The Postcard
An Oilette Series postcard that was published by Raphael Tuck & Sons Ltd., Art Publishers to Their Majesties the King and Queen. On the back of the card they have printed:
"Mount Stephen and Cathedral
Peak From Burgess Pass.
From Burgess Pass a splendid
view can be obtained of Mount
Stephen and Cathedral Peak.
(The latter is happily named,
for its summit bears a wonderful
resemblance to some noble ruin
of Gothic architecture).
Cathedral peak is 10,204 feet
high, and, with the majestic
grandeur of Mount Stephen
close by, the tourist is fascinated
with the beauty and magnitude
of the Canadian Rockies".
The card was posted in Victoria, B.C. on Thursday the 27th. January 1910 to:
Miss C. Maples,
2, Wansbeck Road,
Victoria Park,
London,
England.
The message on the divided back of the card was as follows:
"Jan 27.
Dear Chrissie,
Just received your letters
today.
It did seem like old times
again to hear from you.
Glad to hear all are well.
Will write soon,
L C."
Thomas Crapper
So what else happened on the day that the card was posted?
Well, the 27th. January 1910 was not a good day for Thomas Crapper, because he died in Anerley, South London on that day at the aged of 73.
Thomas Crapper, who was born in September 1836 in Thorne, Yorkshire, was an English businessman and plumber. He founded Thomas Crapper & Co in London, a sanitary equipment company.
Crapper held nine patents, three of them for water closet improvements such as the floating ballcock. He improved the S-bend plumbing trap in 1880 by inventing the U-bend.
The firm's lavatorial equipment was manufactured at premises in Marlborough Road (now Draycott Avenue). The company owned the world's first bath, toilet and sink showroom in King's Road, Chelsea. Crapper was noted for the quality of his products, and received several royal warrants.
Manhole covers with Crapper's company's name on them in Westminster Abbey have become one of London's tourist attractions.
The Life of Thomas Crapper
Thomas Crapper's father, Charles, was a sailor. In 1853, Thomas was apprenticed to his brother George, a master plumber in Chelsea, and thereafter spent three years as a journeyman plumber.
In 1861, Crapper set himself up as a sanitary engineer, with his own brass foundry and workshops in nearby Marlborough Road.
In the 1880's, Prince Edward (later Edward VII) purchased his country seat of Sandringham House in Norfolk and asked Thomas Crapper & Co. to supply the plumbing, including thirty lavatories with cedarwood seats and enclosures, thus giving Crapper his first Royal Warrant.
The firm received further warrants from Edward as King and from George V both as Prince of Wales and as King.
In 1904, Crapper retired, passing the firm to his nephew George and his business partner Robert Marr Wharam. Crapper lived at 12 Thornsett Road, Anerley, for the last six years of his life and died on the 27th. January 1910. Crapper's death certificate records that he died from colon cancer. He was buried in the nearby Elmers End Cemetery.
Subsequent Fate of the Crapper Company
In 1966, the Crapper company was sold by then-owner Robert G. Wharam (son of Robert Marr Wharam) on his retirement, to their rivals John Bolding & Sons.
Bolding went into liquidation in 1969. The company fell out of use until it was acquired by Simon Kirby, a historian and collector of antique bathroom fittings, who relaunched the company in Stratford-upon-Avon, producing authentic reproductions of Crapper's original Victorian bathroom fittings.
Achievements of Thomas Crapper
As the first man to set up public showrooms for displaying sanitary ware, he became known as an advocate of sanitary plumbing, popularising the notion of installation inside people's homes.
He also helped refine and develop improvements to existing plumbing and sanitary fittings. As a part of his business, he maintained a foundry and metal shop which enabled him to try out new designs and develop more efficient plumbing solutions.
Crapper improved the S-bend trap in 1880. The new U-bend plumbing trap was a significant improvement on the "S" as it could not jam, and unlike the S-bend, it did not have a tendency to dry out and did not need an overflow.
The BBC nominated the U-bend as one of the 50 Things That Made the Modern Economy
Crapper held nine patents, three of them for water closet improvements such as the floating ballcock, but none for the flush toilet itself.
Crapper's advertisements implied the siphonic flush was his invention. One such advertisement read
"Crapper's Valveless Water Waste
Preventer (Patent No. 4,990).
One movable part only."
Crapper made this claim even though patent 4,990 (for a minor improvement to the water waste preventer) was not his, but that of Albert Giblin in 1898. However, Crapper's nephew, George, did improve the siphon mechanism by which the water flow starts. A patent for this development was awarded in 1897.
Origin of the Word "Crap"
It has often been claimed in popular culture that the profane slang term for human bodily waste, crap, originated with Thomas Crapper because of his association with lavatories.
A common version of this story is that American servicemen stationed in England during the Great War saw his name on cisterns and used it as army slang, i.e:
"I'm going to the crapper".
The word crap is actually of Middle English origin, and predates its application to bodily waste. Its most likely origin is a combination of two older words: the Dutch krappen (to pluck off, cut off, or separate) and the Old French crappe (siftings, waste or rejected matter, from the medieval Latin crappa).
In English, it was used to refer to chaff and also to weeds or other rubbish. Its first recorded application to bodily waste, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, appeared in 1846, 10 years after Crapper was born, under a reference to a crapping ken, or a privy, where ken means a house.
