Titanic Bathrooms

[Michael H. Standart]

>>So odd that the middle classes of the 1950s managed this, yet here I am living in a 1902 house in 2009 and have not yet managed it. <<

it helps to know that they were designed this way in keeping with the trends of fashion. Once upon a time, it was quite fashionable to show off plumbing as so few really even had it, and those who did tended to be very wealthy. In time, the "Stutus symbol" came to be seen as tacky, so the fashion turned to hiding it to look modern.

As one who now deals with plumbing issues and problems for a living, I see every day how this had tended to backfire. Hiding it all may be fashionable, but it's bear to dig it all out, especially from behind walls, to do any essential repairs.

However, as Jim pointed out, having all that exposed can pose some real problems as far as cleanliness goes.

 

[Jim Kalafus]

>but it's bear to dig it all out, especially from behind walls,

Which is probably ANOTHER reason for the exposed piping. In an existing house, it would have reduced the irritation a bit to run the pipes down a wall, rather than remove the wall, place the pipes, and then build a new wall 6 or 7 inches further in to the room.

The house I lived in, in the Bronx, was a pre-1865 farmhouse that the city ended up overwhelming. During my time there, 1984-1995, it had the original 1890s "conversion bathroom" which was actually pretty cool and which gave me insights into how a Victorian who was converting his former farm structure to a town house went about doing it. A very small section of the top floor, under the peaked roof, was partitioned off. A clawfoot bathtub was shoehorned into the otherwise useless space where the roof angled sharply down and met the floor. The fresh water pipes ran up the walls on the lower floors, and as an added touch of.... plumbing ostentation? .... the back parlor had a white enamel sink in it, apparently for those times when formality and the need for cleanliness intersected. The waste water pipes also ran down the wall, but in that case another bit of Victorian one-upsmanship came in to play and ultra-stylish built-in closets were constructed to conceal them.

 

[Marilyn Lena Penner]

Monica's post : Servants lived in the attic - I know because I discovered the electric bells that summoned them to their work. Yet there was only one bathroom for the entire household, servants included. Eh?

Marilyn's reply : Maybe the servants used chamberpots in their rooms.

 

[Jeremy Aufderheide]

>> Maybe the servants used chamberpots in their rooms.

To bathe in or to make tinkles?

 

[Michael H. Standart]

>>To bathe in or to make tinkles?<<

"Tinkles."

If you're ever in Asheville North Carolina, take a day to check out the Biltmore Estate, in particular the Biltmore Mansion which was constructed for the Vanderbilts. The servents quarters are on the upper floors and not one has an en suite bathroom.

There were chamberpots inside and a room about the size of a large closet with a fixture known as a slop sink in which the contents of the chamberpots was dumped.

 

[Jim Kalafus]

The best you would find during the Titanic era, would be a bathtub, sink, and toilet (I think the word I was groping for was "bathroom") of a communal nature located off the servants' hall.

 

[Fiona Nitschke]

Then there's the servants' privy I've seen used in contemporaneous documents regarding the outdoor variety, even after the introduction of the flush toilet not just the pit. Also water closet - a politer term, and indoors too.

Reading of others' experiences of retrofitted bathrooms is quite interesting, and echoed by my various experiences. For years I lived in 1920s house complete with 1920s plumbing including a cream enamel gas water heater (very luxurious for its time) that had so many pipes it looked like something designed by Heath Robinson. The subsequent 1950s kitchen renovations have failed but the 1920s water heater is still going strong, 'plumbing ostentation' pipes'n'all.