The flushing toilet was invented in 1596, not by Thomas Crapper as most people think, but by Sir John Harington.
The Real Inventor of the Toilet: Not Who You Think
One of history's most enduring myths involves a Victorian plumber with an unfortunate name and a throne fit for a queen. Most people credit Thomas Crapper with inventing the flush toilet, but the real inventor beat him to it by nearly 300 years.
Sir John Harington, a witty courtier and godson to Queen Elizabeth I, designed the first flushing toilet in 1596. His invention featured a 2-foot-deep oval bowl waterproofed with pitch, resin, and wax, fed by water from an upstairs cistern. The device used a flush valve to release water from the tank and required 7.5 gallons per flush—though when water was scarce, up to 20 people could use it between flushes.
The Ajax: A Royal Toilet With a Punny Name
Harington called his invention the "Ajax," a playful pun on "jakes"—16th-century slang for toilet. In 1596, he published A New Discourse upon a Stale Subject: The Metamorphosis of Ajax under the pseudonym Misacmos, describing his creation in elaborate (and occasionally crude) detail. The book was part technical manual, part bathroom humor.
Queen Elizabeth was so impressed that Harington installed a working model for her at Richmond Palace. Despite royal approval, the invention didn't catch on. Society wasn't ready for indoor plumbing, and Harington's design lacked the S-bend pipe needed to block sewer gases—a crucial improvement added by Alexander Cumming in 1775 when he patented the first modern flush mechanism.
So Who Was Thomas Crapper?
Thomas Crapper was a real person—and a genuinely talented plumber. Born in 1836, he founded a successful London plumbing company and held nine patents, including three for water closet improvements like the floating ballcock. His greatest innovation wasn't technical but commercial: Crapper invented the bathroom showroom, bringing toilets out of the shadows and into public view.
The myth connecting Crapper to the toilet's invention stems from a cheeky 1969 biography by New Zealand satirist Wallace Reyburn. The book exaggerated Crapper's achievements, and the story stuck—probably because his name was too perfect to ignore.
Did His Name Give Us the Word "Crap"?
Here's where it gets murky. The word "crap" existed as slang for bodily waste before Crapper went into business. However, American soldiers stationed in England during World War I saw cisterns stamped with "T. Crapper" in public toilets and may have popularized "crapper" as slang for toilet when they returned home.
Harington's Ajax never became a household name, but his ingenuity paved the way for modern sanitation. Meanwhile, Thomas Crapper gets credit for an invention he didn't create—proving that in history, as in plumbing, sometimes the wrong things go down the drain.