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Daily Mirror
23-07-2025
- General
- Daily Mirror
‘I am a loo historian – you'll never guess what Tudors used to wipe their bums'
Our 19th century super sewers turn 150 this year, but before the Great Stink, festering cesspits had to be cleared out by hand. The Mirror digs into the smelly history of toilets… Poo now travels under London in a sewer tunnel so wide, you could drive three buses side-by-side through it. But before this new super sewer opened this year, Londoners were still flushing their waste down 1,300 miles of a creaking brick-built Victorian sewage system, with ornate cathedral-sized pumping stations. However, when the Public Health Act of 1875, received Royal assent 150 years ago, in August 1875, the drainage system built by civil engineer Sir Joseph Bazalgette in the city was the super sewer of its time. It was built after the horror of The Great Stink of 1858, when the River Thames became so polluted with raw excrement, that during one long hot summer, the water levels dropped, and the malodorous smell was so noxious, it shut the Houses of Parliament. Nght soil workers, or gong farmers carted away the city's filth from 200,000 festering cesspits and outdoor privies, to be used as fertiliser. 'There was no integrated sewerage network system, so all the dung heaps had to be dug out by gong men,' explains Dr Dave Musgrove, content director of BBC History Magazine and the HistoryExtra podcast. 'It was an unpleasant job but reasonably well-paid, because the excrement was valuable. If you weren't rich, you had your pit, you dug it out, and it was taken away in carts and used for manuring fields.' The 17th century diarist Samuel Pepys wrote extensively about his chamber pot and whether it had been emptied into the cesspit beneath the house by his servant. 'He also used to relieve himself in the fireplace,' says Dr Musgrove. 'But he tells a story where he goes down into his basement and is very disappointed to step into a great heap of turds, because his neighbour hasn't emptied his pit and it's leaked into his.' A 19th century population explosion meant the night soil men couldn't keep up with the volume of fecal matter, and piles of untreated human waste either leaked or were dumped on the shores of the Thames, turning it into an open sewer. Along with human corpses and rotting vegetation in the waterways, this was a toxic disaster waiting to happen. 'By the early 19th century, more people were wanting to use this up-and-coming toilet flushing technology. But it meant the city had lots more liquid matter,' explains the historian. 'So they start digging sewers, digging underground or even just overground ones, and it's going into rivers and the water system is becoming contaminated.' Before 1875, people had no idea that dirty water caused the deadly cholera epidemics that raged in the country's crowded cities. Dr Dave Musgrove, who also hosts HistoryExtra Toilets Through Time podcast series, says: 'Throughout this period we get a slew of public health legislation, where people start to recognise that it is an issue.' Frightened city dwellers blamed the thousands of deaths on the foul miasma that hung heavy over London and other cities. In 1853 outbreaks of cholera in London, Gateshead and Newcastle killed over 10,000 people. The following year another epidemic hit South London After one particularly virulent outbreak on August 31, 1854, when 127 people living around Broad Street in Soho died, a local anaesthetist, John Snow, suspected contaminated water was to blame, but nobody believed him. He traced it to a water pump on Broad Street, where a child had been taken ill with cholera and its nappies had been cleaned in a cesspool of water close to the Broad Street well. The local parish agreed to remove the pump handle as an experiment – and the spread of cholera was stalled. From then on, new sanitary laws made it compulsory for local authorities to provide sewers, control water supplies and regulate the overcrowded and unsanitary lodging houses in rookeries where most poor people lived in Victorian times. Most importantly, all residential construction had to have running water and an internal drainage system. But flushing toilets took ages to catch on in Britain. 'The person who is often cited as having invented the first one was the godson of Queen Elizabeth I, Thomas Harrington, who came up with what he called the 'Ajax' on a lad's weekend in the 15th century.' Although the Queen had one installed, nobody thought his idea would catch on. The ruined Grade I listed Wingfield Manor in Derbyshire is also home to a flushing toilet built in 1596. And it's thought Henry III's 13th century garderobe in York's Clifford's Tower had a flushing spout that ran water down the lavatory hole and out of the tower. But while we were still going alfresco in philistine Britain, the world 's first flushing loos were actually invented in Bronze Age Crete. 'The Minoan Palace of Knossos had a very advanced plumbing system that was built around 2000 BC,' says Dr Musgrove. Cesspits are gold dust to archaeologists, as they reveal so much about the people who used them. 'The people who built the Neolithic site of Stonehenge lived in a village a couple of miles away called Durrington Walls in a settlement of round houses,' Dr Musgrove continues. 'Human poo was excavated, which was riddled with parasites – possibly from eating meat that hadn't been cooked well – but there was no particular designated toilet area.' That changed with the Roman invasion. You can still visit the well preserved Roman communal loos at Chedworth Roman Villa in Gloucestershire or Housesteads Roman fort at Hadrian's Wall ,where soldiers sat chatting side-by-side at the communal latrines while rainwater flushed away their waste. After the Romans leave things go downhill. 'In the early medieval period British society sort of fractures, but excavations in Coppergate in York in the 1980s found evidence of Viking toilets – and the famous Jorvik turd.' The Vikings lived in tightly packed areas, and had yards where people just dug holes and did their business, with little wicker dividing walls. Dr Musgrove adds: 'You can see the mineralised coprolite Viking 9th century poo at the museum, where they've recreated those toilets with Bogar who's been sitting on this loo for 40 years.' The Jorvik turd also tells us a lot about the Viking diet. 'It's quite a big poo – 5cm wide by 20cm long,' chuckles Dr Musgrove. 'Whoever produced it enjoyed a diet rich in bread and meat but not many vegetables.' In the Middle Ages toilets were holes in the ground in communal spaces over a river or a stream. 'They were basically doing their business into the water,' says the historian. 'But there weren't concentrations of people living in one place, so sewage wasn't much of an issue.' Community toilets continued in the Tudor period when Henry VIII built a two-story loo for courtiers at Hampton Court called the House of Easement, which held 28 people at once. 'There were private toilets for important people in castles,' adds Dr Musgrove. 'But those were still quite basic spaces in the wall and human waste would drop down a pipe into a cesspit – or just drip down the outside of the walls.' We've come a long way since those smelly days, but before we congratulate ourselves on having super sewers, transporting our effluent safely away from our homes, it's important to scotch the myth of our ancestors chucking urine-filled chamber pots out of over-hanging medieval windows onto people's heads on the cobbles below. 'Even hundreds of years before the 1875 act, communities did their level best to separate themselves from their faeces,' says Dr Musgrove. 'There were many by-laws to stop us fouling our own spaces even in the Middle Ages, so we shouldn't imagine the streets of Britain's cities were just covered in filth all the time.' Something our leaky water utility companies could no doubt learn from even now. The back story on loo paper Anyone unlucky enough to have used Izal tracing paper loo paper at school will appreciate how important a nice soft double ply is. The first loo paper appeared in 1887 when Joseph C. Gayetty of New York sold medicated flat sheets called The Therapeutic Paper, and the first perforated rolls were sold in 1890 by the Scott Paper Company. But it took a long time for these to become popular because most people were accustomed to using any old paper. 'Once we started printing stuff from the 15th century onwards, people quite quickly started using it for the purposes of wiping – and sometimes as a political gesture,' explains Dr Musgrove. 'If there was something you disagreed with, you might offer that to people to wipe their bottom.' Before that, the early Romans loved a communal khazi and it's thought they also shared a communal sponge. But Dr Musgrove admits: 'We don't actually know whether the sponge on a stick was used for wiping Roman bottoms – or for cleaning the toilets.' Moss was very popular in the Middle Ages for bum wiping. 'There was a thriving trade in bringing moss into medieval towns because it was a valuable product – nice and soft on your backside. Archaeologists have also found evidence of rags in toilet soil.' But the hardcore Tudors used 'oyster and mussel shells – more for scraping than wiping,' according to Dr Musgrove. Alarmingly, holly has also been found in some cesspits. 'That would have made the user quite anxious,' the historian says.
Daily Mirror
19-07-2025
- General
- Daily Mirror
Men paid to dig out holes full of poo in grim and smelly job
It's a dirty job but someone's got to do it – before the 19th century super sewer, which turns 150 this year, festering cesspits had to be cleared out by hand – or at least a bucket and a cart by gong farmers Poo now travels under London in a sewer tunnel so wide, you could drive three buses side-by-side through it. But before this new super sewer opened this year, Londoners were still flushing their waste down 1,300 miles of a creaking brick-built Victorian sewage system, with ornate cathedral-sized pumping stations. However, when the Public Health Act of 1875, received Royal assent 150 years ago, in August 1875, the drainage system built by civil engineer Sir Joseph Bazalgette in the city was the super sewer of its time. It was built after the horror of The Great Stink of 1858, when the River Thames became so polluted with raw excrement, that during one long hot summer, the water levels dropped, and the malodorous smell was so noxious, it shut the Houses of Parliament. Nght soil workers, or gong farmers carted away the city's filth from 200,000 festering cesspits and outdoor privies, to be used as fertiliser. 'There was no integrated sewerage network system, so all the dung heaps had to be dug out by gong men,' explains Dr Dave Musgrove, content director of BBC History Magazine and the HistoryExtra podcast. 'It was an unpleasant job but reasonably well-paid, because the excrement was valuable. If you weren't rich, you had your pit, you dug it out, and it was taken away in carts and used for manuring fields.' The 17th century diarist Samuel Pepys wrote extensively about his chamber pot and whether it had been emptied into the cesspit beneath the house by his servant. 'He also used to relieve himself in the fireplace,' says Dr Musgrove. 'But he tells a story where he goes down into his basement and is very disappointed to step into a great heap of turds, because his neighbour hasn't emptied his pit and it's leaked into his.' A 19th century population explosion meant the night soil men couldn't keep up with the volume of fecal matter, and piles of untreated human waste either leaked or were dumped on the shores of the Thames, turning it into an open sewer. Along with human corpses and rotting vegetation in the waterways, this was a toxic disaster waiting to happen. 'By the early 19th century, more people were wanting to use this up-and-coming toilet flushing technology. But it meant the city had lots more liquid matter,' explains the historian. 'So they start digging sewers, digging underground or even just overground ones, and it's going into rivers and the water system is becoming contaminated.' Before 1875, people had no idea that dirty water caused the deadly cholera epidemics that raged in the country's crowded cities. Dr Dave Musgrove, who also hosts HistoryExtra Toilets Through Time podcast series, says: 'Throughout this period we get a slew of public health legislation, where people start to recognise that it is an issue.' Frightened city dwellers blamed the thousands of deaths on the foul miasma that hung heavy over London and other cities. In 1853 outbreaks of cholera in London, Gateshead and Newcastle killed over 10,000 people. The following year another epidemic hit South London After one particularly virulent outbreak on August 31, 1854, when 127 people living around Broad Street in Soho died, a local anaesthetist, John Snow, suspected contaminated water was to blame, but nobody believed him. He traced it to a water pump on Broad Street, where a child had been taken ill with cholera and its nappies had been cleaned in a cesspool of water close to the Broad Street well. The local parish agreed to remove the pump handle as an experiment – and the spread of cholera was stalled. From then on, new sanitary laws made it compulsory for local authorities to provide sewers, control water supplies and regulate the overcrowded and unsanitary lodging houses in rookeries where most poor people lived in Victorian times. Most importantly, all residential construction had to have running water and an internal drainage system. But flushing toilets took ages to catch on in Britain. 'The person who is often cited as having invented the first one was the godson of Queen Elizabeth I, Thomas Harrington, who came up with what he called the 'Ajax' on a lad's weekend in the 15th century.' Although the Queen had one installed, nobody thought his idea would catch on. The ruined Grade I listed Wingfield Manor in Derbyshire is also home to a flushing toilet built in 1596. And it's thought Henry III's 13th century garderobe in York's Clifford's Tower had a flushing spout that ran water down the lavatory hole and out of the tower. But while we were still going alfresco in philistine Britain, the world 's first flushing loos were actually invented in Bronze Age Crete. 'The Minoan Palace of Knossos had a very advanced plumbing system that was built around 2000 BC,' says Dr Musgrove. Cesspits are gold dust to archaeologists, as they reveal so much about the people who used them. 'The people who built the Neolithic site of Stonehenge lived in a village a couple of miles away called Durrington Walls in a settlement of round houses,' Dr Musgrove continues. 'Human poo was excavated, which was riddled with parasites – possibly from eating meat that hadn't been cooked well – but there was no particular designated toilet area.' That changed with the Roman invasion. You can still visit the well preserved Roman communal loos at Chedworth Roman Villa in Gloucestershire or Housesteads Roman fort at Hadrian's Wall ,where soldiers sat chatting side-by-side at the communal latrines while rainwater flushed away their waste. After the Romans leave things go downhill. 'In the early medieval period British society sort of fractures, but excavations in Coppergate in York in the 1980s found evidence of Viking toilets – and the famous Jorvik turd.' The Vikings lived in tightly packed areas, and had yards where people just dug holes and did their business, with little wicker dividing walls. Dr Musgrove adds: 'You can see the mineralised coprolite Viking 9th century poo at the museum, where they've recreated those toilets with Bogar who's been sitting on this loo for 40 years.' The Jorvik turd also tells us a lot about the Viking diet. 'It's quite a big poo – 5cm wide by 20cm long,' chuckles Dr Musgrove. 'Whoever produced it enjoyed a diet rich in bread and meat but not many vegetables.' In the Middle Ages toilets were holes in the ground in communal spaces over a river or a stream. 'They were basically doing their business into the water,' says the historian. 'But there weren't concentrations of people living in one place, so sewage wasn't much of an issue.' Community toilets continued in the Tudor period when Henry VIII built a two-story loo for courtiers at Hampton Court called the House of Easement, which held 28 people at once. 'There were private toilets for important people in castles,' adds Dr Musgrove. 'But those were still quite basic spaces in the wall and human waste would drop down a pipe into a cesspit – or just drip down the outside of the walls.' We've come a long way since those smelly days, but before we congratulate ourselves on having super sewers, transporting our effluent safely away from our homes, it's important to scotch the myth of our ancestors chucking urine-filled chamber pots out of over-hanging medieval windows onto people's heads on the cobbles below. 'Even hundreds of years before the 1875 act, communities did their level best to separate themselves from their faeces,' says Dr Musgrove. 'There were many by-laws to stop us fouling our own spaces even in the Middle Ages, so we shouldn't imagine the streets of Britain's cities were just covered in filth all the time.' Something our leaky water utility companies could no doubt learn from even now. The back story on loo paper Anyone unlucky enough to have used Izal tracing paper loo paper at school will appreciate how important a nice soft double ply is. The first loo paper appeared in 1887 when Joseph C. Gayetty of New York sold medicated flat sheets called The Therapeutic Paper, and the first perforated rolls were sold in 1890 by the Scott Paper Company. But it took a long time for these to become popular because most people were accustomed to using any old paper. 'Once we started printing stuff from the 15th century onwards, people quite quickly started using it for the purposes of wiping – and sometimes as a political gesture,' explains Dr Musgrove. 'If there was something you disagreed with, you might offer that to people to wipe their bottom.' Before that, the early Romans loved a communal khazi and it's thought they also shared a communal sponge. But Dr Musgrove admits: 'We don't actually know whether the sponge on a stick was used for wiping Roman bottoms – or for cleaning the toilets.' Moss was very popular in the Middle Ages for bum wiping. 'There was a thriving trade in bringing moss into medieval towns because it was a valuable product – nice and soft on your backside. Archaeologists have also found evidence of rags in toilet soil.' But the hardcore Tudors used 'oyster and mussel shells – more for scraping than wiping,' according to Dr Musgrove. Alarmingly, holly has also been found in some cesspits. 'That would have made the user quite anxious,' the historian says.
Daily Mirror
09-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Daily Mirror
93 phalluses and well-hung horses - the Bayeux Tapestry decoded
The mysteries of the propaganda and porn of England's most important historical relic show the embroidered tale of William's invasion was just as important in Anglo French relations in 1066 as it is now The Bayeux Tapestry is coming home for the first time in 900 years – where experts believe it was made in the first place, as a piece of medieval propaganda by Kent needleworkers with a saucy sense of humour. Nearly 70m long and 50cm tall, the wool-embroidered fragile linen cloth is a woven story of the events leading up to the Norman Conquest of England in 1066 – but history, as we know, belongs to the victors. In the spring of that year, the King of England Edward the Confessor had died, leaving his country in political turmoil. Into the breach stepped William, Duke of Normandy, who had almost certainly been promised the crown by his first cousin once removed, Edward. But Harold, who was the son of the real power behind the English throne, Godwine, Earl of Wessex, took it for his own, despite having sworn an oath of support to William. It was for this reason that William's ruthless Norman invasion fleet crossed the English Channel and decisively trounced King Harold II - slaughtering thousands on a hilltop near Hastings, in the fading autumn light of October 14, 1066. That date – which is etched into every schoolchild's mind – changed the course of history for England. Even now, 900 years later, the 11th century tapestry is the most iconic image of its time. 'It tells the story of probably the most important event in English history, a massive transformation in society, culture and economy in England,' explains Dr Dave Musgrove, content director of BBC History Magazine and the HistoryExtra podcast, and also co-author with Prof Michael Lewis of the Story of the Bayeux Tapestry. 'It is such a powerful, resonant, vivid document using the power of the imagery which still speaks to us today.' President Macron's announcement at the dazzling state banquet in front of King Charles, the royal family and rock stars Mick Jagger and Elton John that he will loan the Bayeux Tapestry to the British Museum next year, was made in the spirit of Anglo French Entente Cordiale. But the extra layer of intrigue is that, according to historian Dr Musgrove, the tapestry may have been commissioned in the first place to placate the defeated English – and bring together the warring countries. Much of the history of the relic is unknown and open to a great deal of interpretation – both now and by medieval minds. The characters buried within the 58 scenes of several stitched cloth panels, that were sewn together to make one piece, reveal a lot about the fashions, politics, carpentry and ship-building of the time. READ MORE: 'Gran's saucy paintings were slammed – but we're having last laugh' Historians have also unravelled its rude secrets and found willy-waving soldiers and well-hung horses. But, a bit like a medieval social media post that lacks nuance, it was probably created as a 'simplistic narrative' that William had a 'decent claim to the throne of England, that he was justified in his invasion, and his adversary, Harold, was a worthy opponent to be applauded for his military prowess'. Dr Musgrove says you have to read between the woven lines. 'The beauty of the tapestry are the little Latin captions which are very terse and don't really tell you anything, which is one of the reasons it might have been made to bring people together, because you can read it and look at it in so many different ways,' he says. Before we even get to the blood and gore of the battle itself, the tapestry starts about a year before the main event. READ MORE: 'We drank to excess and had debauched sex parties – but one drug split the band' 'It's the story of how Harold Godwinson, who at that point was an important earl in England, but not the King, gets himself entangled in Normandy,' explains Dr Musgrove. 'He goes on a sea voyage to Normandy, finds himself probably as an unwelcome guest of William, and then they go on some adventures together and Harold is painted as heroic.' History lessons tell us the Normans brutally asserted their control over his newly-conquered kingdom, but there is another theory to explain why the English are treated well and Harold is painted as a hero in the tapestry. 'We think this might have been made at a particular moment in time shortly after the battle, when William was trying to bring everyone together,' says the historian. This very un-Normanlike touchy-feely attitude didn't last long. 'By 1070 William had enough of rebellions and took a much harsher line,' says Dr Musgrove. One of the more famous scenes in the tapestry is the Halley's Comet which appeared in the sky in 1066 after the death of King Edward. Dr Musgrove continues: 'It's a portent of bad luck, so this is a commentary on the fact that Harold has had himself crowned when he shouldn't have, because he's made this oath to William'. Nobody is sure exactly why the tapestry was commissioned or exactly when, but there are theories about it, including a story as old as time about a boastful power-seeking nobleman. 'The main theory is that it was created by Bishop Odo of Bayeux, who was William the Conqueror's half-brother, because he has surprising prominence in the tapestry,' says Dr Musgrove. 'Perhaps he wanted to be memorialised in an artefact for his cathedral? Or he wanted to curry favour with William, who he'd fallen out with and wanted to sort of show what a marvellous thing the Norman conquest was.' It clearly worked, as Bishop Odo was made Earl of Kent after the conquest. But the first clear documentary reference for the tapestry wasn't until 1476 when it appeared in an inventory at Bayeux Cathedral. However, Dr Musgrove says most experts would agree that it was probably made in Canterbury by English seamstresses, who were famous for their needlework. 'We had a rich tradition in Anglo-Saxon embroidery, and also in the Latin captions there are bits of English language,' he explains. 'Importantly, some of the scenes seem to be almost directly copied in their content and their style from scenes in illuminated manuscripts, which we know were held in monastic libraries in Canterbury in the 11th century.' And there was one more link – the power-crazed Bishop Odo was also in charge in Canterbury. The original embroidery is kept in the Bayeux Museum in Normandy, but a replica created in the late 19th century is held at Reading Museum. 'Seeing Mick Jagger at the banquet reminded me that Charlie Watts also owned a replica of the Bayeux tapestry – there were a few copies made in the 19th century,' adds the author. But the nudity and willy waving figures sewn into the borders around the battle scenes were actually censored by the Victorians in their versions. Underpants were sewn over offending genitals and even horses' genetalia was covered! READ MORE: 'I'm a chemist - Agatha Christie wrote one murder plot better than any other' While pictures of phalluses are often symbols of fertility in different cultures, in our Anglo-Saxon tapestry they very much give off 'rich bloke in sports car' energy. 'There are 93 penises in the tapestry,' confirms Dr Musgrove. 'Although 88 of those belong to horses. What's quite fun is that William the Conqueror is riding a horse with a a memorably large appendage.' There could be a 94th among the human figures of men – and women – with their genitals exposed, but Dr Musgrove says a question hangs over whether 'what's dangling below his garments is a penis or a scabbard or sword'. Again, nobody knows the reason for the rude nudes. They may just be some sort of commentary on what is happening in the main battle. Otherwise, it was created for the monks in Canterbury and, as the historian proposes, 'it's actually a big sort of moral commentary on the sins of worldly people'. Another explanation - given the earthy nature of soldiers - is that it's simply medieval porn. 'The tapestry may well have been created for military men who fought in the Battle of Hastings to remind them of their glories,' suggests Dr Musgrove. 'They might have been the sort of chaps who are amused by depictions of naked people, and they're providing moments of levity to what is essentially a bloody story.' Which basically means the tapestry could also be a 900-year-old sex text!
