Re: Strange Toilets
Stranger yet were the Automatic Slop-water Toilets designed well over a century ago by Duckett's of Burnley. These worked on a fairly simple operating principle, namely water was scarce and you didn't want to waste water using to flush toilets. No, these toilets used grey water that had already been used for something else, and were automatic so whenever the water tipper-pan got full, it tipped and flushed.
The downsides to this mechanism were many.
Firstly, the toilet only flushed the actual pan, and didn't wash the edges of the bowl (but you had housewives for that mucky job).
Secondly, the pan had to be below the source of the water, so the toilets were always cavernously deep pits, dangerous for small children to use.
Finally and worst of all, they didn't actually save water. People do not like crapping into someone else's mess, so houses which had these sorts of toilets quickly developed the habit of leaving a tap running just a little, to make the toilet flush at regular intervals. This habit wasted more water than a normal flush toilet used.
Very few working examples of the Duckett toilet are left in the world, and thankfully the design never really travelled far beyond industrial Lancashire.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
