Gayetty’s Medicated Paper

Garderobe in a Czech castle

I really love to read about those 'insignificant' yet 'significant' items that are really important in our lives.  Living in Europe and visiting castles in France, Germany, Italy, Belgium, Austria, Italy, The Netherlands and Czechoslavakia (before it was the Czech Republic and Slovakia), there was always a lacking of a designated bathroom facilities in those fortresses to relieve oneself.  

Queen Mary of Scots private garderobe

Castle of the Louvre

Most of the early bathrooms were merely holes in a corner in a designated room that emptied out into the outside at the base of the castle wall.  Even when visiting the Louvre Museum in Paris, the Castle of the Louvre that was converted and renovated as the Louvre Museum itself contained remnants of the "ole hole in the floor" (or garderobes) as well as the exterior outside floor of where antiquated feces remains are still being studied. 
 

Garderobe chute showing exterior erosion under the chute

Garderobes were a room in a castles or monastery that had a bench with a hole in it. Not unlike how we use a toilet today. The person would sit down, do their business wipe with straw, moss, leaves, wool or linen rags, and then walk away. The waste would fall down a shoot into a pit or a moat. If into a cesspit it was then cleaned and mucked out by gong farmers. Garderobes were sometimes blocked off by a screen or door and sometimes out in the open. Since I never been to France, the bathroom facilities brought a few surprises to me. When traveling the French countryside, I visited a rest stop while driving to Paris from Germany.  There lacking in the "water closet" (WC) was an actual porcelain structure to sit upon.  I mean those Kings loved their thrones, but the WC thrones were found no where in those rest stops like we have grown accustomed to here in the United States, England, Germany and other parts of Europe. France was really quite a surprise, except within the city where one visited a WC alongside a boulevard or out in the median, much like the rest of Europe. But, the real story here that I want to discuss is the method of cleaning oneself after releasing one's waste, so the history of toilet paper has become an interest of mine today.  But, before we explore that history, why is the 'toilet' called the 'toilet' and did Thomas Crapper really invent the toilet?  Quoting from the Toilet Paper History Encyclopedia, below are those answers.

What does the word “toilet” mean?

Deriving in 1828, the original meaning of toilet, or toilette, is of French origin meaning the “act of washing, dressing, and preparing oneself”. As the years went by, the word evolved into actually being the room or facility in which one arranges their toilet. In modern days, toilet refers to the plumbing fixture that one might use in the “bathroom”, with “bathroom” now describing the facility one would go to for the purpose of using the toilet or lavatory.

Why is a bathroom often called the “toilet”?

According to bathroom historian Frank Muir, the toilet and/or the outhouse have at one time or another been called:
• “House of Honor”; the ancient Israelite
• The “House of the Morning”; the ancient Egyptians
• The “garderobe” (literally, “cloakroom”)
• The the necessarium, the necessary house,
• The reredorter (literally, “the room at the back of the dormitory”)
• The privy (that is, the private place
• The jakes, the john, the loo, the W.C. (for water closet),
• Room 100 (in Europe),
• The lavatory
• The closet of ease
• The Throne
• Countless other nouns

In addition to euphemisms, needless to say, there is also an abundance of vulgar expressions. Curiously, however, there is no “real” word for the place where one deposits one’s bodily wastes. ‘Toilet,’ which is now thought of as the “official” term, is itself a euphemism. Originally, toilet was the process of dressing, as in, “the lady has just completed her toilet.” Before toilet assumed its present meaning in the early twentieth century, the accepted technical term for the “john” was the vaguely disgusting, but still euphemistic “bog-house.”

Did Thomas Crapper invent the toilet?

No. Although from 1861 to 1904 Crapper did have a successful career in the plumbing industry, holding nine patents for plumbing-related products in England, he did not invent the toilet. Albert Giblin holds the 1819 British Patent for the Silent Valveless Water Waste Preventer, a system that allowed a toilet to flush effectively. Giblin worked for Crapper as an employee and the most likely scenario is that Crapper bought the patent rights from Giblin and marketed the device himself.

The History of Toilet Paper

The Chinese were responsible for the invention of the toilet paper. But, how did the rest of the world fare? As mentioned in the Toilet Paper Encyclopedia (http://encyclopedia.toiletpaperworld.com/toilet-paper-history/history-of-toilet-paper) below is a list of what people in various societies used to clean themselves:

- Wealthy Romans -Wool, rosewater

- Public Restrooms in Ancient Rome- A sponge soaked in salt water, on the end of a stick

- Wealthy French – lace, wool and hemp; bidet

- Middle Ages – hayballs, a scraper/gompf stick kept in a container in the privy

- Early Americans – rags, newsprint, paper from catalogs, corncobs, and leaves

- Viking Age/England- discarded sheep and lambs wool

- Hawaiians – coconut shells

- Eskimos – snow and Tundra moss

- India – your left hand and water

- Commoners – Defecating in the river is very common

- Sailors from Spain/Portugal – frayed end of an old anchor line

- Medieval Europe- Straw, hay, grass, gompf stick

- United States – Corn cobs, Sears Roebuck catalog, mussel shell, newspaper, leaves, sand

- British Lords – pages from a book

- Elite citizens – Hemp & wool

Gayetty's Medicated Paper

Joseph Gayetty is widely credited with being the inventor of modern commercially available toilet paper in the United States. Gayetty's paper, first introduced in 1857, was available as late as the 1920s. Gayetty's Medicated Paper was sold in packages of flat sheets, watermarked with the inventor's name. Original advertisements for the product used the tagline "The greatest necessity of the age! Gayetty's medicated paper for the water-closet."

Joseph Gayetty

Seth Wheeler of Albany, New York, obtained the earliest United States patents for toilet paper and dispensers, the types of which eventually were in common usage in that country, in 1883. Moist toilet paper was first introduced in the United Kingdom by Andrex in the 1990s, and in the United States by Kimberly-Clark in 2001 (in lieu of bidets which are rare in those countries.) It is designed to clean better than dry toilet paper after defecation, and may be useful for women during menstruation. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toilet_paper)

Gayetty's Medicated Paper

Gayetty Medicated Paper advertisement

Don't know about you, but I am so glad for the invention of the toilet paper. Can't imagine wiping myself with mussel or coconut shells.  Think that would hurt.  Then again, I don't recall Chuck Nolan having any problems with either shell, unless of course, he used palm fronds!

Tom Hanks portrayed Chuck Noland in Castaway

For more information:

http://historyundressed.blogspot.com/2008/07/history-of-hygiene-bathing-teeth.html