I HESITATE to burden this work with matters which the reader may consider better left outside, but as a brief history of the first use of "places of convenience" inside a house may not be without interest to the sanitary student, I give here some extracts in extenso from my "Lectures": -

"Privies served their purpose well enough when every man had a garden or piece of ground, but when men congregated together in cities and towns, remote places for putting such conveniences could not be found, and drains and sewers had to be made, into which the general slops of the house were thrown.

"Instead of building water-closets as we do now, the rich ancients used close-stools, or pans which were frequently made of gold, besides the water-closets which were made in vaulted recesses in their kitchens.

"In writing of the discoveries made by antiquarians in Pompeii, Fosbroke says, in his 'Encyclopaedia of Antiquities' (p. 78), 'The kitchen is descended by stairs, on the left hand of which is an arched stone dresser, used as the hearth for cooking. On the right hand is a vaulted recess for a privy, three feet deep, formerly provided with a door and seat, an ancient appendage to a kitchen, still retained in modern Italy.'

"The Romans placed vases, called gastra, upon the edges of roads and streets, just as we now fix urinals.

"In Sir William Hamilton's account of ' Discoveries at Pompeii,' he says, in a paperl read before the Society of Antiquaries, in 1775, 'Close to the Temple of Isis is a theatre, no more of which has been cleared than the scene, and the corridor that leads to the seats. In this corridor was a retiring-place for necessary occasions, where the pipe to convey the water, and the basin, like that of our water-closets (a.d. 1775), still remain, the wood of the seat only having mouldered away by time.' As Pompeii was destroyed by an eruption of Mount Vesuvius in the year a.d. 79, this W.C., which Sir William Hamilton saw, must have been 1,700 years old at the least.

"Fosbroke, in his 'Encyclopedia of Antiquities' (p. 397), says, ' The water-closet in the Palace of the Caesars is adorned with marble arabesques and mosaics; at the back of one is a cistern, the water of which is distributed by cocks to different seats.'

"Olympiodorus says that 'in the Thermae of Antoninus (which were baths and gymnasium combined) ' there were 1,600 seats of marble pierced like chaises-percees for the convenience of those who bathed.'2

"The fall of the Roman Empire led to the disuse of water-closets, and to a return to the customs of earlier ages.

"Beckman says that in Paris, so late as the fourteenth century, the people had the liberty of throwing anything from their windows whenever they chose, provided they gave notice three times before by crying out, ' Gave l'eau!

1 "Archaeologia," vol. iv. p. 168.

2 Fosbroke's "Encyclopaedia of Antiquities," p. 67.

This practice was, we learn, forbidden in 1395.1 A like practice seems to have continued much later in Edinburgh; for in a.d. 1750, when people went out into the streets at night, it was necessary, in order to avoid disagreeable accidents from the windows, that they should take with them a guide, who, as he went along, called out with a loud voice, ' Haud your han!' This must have been a good time for hatters and tailors. At that period, when the luxury of water-closets was unknown, it was the custom for men to perambulate the streets of Edinburgh carrying conveniences (pails) suspended from a yoke on their shoulders, and enveloped by cloaks sufficiently large to cover both their apparatus and customers, crying, 'Wha wants me for a bawbee?'2 It has since been used against the Edinburgh people as a joke or satire upon an ancient custom. By way of set-off, however, it may be observed, that in 1846 almost every house in Edinburgh had a water-closet.

"In a Parisian code of laws, which was improved in 1513, it was expressly ordered that every house should have a privy; but in the year 1700 they had not this 'luxury ' in every house, for at that time, only 180 years . ago, the police had instructions to see that each house had a privy, or to lock the house up if the occupants did not make one within a month.

"If we turn to Spain, matters were worse, for we are told that ' the residence of the King of Spain was destitute of this improvement, at the very time that the English circumnavigators found privies constructed, in the European manner, near the habitations of the cannibals of New Zealand.'3

"Privies seem to have been common in the large and flourishing towns of Germany much earlier than in Paris. In the annals of Frankfort-on-the-Maine, we are told that an order was issued, in 1496, by the Council, forbidding the proprietors of houses, situated in a certain place planted with trees, to erect privies towards the side where the trees were growing. In 1498, George Pfeffer von Hell, I.U.D., Chancellor of the Electorate at Mentz, fell by accident into a privy, and there perished - a privy chancellor! Beckman, speaking of Berlin, in 1846, does not say much in favour of the sanitary arrangements there at that time - forty-five years ago. He says: ' In most of the houses small closets are located on the landings of the stairs, which require to be emptied every other night, to the no great satisfaction of the olfactory nerves. Nor are the streets kept in a very proper state, large puddles of filth being allowed to collect before the doors even of the best houses, and which, especially in the hot summer months, diffuse a most horrible stench.' "But let us return to our own country. Stow tells that, 'In 1290, the monks of White Friars complained to the King and Parliament, that the putrid exhalations arising from the Fleet river were so powerful as to overcome all the frankincense burnt at their altars during divine service, and even occasioned the deaths of many brethren. Many attempts were made to cleanse this river and restore it to its ancient condition of utility as a navigable stream; but they proved unavailing, and the stream which formerly conducted vessels with merchandise as far as Fleet Bridge and Old Bourne (now Holborn) Bridge, if not farther, became, in the language of Pope,