Please Adjust Your Dress Before Leaving

Regular readers will know that I've been researching George Jennings, the plumber who installed WCs for the Great Exhibition of 1851, sometimes described as the inventor of the public toilet. There's been a lot of misinformation about this subject in the past, largely stemming from The Good Loo Guide which misattributed the opening of the first underground toilets in London to Jennings, and gave the date as 1855 rather than 1885.

For a while, I assumed this was just pure confusion - not least because Jennings' firm, after his death, went on to install and run many public toilets in London in the early 1900s.

Then I found Jennings' letter to the City of London from 1858, actually offering to build an underground public toilet - so there was some fact behind the mistaken attribution. But, tragically, the accompanying illustration was missing from the City archives ... or so I thought.

It was only after some more digging that:

i. I found a useful reference to Jennnings' underground toilets in the Science Museum Archive

ii. I then remembered that Sarah McCabe had remarked upon the same reference in her master's thesis on late Victorian public toilets (generously emailed for my perusal - many thanks again, Sarah)

The illustration was not lost at all ... indeed, here it is, courtesy of those lovely people at the Science Museum:

Copyright: Science Museum Archives

The background, I think, is a generic City-scape, although I'm willing to be corrected. This is surely the same plan sent to the City of London, although this copy was sent to Capt. Francis Fowke, Director of Works at South Kensington Museum, with a view to it appearing in the 1862 International Exhibition (Jennings would also design and run the toilets at the 1862 Exhibition).

The seat on the left is the attendants room, not a toilet (as the fact that it is unconnected with the drainage, and the overview shows):

Copyright: Science Museum Archive

What's fascinating about this drawing is that all its key features would eventually appear in Victorian underground public toilets, some twenty years later - right from the City's first effort in 1885 (see here for a full description). William Haywood, the City's Engineer, seems to have happily copied the key features of Jennings' unused 1858 plan - from the 'inner ring' of urinals around a central column, to a gas lamp above ground providing a draught for ventilation - and put them into his Royal Exchange toilets which opened in 1885.

No wonder, then, that people have latterly been keen to attribute the work to Jennings himself (who inconveniently died in 1882). Nor that Jennings is reputed to have nurtured a grievance against the City authorities.

Note also the public drinking fountain at the ground level - the latest thing in sanitary improvement in 1850s London when the toilets were designed (Haywood did not bother to copy this in the 1880s).

The best bit of the drawing, of course, is the mid-Victorian gentleman nonchalantly emerging from the WC.

Copyright: Science Museum

Is this the only picture of a Victorian leaving a public lavatory, immediately after the act?

Victorian urinals would have the instruction 'Please adjust your dress before leaving' painted upon the wall (or, in the case of cast iron urinals, even embossed upon the metal - as one rare surviving example at Twickenham shows). At least our gentleman has paid heed to that injunction.

[thanks to JL for the image]

But can anyone help me with the trousers, as it were? Would there have been buttons at the front, round the waist, where?

Possibly I am already in too deep.

But - if you have good pics of mid-Victorian trousers and their buttons, I'd like to see them.

George Jennings and the Public Toilet

Did the well-known Victorian sanitary engineer George Jennings invent the public toilet?

It's a fact that's often repeated on various websites and books, but not really true. Admittedly, he installed his toilets at the Great Exhibition, but the Exhibition's commissioners had been lobbied to take action by a committee of members of the Royal Society of Arts.

It's often said that he installed underground toilets at the Royal Exchange in 1855 but this claim seems to date back to 'The Good Loo Guide' - a comic 1960s publication by Jonathan Routh - which gets the date wrong by some thirty years - 1885 is the correct date (click here for details), and Jennings was not involved in that particular build (not least because he was dead three years earlier), nor his firm.

He did, however, offer at least twice to set up public toilets in the City of London, and came up with the idea of underground public toilets in 1858, which were rejected due to 'English delicacy of feeling' (i.e. public water closets were considered unsavoury and immodest). [I only have an account of this response from Lawrence Wright's 'Clean and Decent' 1960, p.201, which reprints a memoir/letter/comment from Jennings without providing a citation]. Jenning's company, which survived his demise and prospered, would provide fixtures and fittings for many of the public toilets built in the 1880s and beyond, and contracted to manage some of them, in prime locations in London.

I've been mooching around the archives at the LMA (which I love, but the City's sanitary records are the worst-catalogued collection of material in the known universe) and, although I haven't found the City of London's rejection of Jenning's proposal, I have found his original 1858 letter. Here it is, in full:

5 Holland Street, Blackfriars, S.E.

December 13th 1858

To the Honourable the Commissioners of Sewers for the City of London

Gentlemen, I observe in 'The Times' that certain matters of a Sanitary character have been referred to your Engineer.

I think it only right to call attention to the efforts I have made to prevent the defilement of our thoroughfares and to remove those Plague spots that are offensive to the eye, and a reproach to the Metropolis.

Having provided, and fixed the Sanitary appliances at the Exhibition of 1851 and the Dublin Exhibition of 1852, as also those in the present Crystal Palace, I can bear testimony to the Public application of conveniences, suited to the advanced stage of civilization.

I know the subject is a peculiar one, and very difficult to handle, but no false delicacy ought to prevent immediate attention being given to matters effecting the health, and comfort, of the thousands who daily throng the thoroughfares of your City.

Herewith, I send you Lithographed drawings of a 'Halting Place' for a public Crossing: the space proposed to be occupied is not more than is appropriated to the any of the present 'Halting Places' and the design also provides for a Public Lamp & Drinking Fountain.

In the super-structure (which may be extended to any size without in the slightest degree impairing the stability of the thoroughfare above) you will see I show a Public Urinal, similar to those I have so satisfactorily erected for the St. Giles District Board of Works in the Seven Dials, and at the British Museum, as alson on the Great Northern and other Railways.

Water Closets and Lavatories are also shown with a Room for the Attendants. The wall space I propose should be covered with Time Tables from the different Railways; lists of Cab-fares from that particular point, to any part of the Metropolis, and other useful information. You will also observe that every arrangement is made for lighting and perfect ventilation.

In 1851 in connection with the Society of Arts, I spent a considerable sum to promote the establishment of Public Waiting Rooms and in the beginning of 1856, I had elaborate drawings made, showing how the vacant space next to the Royal Exchange might be advantageously employed. These drawings were submitted to the then Gresham Committee.

Public Waiting Rooms - Fountains - Water Closets and Lavatories may by some be considered a little in advance of the times, but they are nevertheless a necessary and would be appreciated accordingly.

As an example - At the Crystal Palace,for want of funds, the Lavatories were nearly excluded. I urged their introduction, but was told "persons would not come to Sydenham to wash their hands." I persisted and ultimately at a nominal cost, fitted the whole of the Waiting Rooms. These Waiting rooms I am told now produce a thousand pounds per annum.

If you consider my arrangements bear the stamp of common sense, I offer through you to supply and fix in any part of the City every Sanitary appliance shown in my drawings free of any charge.

If the cost of Gas-lights Water Supply and respectable Attendants capable of understanding and answering a question, should be considered an expense too great to be encountered, I am willing to take every expense on myself, and carry out every detail, under your Engineer's direction, provided the attendants I furnish are allowed to receive a small gratuity for use of Towels &c. as at the Crystal Palace.

If this (which many would turn a speculation) should prove commercially valuable, I shall be quite ready at any time to resign my trust, or retain it, using the proceeds for the establishment of similar conveniences.

I have the honour to be My Lord & Gentlemen,

Your obedient Servant,

George Jennings

Lithographed Drawings of the proposed 'Halting Place' were laid before the Court, and examined.

Resolved

That it be referred to the Committee on General Purposes to consider the said proposal and report.