History Hits at Home: The Chamber Pot and the Toilet

We continue on with the sanitation theme for today's history hits at home featuring the Chamber Pot.

Chamber Pot in a Commode - Master Bedroom of Backus-Page House Museum

A chamber pot with lid from the Backus-Page House Museum collection.  

The Chamber Pot

Most of the rooms in our museum contain Chamber Pots.  These were mostly used during the winter months when the family members did not want to walk through the snow to get to the outhouse, and during the night when they did not want to light a candle. 

They came in a variety of sizes and colours to fit with the decor of the home and in upper class homes, would be nicely decorated and with matching lids.  The pots with lids were preferred because of the fumes and moisture of the waste material and were kept under the bed or in a nightstand. They were all shaped to make it convenient for women to squat or stand and was able to be hidden under the large skirts.

By the late 1800s, chamber pots were sometimes built into cabinets with covers that close, and were called commodes.  Even though we now have modern toilets, chamber pots are still used today in countries that lack indoor plumbing.

Why do we use the word toilet?

Until recently, we preferred not to talk about toilets in polite society. We now use a variety of euphemisms instead. Rather than use the word toilet, we talk about restrooms, washrooms and bathrooms, or powdering our nose.

The word “toilette” came from the Middle French word for cloth and by the Georgian era, a toilet referred to the cloth that lay on a dressing table, holding such things such as hairbrush and perfume. Since using powder was common for upper-class women and men, this would have given us the phrase “powder room”.

The word then moved away from the dressing table and the act of dressing to the place where the person dressed – the dressing room, which may have had a toilet (that is, a lavatory) in it. It started to be used as a euphemism for lavatory at the end of the 19th century.

There are other euphemisms that have come to us from the mid-Victorian era. A Privy is another word for a private place. Latrine, which we now think of as an outdoor toilet, is from an old-English word for washbasin or washroom.

In Britain, we often see the signs for the WC. It stands for water closet, another word used for the early flushing toilets. Around 1871, the initials came into common use.

No matter what term you use, we can thank our Victorian ancestors for giving us all the different words. Be sure to come out to our museum to see our collection of bathroom seats.

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