Thomas Crapper Day
Yes its true. Today we celebrate the man behind the porcelain
throne – Thomas Crapper.
Though credited by many as the inventor of the flush toilet,
Crapper was not, but he did popularize the WC (water closet).
He was a shrewd businessman, salesman and self-publicist. In a
time when bathroom fixtures were barely spoken of, he heavily
promoted sanitary plumbing and pioneered the concept of the
bathroom fittings showroom*
Crapper did hold numerous patents that helped modernize indoor
plumbing. His company, Thomas Crapper & Co. Ltd., is still
creating reproductions of his original designs.
BTW – About the word Crap …
…is old in the English language, one of a group of nouns
applied to discarded cast offs, like “residue from
renderings” (1490s) or … probably extended from Middle
English crappe “chaff, or grain that has been trodden
underfoot in a barn” (c. 1440), deriving ultimately from Late
Latin crappa, “chaff.”
Yet another purported explanation is that Crapper’s flush
toilet advertising was so widespread that “crapper”
became a synonym for “toilet” and people simply assumed
that he was the inventor.*