Page 16 - COBH EDITION 3rd MAY DIGITAL VERSION

‘How would our Snowflakes handle the outside loo?’ -
Trevor Laffan

I was listening to a conversation on the radio recently
about people being washed in a tin bath in the kitchen
back in the day. A contributor to the programme was
explaining how, before bathrooms became common
place, the bath was brought into the kitchen on bath
night. It was placed in front of the fire and the kids
were washed in turn.
Listeners were texting and tweeting the programme in
their droves because they couldn’t believe their ears.
They were horrified that several kids were washed in
the same water and, in the kitchen of all places, where privacy had to be an issue
with people coming and going.
I was laughing to myself but I found it strange that so many people were astonished
at this carry on and they were commenting as if this was something that happened
in the dark ages. It surprised me because I remember those days clearly and they
weren’t that long ago.

We had a tin bath at home with a handle on either end, and it used to hang from
a hook on the wall in our back yard. It was light and easy to carry, and it would be
brought into the kitchen, usually on a Saturday night and placed on the floor in front
of the range where it would be filled with pots of hot water from the stove.

Using the same water to wash several children was a difficult concept for some, but
the reality was that it took a big effort to heat enough water to fill the bath in the
first place, so they made use of it while they had it.

We lived in a small terraced house, so privacy would have been difficult at the best
of times. Space was at a premium, but it wasn’t an issue for me because I was only
a child. I don’t know what the adults did or even if they could fit into the bath be-
cause I don’t remember it being that big.

That got me thinking about what else younger listeners might have found unusual
and I immediately thought of the outdoor toilet. I remember ours was in the corner
of the back yard, so you had to go out through the back door and down some steps
to get to it. It was a small space, with white-washed walls on the inside and a bare
light bulb that came to life when you pulled a string.

It had a corrugated iron roof which didn’t do anything for heat retention and when it
rained it got pretty noisy in there.
The cistern was overhead and to flush the toilet you had to pull a chain with a
wooden handle attached to the end of it. There was a flimsy timber door on the loo
that closed with a simple latch but the bottom of it was about seven or eight inches
off the ground so there was plenty of room for all kinds of creatures to get in. And
they frequently did.