The public toilets in Westminster were the cause of endless concern to Prime Minister Herbert Asquith as his premiership coincided with a rise in suffragette activity, and having thrown a brick through a window or hurled an egg at a policeman the protestors would seek sanctuary in the lavatories, knowing that as the male police force would not want to break protocol by entering a ladies’ toilet they were virtually immune from arrest. At the outbreak of the First World War Asquith successfully petitioned Parliament to temporarily close the toilets for this reason.
In the 1970s, however, it was decided that a statue of Asquith should be erected to commemorate him but after it had been up for several weeks a passer by enquired as to why the former Prime Minister had a shaggy haircut and appeared to have his pants around his ankles; closer inspection revealed that rather than depicting Herbert Asquith it was actually a statue of soft-porn star Robin Askwith, and that the sculptor commissioned to create the piece had got confused and mistakenly commemorated the actor who was at the time starring in the latest instalment of his popular film series, Confessions of a Toilet Attendant.
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