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Thomas Crapper Day

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thomas crapper dayToday is Thomas Crapper Day, commemorating the death in 1910 of the man widely believed to have invented the flush toilet. Although that is, as they say, crap, Crapper was a shrewd marketer, leveraging his status as plumber to the British royal family to popularize indoor plumbing. He owned the first showroom of bathroom facilities and publicized the toilet at a time when no one spoke of such “necessities.”

Crapper is one small part of the largely untold history of the device that transformed the world. Humans have been building indoor plumbing for millennia. Excavations have uncovered evidence of flushing toilets dating back to 2600 B.C., during the mature Harappan phase of the Indus Valley Civilization.

John Harrington (also spelled Harington) invented a version in 1596 with a cord that, when pulled, would allow a rush of water from the “water closet,” flushing away waste. He installed one at his home and also built one for his godmother, Queen Elizabeth I. He called it the Ajax as a play on”jakes,” a slang term for toilet in use at the time. He may be the reason we sometimes call it a “john.”

An author, Harrington wrote “A New Discourse upon a Stale Subject: The Metamorphosis of Ajax.” Superficially, its subject was his invention; in truth, it was a thinly-veiled allegory about political stercus (manure) poisoning the state. The book got him banished from court for a time, and the queen called him her saucy godson.

(Side note: A scent called Stercus was introduced at Smell Festival 2014 in Bologna, Italy. The perfumer named his brand Orto Parisi to honor his grandfather, who fertilized his garden with his own excrement. The bottle was displayed on a slab of dried, pressed manure inside a golden frame. Order here if you dare.)

thomas crapper day

Yup, that’s a tray made of poop.

Fellow Brits refined Harrington’s design. Alexander Cumming invented the S-trap in 1775, which used a sliding valve called a “stink trap” to seal the bowl’s outlet and prevent sewer stench from entering the home. It is still in use today. Two years later, Samuel Prosser patented the “plunger closet,” which featured a separate flush tank.

After noticing that the toilets he installed in London tended to freeze in winter, Joseph Bramah replaced the sliding valve with a hinged flap and also developed a float valve system for the flush tank. Many sources state that a coworker named Mr. Allen devised the apparatus. But Bramah received the patent in 1778 and, as a result, we can’t even find Allen’s first name in historical records. In 1852, George Jennings patented his own improvements and later constructed London’s first public toilets.

At last, we’re back to where we started. When did Thomas Crapper receive patent #4990, prominently featured in his advertisements? He didn’t. Albert Giblin was awarded patent #4990 for his “Improvements to Flushing Cisterns” in 1898. (Many sites mistakenly report the year as 1819. We have located the original patent and drawings.)

thomas crapper day

Adam Hart-Davis of Exnet used the British Library to painstakingly track down all patents awarded to Thomas Crapper. According to him, “Mr. Crapper took out exactly six, starting in 1881 (#1628) to do with ventilating house drains, and ending in 1893 (#11604) for a mechanism to flush a lavatory by means of a foot lever. None of his patents was #4990. None of his patents was for a valveless water-waste preventer (WWP).”

It’s possible that Giblin, of whom little else can be learned, sold his patent to Mr. Crapper. One source states that he was Crapper’s employee, which would explain a lot. What we can say with certainty is that Thomas Crapper and Company, claiming to be “The Original Patentees and Manufacturers of Bathroom Appliances,” is still in business today.

The company website tells the story of Crapper’s design of the first automatic flush toilet, featuring a spring-loaded seat that would fly up, pulling rods that triggered the flushing action. Unfortunately, with time and use, the rubber buffers attached to the seat’s underside began to break down and become sticky.

“This caused the seat to remain down, attached to the loo pan for a few seconds as the user got to his feet. Seconds later the seat, under stress from the powerful springs, would free itself and sweep violently upwards – striking the unfortunate Victorian on the bare bottom!”

It became known as the “Bottom Slapper” and was not a commercial success. (One could say it was a hit and then it wasn’t.) We trust that the royal family, who contracted Crapper to install plumbing fixtures at Buckingham Palace and Windsor Castle, were never subjected to that indignity.

thomas crapper day

Manhole covers bearing the company name have become minor tourist destinations. One in particular, outside Westminster Abbey, another site supplied by Crapper, has become a popular spot to take brass rubbings. Some of the enthusiasm for this activity may stem from the misconception that the slang term “crap” for human waste originated with Thomas Crapper. In fact, it predated him by hundreds of years.

He may have been indirectly responsible for the American habit of calling a toilet “the crapper.” Every time U.S. soldiers stationed in Britain during World War I used a bathroom, they saw “CRAPPER” in the porcelain of the toilet and sink. The association between “crap,” “Crapper,” and the act of crapping in a Crapper was so irresistibly hilarious that they brought it home with them, and their descendants continue to use it every day—-in word and deed.

thomas crapper day

If this holiday, focused as it is on a distasteful bodily function, seems undeserving of your attention, ask yourself this question: If you could only choose one, which could you live without? Your toilet or your iPhone?

Take that, Apple.

Cremation Day

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cremation dayCremation Day is more fun than it sounds. Let’s rephrase: it’s more fun to read about than it sounds. Trust us.

On December 9, 1792, the first recorded open-air cremation in the United States took place in Charleston, South Carolina. The decedent was Colonel Henry Laurens, former president of the Continental Congress, who had once co-owned the largest slave trading company in North America.

Laurens, who suffered from a fear of being buried alive, stipulated in his will that his body be burned on the grounds of his plantation. (One wonders why it never occurred to him to be afraid of being burned alive.) His ashes were then placed in an urn and buried in the family cemetery.

The plantation is now a Trappist monastery, exposed by PETA in 2007 for starving chickens for weeks to increase egg production. Now the monks raise mushrooms instead.

Humble Beginnings

Cremation dates back to ancient Greece and Rome, where urns called amphorae were used to store the ashes of the cremated. The Greeks buried them under mounds of earth and stone. Romans built columbaria, vaults containing niches to hold the urns.

Vikings burned the dead atop funeral pyres, but the rest of what we see on TV and in movies is bunk. They did not place the deceased in boats and set them ablaze. An untended fire over water could not reach or maintain a temperature high enough to incinerate a body, leaving charred remains to be picked apart by birds or washed ashore.

cremation day

Also, boats were much too valuable to burn every time someone died. They would have spent all their time shipbuilding. Ship captains were sometimes buried with a small ceremonial ship. One of these boats, dating back to the ninth century, was unearthed in Norway in 1904. It contained sacrificial women and livestock but no burnt timber. Sorry, Hollywood.

The first cremation chamber, called a retort, was constructed by Professor Lodovico Brunetti and introduced at the Vienna Medical Exhibition of 1873. He displayed the furnace with four pounds of cremated human remains and a sign that read: “Vermibus erepti, puro consumimur igni!”, which, loosely translated from Latin, means “Saved from worms, we are consumed by pure fire!”

Dr. Francis J. LeMoyne constructed America’s first modern crematory in 1876 on property he owned in Washington, Pennsylvania, after the local cemetery refused to host it. Housed in a simple brick building, it remains in remarkable condition 139 years later. (Tours are available the second Saturday of May through September from 2 to 4 pm.)

cremation day

As luck would have it, the New York Cremation Society had just come into possession of its first dead body, Baron Joseph Henry Louis Charles De Palm, a German aristocrat who had apparently died without a penny to his name(s).

The society contacted LeMoyne and requested the use of his facility, seeing it as an opportunity to showcase the superiority of cremation. On December 6, 1876, surrounded by a throng of reporters, scientists, and physicians, the baron’s body was produced.

Unfortunately, DePalm had been dead for six months, poorly preserved with potter’s clay and phenol. The gruesome sight of the withered, shrunken corpse did not further the cause. Though the procedure went well, the herbs and pine branches could not alleviate the stench. Newspaper accounts were less than glowing.

It’s said that Dr. LeMoyne built the crematory due to his own fear of being buried alive. (Honestly, does anyone look forward to that possibility?) He died in 1879 and, in accordance with his wishes, was cremated on the premises.

Happy Endings

Cremation’s acceptance grew slowly. Between 1876 and 1901, 25 new crematories were built across the U.S. By the time the Cremation Association of America was founded in 1913, there were 52. More than 10,000 cremations took place that year.

Bronze urns became fashionable in the 1920s, some so heavy that the floors underneath had to be reinforced. Various styles were favored across the country. Round ones were preferred in the Northeast, while rectangular and book shapes sold well on the West Coast. In the Midwest, book, box, and vase models were popular, according to Jason Engler, Senior Cremation Advisor to the National Museum of Funeral History, which can be rented for parties and has a lovely gift shop with items like this “Any Day Above Ground is a Good One®” beer koozie.

Cremation Day

In the 1980s, bronze prices soared, and urns made of aluminum, cloisonné, and other lower-cost materials made post-cremation receptacles affordable to the masses. Times have changed since then: Of the 1.9 million people cremated in the U.S. in 2023, about 600,000 chose to be scattered rather than stored.

If only they’d known about LifeGem, a company that turns ashes into a cocktail ring. Just seal no more than eight ounces of your loved one in a plastic container and ship it. (Add a lock of your hair to create a “unity LifeGem heirloom diamond.” Why should the dead have all the fun?)

The carbon is extracted and superheated, which “converts your loved one’s carbon to graphite with unique characteristics and elements that will create your one-of-a-kind LifeGem diamond.” What kind of graphite? Like a pencil? A fishing rod? Fuselage? A neutron moderator in a nuclear reactor?

cremation day

Specialists transfer the graphite to a machine that heats and compresses it for several weeks. At this point, any resemblance to your loved one is purely ceremonial, DNA long gone, so it’s faceted and etched with your choice of messages to guarantee its uniqueness.

A half-carat colorless LifeGem costs $5,599. Volume discounts are available. Now everyone can have a piece of Grandpa. Just make sure you take him off when you wash the dishes.

Happy Cremation Day!

More death-related holidays:
Sylvia Plath Day
Create a Great Funeral Day
Plan Your Epitaph Day
RIP Visit a Cemetery Day

Plan Your Epitaph Day

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Depending on how you view it, a tombstone is your last chance to say goodbye, crack a joke, be profound, or otherwise make cemetery visitors imagine you were cool and wish they’d known you before they move on to visit their Nana’s weed-covered resting place.

Plan Your Epitaph Day was created by Lance Hardie in 1995 to coincide with the Day of the Dead (Dia de los Muertos), a Mexican holiday that honors the souls of departed loved ones. Hardie’s goal was simple: to make sure that we take control of our epitaphs, those few all-important words that will tell those who see them what we’d like them to think about who we used to be.

Playing with the idea of death is encouraged at this time of year. We dress up for Halloween and laugh, perhaps a bit timorously, at shadows. It’s also a time for reflection and mental housekeeping, as we’ve seen with holidays recently profiled here, such as Create a Great Funeral Day, Visit a Cemetery Day, and even National Magic Day, with its tribute to the death of Harry Houdini.

Let’s take a look at a couple of epitaphs quoted by Hardie.

W.C. Fields

Sadly, we must begin by debunking a favorite of ours: W.C. Fields did not have this on his gravestone:

“Here lies W. C. Fields. I would rather be living in Philadelphia.”

Fields was no fan of  Philadelphia, famously calling it “a cemetery with lights.” When he was invited to contribute his own epitaph for the June 1925 issue of Vanity Fair, it was no surprise that Philly rated a mention. Since then, various permutations of the pithy comment have coalesced into a myth about his gravestone.

As it turns out, Fields didn’t use his headstone to take one last jab for posterity. (Perhaps he worried the joke would not stay fresh through the ages, or didn’t care since he wouldn’t be around to witness it?) Instead, it simply reads “W.C. Fields 1880 – 1946”.

plan your epitaph day wc fields

William Shakespeare

Hardie also cites Shakespeare’s epitaph. This one does exist in the Collegiate Church of the Holy Trinity in Stratford-Upon-Avon, England. The gravestone is badly eroded and reads:

plan your epitaph day

GOOD FREND FOR JESUS SAKE FORBEARE

TO DIGG THE DUST ENCLOASED HEARE

BLESE BE THE MAN THAT SPARES THES STONES

AND CURST BE HE THAT MOVES MY BONES

Shakespeare didn’t leave a spooky epitaph to be studied and interpreted in perpetuity. He left instructions. In his day, it was accepted practice to dig up bones from the church’s graveyard and tombs, moving them to make room for more burials. They were placed in a charnel house and subsequently burned.

(Some claim this was called the “bonefire of the vanities.” Although that would be a heck of an origin story for the title of Tom Wolfe’s book, we could find no proof of it.)

Shakespeare knew and disdained the church’s practice of recycling graves. He may have also meant to dissuade the government from moving his bones to Westminster Abbey. Thus far, his wishes have been honored.

A Sad Update

When we first wrote about him in 2015, Hardie was 79. He died the following year on October 27, 2016. It was surprisingly hard to find and verify this information, especially given the research capacity on today’s Internet. We had to triangulate his hometowns of Arcata and Eureka, CA, work history, and even his bequest to Humboldt State University to support future generations of students researching sustainable technology. We’ve been unable to find an obituary in any newspaper.

The saddest thing of all is that we haven’t found any record of the epitaph he wrote for himself, or a photo or description of his headstone. Sites like FindAGrave.com are dedicated to documenting grave markers worldwide. If you have this information, please contact us. It’s a shame not to know what Mr. Hardie chose to leave as his last words from beyond the grave.

What Now?

For anyone daunted by the prospect of writing their own epitaph, Mr. Hardie offered to write it for them. He didn’t provide prices, just noted it would be expensive. He did make exceptions for death row inmates and members of the U.S. military about to report to a war zone; he offered to write their epitaphs for free. (Death row inmates needed to provide the date of execution; service members, proof of their orders.)

We need to take a moment to point out that many who die in prison have no means to pay for their funerals and end up in prison graveyards like Captain Joe Byrd Cemetery in Texas, the largest in the country. They lie beneath markers that bear only name, inmate number, and date of death.  Notorious killers are routinely identified by inmate number alone to discourage visitation and vandalism. Not much need for epitaphs there, free or otherwise.

In any case, Mr. Hardie is no longer available to take requests, and it doesn’t appear that anyone else has picked up his mantle. It could be an interesting career in an untapped market for those with a gift for writing a customer’s final soundbite. Food for thought.

For now, let’s get back to the fun stuff. A Google search for “funny epitaphs” returns thousands of results, including this one at BoredPanda. If you need some inspiration, use this epitaph generator at WikiHow. (Yes, WikiHow is still a thing.)

Here at Worldwide Weird Holidays, we want to get in on the fun and like to imagine the impact this would have in any cemetery at dusk:

plan your epitaph day tombstone

 Feel free to use it: no charge. It’s our gift to you.

National Magic Day

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Everybody knows today is Halloween. But it’s also National Magic Day, when members of the Society of American Magicians (SAM) and many other groups celebrate by offering free magic performances for kids, the ill, the elderly, and shut-ins.

Why is this holiday celebrated today? In 1938, a Chicago member of SAM proposed a holiday to honor Harry Houdini. October 31st was declared National Magic Day in memory of the day Houdini died.

national magic day houdini in chains

Houdini set the standard for a type of performance known as Escape Or Die. There are at least three possible ways for a magician to risk his life in the event of failure.  These are death by drowning, as in the water escapes Houdini pioneered; death by suffocation, as in escapes from airtight enclosures such as coffins; and death by falling (also originated by Houdini), in a straitjacket escape while hanging from high above the earth, where falling meant certain death.

In 1915, at the Panama-Pacific International Exposition in San Francisco, Houdini was chained in a locked box weighted down with 500 pounds of iron and dropped into the bay. He escaped. To celebrate the fair’s centennial, the Palace of Fine Arts, the only building to remain from the exposition, constructed an “escape room” that challenged all who entered to escape within 80 minutes.

On September 30, 1926, in Worcester, MA, he performed the first public test of an airtight coffin, seeking to prove there were no secret tubes siphoning air to him or other trickery. The Daily Telegram reported that Houdini would be sealed for one hour “in the coffin in which he will be buried when he dies.”

national magic day houdini coffin test

The test went off without a hitch. What no one knew then was that it would become Houdini’s casket only one month later, after his death on Halloween 1926.

Houdini wasn’t killed by a feat gone wrong; he died of diffuse peritonitis due to acute appendicitis, widely believed to have been caused by a punch to his abdomen on the morning of October 22, 1926. A young man who may have been a college student, an amateur boxer, or both decided to test Houdini’s boast that he could withstand any blow. The magician later claimed he was injured only because he wasn’t given time to prepare by tensing his abdominal muscles.

Research shows it’s unlikely that a punch could directly rupture an appendix, even one that’s already inflamed. In any case, Houdini mistakenly assumed the pain he suffered afterward was due only to the punch, leading him to refuse medical treatment for what could have been a routine case of appendicitis.

Instead, he continued to perform for two more days until, overwhelmed by pain, he agreed to be hospitalized. The surgeon who removed his appendix found it had burst, spreading peritonitis throughout Houdini’s body. The odds were against him in the days before antibiotics, but he held on and endured another surgery, seeming to rally before finally slipping away on October 31st at the age of 52.

Ten years later, his wife Bess held what she called The Final Houdini Séance on the roof of the Knickerbocker Hotel. Supposedly, she had a compact with her late husband to contact her within ten years. There’s nothing to substantiate that. It appears that Bess wanted the subject of communicating with Harry to be closed. After her husband did not reappear,  she wrote:

Since the failure of the ten-year test, it is my opinion that all concerned have struck a mighty worldwide blow at superstition.

There is a recording of the séance or, more likely, a theatrical reading of the transcript, which was released as an album. On it, Bess says, “It is finished.”

She couldn’t have been more wrong. The “final” séance spawned dozens of Halloween Houdini séances that continue to this day. Some bill themselves as “official.” As Houdini himself would tell you, that’s impossible. One thing’s for sure: If séances work, then Mr. Houdini’s phone is ringing off the hook right about now.

*****

P.S. Houdini was well known for his hostility to the Spiritualism movement so popular in his day and attempted to discredit so-called mediums at every turn. (He had tried to contact his dead brother and father as a young man and was embittered by the experience.)

So it seems a bit odd that he befriended Arthur Conan Doyle, who was a fervent believer in psychic phenomena. Each sought to convert the other until Doyle’s wife Jean offered to contact Houdini’s mother shortly after her death.

He agreed, wanting to believe it was possible.  During the séance, Jean went into a trance while holding a pencil and jotted a message from Houdini’s mother through a method known as “automatic writing.” Houdini took the note, saying nothing about the fact that his mother had never learned to read or write and, in any case, spoke no English.

He went public soon after, saying that he didn’t believe the Doyles were being intentionally deceitful. They were simply gullible. Doyle responded by saying the language of the spirit is universal. Their friendship never recovered.

Read more about Houdini’s amazing exploits. Honor his skepticism of mediums and con artists, while experiencing the childlike wonder of a magic show. Have a happy National Magic Day!