Toilet Paper Runs

With the sudden panic buying of toilet paper, when the Covid-19 virus was suddenly big news ...

Stockpiling Bog Rolls Was A Feature Of This Crisis ....

..... many of us were actually considering how they would cope if there were no supplies.

Personally I was opting for that old standby, the strips of newspaper on a string. The reasons for this were that:

(a) I didn't fancy using my bare hand or a wash cloth (eek!!), although billions worldwide do just that in open fields, communal out houses, or with a bidet type water wipe.

- But I have a western European pampered backside with a requirement for nice cubicles, and soft 3ply paper. So ...

(b) Newspapers offered the chance of a good read, before using it in a secondary roll (Haha 😁) ... recycling at its purest!

Fortunately, my local Lidl had a delivery, and I got a pack of 24 rolls (which saw me through the crisis OK 🙏), and this internal debate and dilemma was thus put to the back of my mind.

The NT News Had Eight Pages Of Toilet Paper

However at the time, this was a real problem. For instance the NT News, an Australian newspaper even took this idea to heart, and printed an extra eight pages in its editions, to be used as toilet paper, offering relief to its hard pressed readership in the Northern Territories.

However all this made me wonder about life before toilet paper ..... now as touched up on already, I am old enough to remember older people who never bought toilet rolls, and did in fact use newspaper strips in their toilets. If they were doing 'posh' would put up a shiny hard toilet paper .... this was the same hard paper that was in public toilets and schools and official buildings.

The Cheapest Toilet Paper Money Could Buy .... Careful Wiping Required.

That paper was almost non-absorbent and was very hard on any piles (Haemorrhoids). I wince at the memory of it .... and surprisingly, it didn't disappear in the 1960's ....

Old Fashioned Toilet Rolls - A Trip Down Memory Lane?

..... a somewhat softer and slightly more absorbent version was still occasionally found in large office buildings in the 1990's and early 2000's. 

A Fond Memory For No One Actually .....

However, so ferocious was the experience of that paper, that spoof versions were listed on line, allowing some people to relive the experiences that shaped their childhood. But these toilet papers only arrived in Victorian times (In 1857 the first mass-produced toilet paper was produced by Joseph Gayetty with his 'Medicated Paper').... before then, in the West there was the plants next to you in the field, or there was the Roman way.

The Roman Way Of Wiping ...

The Romans used a tersorium to wipe their backsides in largely public toilets ... this was a sponge on a stick that was dipped in a mix of vinegar and sour wine, or salted water, then used to wipe the backside. It was rinsed via a running water trough at the front of the pedestal. The shared sticks often led to disease spread, but Roman soldiers often carried a personal tersorium with them, as public versions wouldn't be available in the field.

Medieval Garderobe's Were For The Rich .....

When the Empire fell, the public toilets stopped, and it was back to the fields, or latrine for everyone and using local plants to wipe backsides again. In the mediaeval period, even lords and ladies only used a posh latrine called a 'garderobe.' which jutted out of the sides of their castles. A hole in the bottom let everything just drop into a pit, or even the moat, and it was the job of the ‘Gongfarmer’ to remove it. For their backside wiping they may have used straw, wool or old cloth.

For clerics, they had latrines called ‘reredorter,' but again backside wiping would have been a rudimentary thing with what ever was available.

• In Greek times from the 5th century BC, they used Pessoi (small stones or broken pottery), which were smoothed on the edges and used to wipe/scrape backsides - makes the hard toilet paper seem a luxury. 
• China, with its early invention of paper, had toilet paper for the very wealthy in the 2nd century BC, while on the Silk Road, excavations have uncovered bamboo sticks, with cloths wrapped round the end (similar to the Roman tersorium, and from much the same time period). By 1393, rice-based toilet paper was mass-produced for the Chinese imperial family.
• The Japanese used sticks called 'chuugi' (20-25 cm wooden sticks), during the Nara period (8th century AD), for both external and internal cleaning of the anal canal (ouch!!).

The forerunner to our modern flushing toilet was invented by Sir John Harington in 1592, and was built in 1596. Queen Elizabeth the first had one, but she didn't like the noise it made when she flushed, so it didn't catch on. If she had liked it, then maybe toilet paper would have been invented in the West ..... history turns on such small decisions. Similarly in the 1750's Joseph Bramah’s new hinged-valve water closets became, but were expensive (one was the same cost as the annual cost of two servants), and so again, they didn't spread many butt cheeks.

So next time your faced with a lack of toilet paper ..... just thank your lucky stars its exists at all.