Indoor "Outhouses"

[Shessar]

He's a link to a condensed history of outhouses and privys. Rather interesing reading I suppose.

http://www.bottlebooks.com/privyto.htm

But I tend to agree with ravells, especially for the fantasy genre of games. It is fantasy, not necessarily medieval. My campaign is set in a world of high magic, and has one rich merchant's house that has the garderobes going to a non-dimentional space (sort of like a bag of holding does) and a permanant control temperatue so that the only fireplaces are those used for relaxation. However, the poorer inhabitants of the land use the traditional chamber pot and street.

If I were running a historical game, I'm sure I'd research things a bit more.

[RobA]

LOL - I was just thinking of how many fantasy inn maps I've seen with indoor privies, and how many space ship deck plans I've seen without.

Thats because in the future, people don't have to go to the loo anymore...

After-all if all your meals are little pills and your environment is tailored to ideals, your body will not produce any waste 100% efficiency!

-Rob A>

[pyrandon]

Thats because in the future, people don't have to go to the loo anymore...

After-all if all your meals are little pills and your environment is tailored to ideals, your body will not produce any waste 100% efficiency!

-Rob A>

Where the *&%*&)) will men read the paper, then??

[jaerdaph]

After watching several episodes of Cities of the Underworld on The History Channel, I learned that the Romans apparently had indoor toilets. It's a shame that technology was lost in the Dark Ages.

[NeonKnight]

Roman indoor toilets were not 'common' place in every house. They were common in the bathhouses though, as the bath houses had water transported to them. The idoor toilets functioned by have many 'latrines' positioned over a channel of flowing water into which ones waste was dropped. They even had 'backside' scrubbers that made use of the water to cleanse oneself after the deed.

Here are some images of the roman latrines:

http://www.englishheritageprints.com...112_440440.jpg

http://www.sewerhistory.org/images/wm/wmj/wmj10.jpg

[pyrandon]

I found an interesting vignette about indoor plumbing in "Life in a Medieval City" by Joseph & Frances Gies:

"A woman who keeps a lodging house is summonsed for creating a 'vile nuisance.' She has had a wooden pipe built from the privy chamber of her house to the gutter, rendering it evil-smelling and sometimes blocking it up. The neighbors bring her into court, where she is fined six deniers and ordered to remove the pipe within forty days." (p. 204)

So evidently plumbing crimes were not unheard of, so great was the desire for indoor plumbing in France c. 1250 AD.

[RPMiller]

You know that could have worked if only she had water to pour down the tube after "the business" was down.

[Gamerprinter]

Unlike the movie "Gladiator", the Roman Emperor Commudus was not killed in the arena, rather his imperial guards threw him down the "guarderobe" of the imperial palace.

This is where we get the word "commode" for toilet.

So I guess the romans had something like a guarderobe in certain large buildings.

[Midgardsormr]

A popular tale, but not one that is true. Commodus was strangled in the bath (or possibly his bed, sources differ) by a man named Narcissus (not to be confused with the Narcissus of Greek mythology), after a plot to poison him failed.

Cassius Dio: LXXIII, paragraph 22:5.

Herodian's History of the Roman Empire Since the Death of Marcus Aurelius, 1.17

The two words are related, though:

commodus -a -um [to measure , in full, complete]; hence [proper, fit, appropriate]; of persons, character, etc., [friendly, obliging, pleasant]. N. as subst. commodum -i, [suitable time, opportunity, convenience; use, advantage, interest; remuneration; loan]. N. acc. as adv. commodum, [at the right time, opportunely; just then]. Adv. commode, [rightly, properly, fitly; pleasantly, comfortably, kindly]. http://www.archives.nd.edu/cgi-bin/l...mmod&ending=us

Commodus' name indicates that he is a proper man--the right man for the time (an obvious misnomer if ever there was one). As the word commode came to English through French, it retained its meaning of something being convenient, or properly placed. Compare our words commodious and accommodate.

/linguistics lesson

[Joshua_101]

Fantasy settings are basically a sanitised and idealised take on medieval / renaissance life. Disease, lack of sanitation, the sheer smelliness, the presence of fleas on virtually everyone and general lack of personal hygiene, the utterly back-breaking, hard life that rural peasants led

In the campaign I'm running right now one of my kingdoms is based heavily on ancient Roman history. I've tried to include as much historical detail as possible from the layout of Roman houses to running water latrines (they used communal sponges to wipe!) and public bathhouses.

http://www.sewerhistory.org/grfx/pub_bath/pubbath1.htm

I find it amazing that the Romans had such an advanced and technological society and that the Dark & Middle Ages was consumed by such regression. It seems that when the Roman legions left England and France, sanitation went with them.

Jack Whyte often writes about Roman sanitation in his A Dream of Eagles Series (called The Camulod Chronicles in USA). Fort at Mediobogdum (or Hardknott Pass) was located at the top of a cliff so the chute from the latrine just went out the side of the precipice. Good thing the valley below was uninhabited!