Just when you thought the Holidays were BEHIND us

You can find all the websites you want (and one is more than a buttload, if you ask me) "debunking the myth" that Sir Thomas Crapper invented the modern flush toilet. While I can't seriously object to their airing out the dirty linen of politicians and generals, who, more often than not, fouled their britches sure as sh*t, when they feel the need to leave their racing stripes on popular history by trying to wipe away the large--one is tempted to say, "commodious"--place this gentleman deserves in our hearts (not to mention other portions of our anatomy), well, that's right up there with going commando for chapping my posterior.

 

These outhouse philosophers argue that flush toilets had been designed and in some cases patented decades or even centuries before Thomas Crapper did his business, and that he was simply a sanitary engineer who had a successful plumbing business in London, and that he purchased the rights to a "valveless water waste preventer" (as it was called in the language of his times, which was every bit as flowery as today's aerosol air fresheners), the component that enabled the toilet to flush effectively, which was invented by either an employee named Albert Gilpin or his own nephew, George Crapper (for some reason, while they can tell us in no uncertain terms that OUR story is a crock of crap, the "myth-busters" can't be quite so positive about which one of THEIR stories is the straight poop). In other words, he didn't invent the flush toilet, he merely built one with the essential component that made it a working proposition, merely went on to manufacture, sell and install them in such quantities that they became not a luxury but an absolute necessity in the home of everyone who would count himself a member of Christian Civilization, and he was merely so successful in this venture that his name and the device became as one. And, because that's merely all he did, and since some other Englishman had built Elizabeth I an indoor biffie a couple of centuries before and because in his sketches Leonardo may have had Mona Lisa or one of those naked guys he liked to draw sitting on one, then Thomas Crapper should be flushed and forgotten.

 

Not to say they're full of it, but I believe it tells us something about their mental constipation that these dung beetles can't even agree on which "myth" regarding Crapper's eponymity they want to debunk. Some say his name became the noun due to the large number of American soldiers in England during WW I, many of them unfamiliar with indoor plumbing, who saw the name on the tanks in the "water closets", and just thought "Crapper" must be the English word for them. Others say it was the large number of American soldiers in England during WW II who saw the name on the tanks and, being American GI's, were soon making cracks about going to "the crapper".

 

I tend toward the WW I argument myself. The WW II theory sounds plausible, because there WERE a lot of American soldiers in England during WW II, the Germans having overrun all of France, forcing us to stop in England and build up for the invasion before going Over There again. On the other hand, there weren't that many American soldiers in England during WW I because that time around, their left wing having collided with The Taxis of the Marne on the road to Paris, their right wing having run into "that contemptible little army" at Wipers* and, as a result, their Schlieffen Plan having turned into Schiesse, the Heinies decided to dig a 500-mile slit trench and squat, so, when Wilson finally got off the pot and let Johnny get his gun, the AEF could book direct passage New York to Saint-Nazaire.

 

Still, WW I sounds more plausible. For one thing, there were SOME American servicemen in England during WW I, either in our own armed forces as liaison personnel, embassy attaches, or passing through for training, or those who had volunteered for the British Army and Royal Flying Corps in the days before Wilson decided he wasn't too proud to fight (or, at least, decided he wasn't too proud to let Black Jack, Captain Eddie and Sergeant York fight). There were also a goodly number of trans-Atlantic business men, diplomatic personnel, journalists and the like, not only during the war, but in the years before and after as well. And, let's face it, it just doesn't take all that many Americans to come up with those kind of jokes--if two or more were gathered in the presence of THAT name, whether they were familiar with indoor plumbing or not, it would have been downright un-American for some kind of off-color humor NOT to have come out of it. Further, and perhaps most telling of all, the first known reference in American literature to "a crapper", as we understand the term, was in the early nineteen-thirties, which, in case the revisionists missed it, is AFTER WW I, but BEFORE WW II.

 

Which is exactly the point: can we really learn anything about lavatory history from people who demonstrably don't know the difference between Number 1 and Number 2?

 

 

Additional evidence of their desperate need for some intellectual Ex-Lax is the fact that the myth-busters are, by their own admission, perplexed that Thomas Crapper is sometimes "inexplicably" misidentified as "John Crapper", or "Sir John Crapper".

 

 

"Inexplicably"...? Really...? Are you sh*tting me...?!!

 

 

One of the volumes in my personal library, treasured since childhood, actually belonged to an uncle, who received it as a Christmas present in the early nineteen-sixties, and, knowing how much I loved it, passed it on to me. A collection of men's room jokes (tame by today's standards, but quite the blue humor knee-slappers back there on the old New Frontier), with a hole bored in the upper left hand corner so that it might hang on the pull chain, and with a cartoon drawing on the cover depicting an Indian fakir about to sit on a commode seat of nails, the title is: "Jokes for the John". Now, granted, not everyone had the educational benefits I enjoyed as a child, but still, even if the old definition "Piled higher and Deeper" is never more applicable than when referring to an Ivy League PhD, I would think even someone from Harvard or Yale would not need to strain his or her mental sphincter over how the popcorn fart of JOHN Crapper got cut loose in the hurricane of History.

 

 

Whether it's affixed to John or Thomas, the "Sir" part really seems to get the Don't-Know-Their-Heads-From-Shinola crowd's bowels in an uproar. They're quicker than the Tiajuana Two-Step when it comes to pointing out that Thomas Crapper was a man of humble origins and never knighted. This, of course, is their way of taking a dump on both Thomas Crapper and us, for mistakenly referring to him by the title. Personally, I believe the only thing this proves is that with all those knobs and points and jewels sticking out all over them, it must have been a Royal Pain for Victoria and Edward to have had their crowned heads stuck up there like that, and that any of their annual honors lists that didn't include the name of Thomas Crapper are fit only for use as a scratchier, less absorbent and altogether unsatisfactory emergency substitute when all that's left of your last roll of Charmin Ultra-Soft is that empty cardboard cylinder hanging forlornly on the spindle. And, truly, that it proves the Glory of our shared Anglo-American heritage of democracy--that this is an instance where it doesn't take some fancy doin's with all their nibs at Buckingham Palace to get the job done, that the most humble commoner who has ever had a moving experience whilst sitting on the throne can and should--and, as the "myth" attests, does--afford him the honorific.

 

 

So, with regard to the revisionist myth-busters, one is tempted to quote one of the inimitable Rowan Atkinson's most memorable lines, "I wouldn't trust the bloody lot of you to know the right way to sit on a toilet seat!" (and, temptation proving too much, as one knew it would, one just did). As for Thomas Crapper, if he didn't technically "invent" the modern flush toilet, he is, more so than any other in my estimation, responsible for its having come to be counted with the Magna Carta, the Bill of Rights, the Habeas Corpus, trial by jury, the English common law and the American Declaration of Independence in what Churchill has called "the joint inheritance of the English-speaking world". Indeed, along with those and Our Glorious English Language itself, it is one of the essential elements that make the English-speaking world worth inheriting. And, if he can hear me up there in that Big Water Closet in the Sky, to Thomas Crapper I will say, "Thank you, sir, and God bless you, sir, and you will always be SIR Thomas to me!"

 

 

Finally, I realize this post is a few days early, but I know you hate last-minute shopping as much as I do, and I wanted to get this out as a reminder while you still have plenty of time to get to the toilet paper-and-air freshener aisle at the supermarket, or visit your local plumbing supply store, to find That Special Something for That Special Someone.

 

 

 

*Wipers: the correct spelling, and the as-close-to-correct-as-anybody-but-a-Frenchman-can-get pronunciation, is "Ypres"/"Ee-preh", but surely you didn't think that I, of all people--and certainly not HERE of all places--was going to pass up the chance to use Tommy Atkins' own scatological Anglicization of it, now did you?

Done