First Night Design | Thomas Crapper Did Not Invent the Flush Loo

Originally posted on First Night Design

Thomas Crapper Toilet Victor Horta Museum, Brussels

 

That’s right — Thomas Crapper (1836-1910) did not invent the flush loo or toilet.  Certainly he was responsible for improving the mechanism by developing the ballcock, for example, and for spreading the word about flush toilets, but the inventor he was not.

Nor is it true that his name is the reason we refer to the ‘waste product’ as ‘crap’.  It’s a lovely idea but his surname is purely coincidental. The word ‘crap’ appeared much earlier and is likely to have come from the combination of the Old French crappe, meaning ‘chaff’, and the Dutch krappe, meaning ‘to pluck’ or ‘cut off’.  These days we use ‘crap’ as a slang word not just for excrement but for anything we consider is…

via First Night Design | Thomas Crapper Did Not Invent the Flush Loo