London Bridge, SE1

Originally Published in Time Out London, August 6-12, 2009

In recent years an argument has raged between historians regarding who invented the flushing toilet, with some attributing it to Thomas Crapper and some arguing that it was actually invented by his great rival, Sir Henry Shitter. Others, however, say the credit should in fact go to Dick Whittington, the four-time Lord Mayor of London, who had the capital's first ever public toilet built on London Bridge in 1421 and which was said to have employed a primitive mechanism that used the Thames to flush away waste.

     The Whittington Longhouse, as it became known, was a 128-seat facility but, like so much of what we known about Whittington, the exact truth has long since been obscured by centuries of pantomime-related myth. For example, in the mid 1950s some academics claimed that not only was the flushing toilet invented by Whittington but that the litter tray was invented by his famous talking cat, although others argued that the litter tray was a much later invention, and also that the cat's linguistic abilities had been greatly exaggerated over the years. Nonetheless, whilst London's first public toilet is no longer there, its creation stands in testimony to the vital role that Whittington played in the history of London's public conveniences.