Commode

c. 1790

This commode is made of satinwood.  It has a hinged top with a fitted interior and draw to remove the chamber pots.  It is one of various ways in which people went to the toilet before flush toilets were invented.  They vary from holes in the ground to extraordinarily elaborate chamber pots such as that owned by Henry VIII, which was embossed with black velvet, ribbons, fringes and quilting.  Indeed the imaginative Victorians even had chamber pots that played music whenever the commode door was opened to clean it.  Ordinary chamber pots were copper but some of the wealthier people had them in silver.  They were nonetheless still left to be emptied by the servants. This was the real problem with non-flushing toilets.  No sewerage meant all the waste was in the gutter to infect the local drinking water and as such severe epidemics of cholera surfaced around London.  This commode was built late in the life of toilets as flushing toilets were already being developed in some primitive fashion such as the valve flushing toilet designed by JF Bromdel and later the first ‘modern’ toilet designed by Alexander Cummings.

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