotch ones.

My grandmother told a tale of seeing a woman in London (must have been before the First World War) stand over a drain with her legs slightly apart and pee.

At balls and similar events there were, apparently, screens with receptacles behind them for peeing in. Maybe they were more for men and the ladies withdrew elsewhere.

But at a ball? With lots of women "ladies" in the same room. Buckets with servants to empty them outside?

It's bad enough queuing at the theatre for the loo. Imagine if there were not any actual loos.

George Bernard Shaw campaigned for public women's toilets in London but they wasn't until 1905!
I think that department stores like Selfridge's also provided them as they realised it would enable women to shop for longer

I wonder what they had in Selfridges? I must Google flushing toilets and see when they came in. I think I had read that before that it enabled women to shop longer or at least get out of the house for longer. All helped towards women's emancipation.

In one episode someone remarks to Mary Bennet hat she "wouldnt want to relieve herself behind a screen" at the ball. What on earth did that mean
Just that, a chamber pot , but hopefully in a separate room, unlike the palace of Versailles in Louis XVI’s reign where you were lucky to be behind a curtain. .

The Bourdaloue.

janeaustensworld.com/2012/07/16/regency-hygiene-the-bourdaloue/

Thank you Graphite. That explains a lot. Maybe one day it will be shown on TV how it was done. Maybe in this current series as they have mentioned the screen already.

I've got an old 'pair of drawers' which are literally that. Two separate legs which are joined by a drawstring at the waist. I expect the bottom bits would overlap but could easily be parted to permit the spending of a penny or more!

I am reading a book about the life in the late 18th/19th century.
Eavesdropping on Jane Austen's England Roy & Lesley Adkin, Abacus, 2013 Chapter 5 'Fashions and Filth' pp141-146

uite simply, regardless of sex or class. You went where you could. The streets were filthy with faeces and water courses were polluted (incuding streams peope used for drinking).

Alternatively,people retired up a uiet alley, or men just did it in public. In the home, women of the status of Jane Austen's famailies would have a commode in their bedroom. In large houses men would have a screened off area in the dining room, or sometimes just a pot in a pot cupboard that they would freely use during meal times and the male drinking sessions that might well follow.

Otherwise most houses would have an outside loo over a bicket or cesspit, which drained into a stream or had to be dug out and emptied regulalry. Generally referred to as the jericho, cerain house,

All told, forget any of our modern fear of everything to do with human excretion, our worries about cleanliness. In the period of Jane Austen, people simply went where they could when the need struck.

Bear in mind women then did not wear close crutched underwear and there was a reason for that. That did not come in until the late 19th century - and ueen Victoria did not approve.

Sometimes in antique shops China ‘jugs’ are described as sauces boats, when in fact they were discrete 18th century receptacle's to urinate in when wearing a long dress.
It always amuses me.

I am so relieved to be in the 21st century! Relieved being the operative word.

It must have stank everywhere. We take everything for granted and I'm sure we wouldn't cope if we were transported back to another era.

Here’s a picture of a Bourdaloue ( ruination receptacle) from the 18th century.

Urination! Could be your ruination as well!

I think it must have been a world of many aromas back then. People didn’t bathe very often, wash their clothes frequently, or have deodorants, and the waft of the contents of chamber pot behind screens at a dance must have been eye watering. Also not to put too fine a point on it if a person defecated up an alley or in a pot at a dance how on earth did they clean themselves, my guess is that they couldn’t.
Hardly a romantic setting as is portrayed on screen though I suppose people were used to these aromas.
I believe that in certain countries today people do urinate and defecate on the street. Sue Perkins in a documentary about India a few years ago walked down a street full of human faeces and slipped and fell in it if I remember rightly.

I'm glad I'm not the only one to wonder about such things 😂. I wonder how homeless women get on while menstruating and when needing the loo in general, the poor souls are curled up in a ball, not moving for hours on end 😢. How do people get on in the middle of a packed crowd at music festivals eg. Glastonbury? I've heard of those "she-wee" things, but you couldn't possibly use that in a crowd 🫣😳.

A few years ago we were looking at houses. One that we viewed had a double toilet. Two seats side by side. Can’t remember if there was a flush system or either water was carried to it in a bucket

Not so far away- as a child we only had an outside toilet- so during the night we had a bucket upstairs on the landing.

It was disgusting and sometimes I got the job of emptying it!

It was 1975 when we finally had an upstairs toilet, and another one downstairs. What luxury!

Some people don't know they are born.

And on that subject, anyone here been to France??

France has elegant fashion, wonderful food, sensuous perfume...but the toilets!!!!!

Stone castles had 'toilet' rooms, from which the 'produce' dropped into the moat.

At balls etc they had a Ladies retiring room. China pots behind screens .

Maybe they did what 500 million Indians still do and pee and poo in the street?