He invented the lavatory!

He was a godson of Queen Elizabeth I, but he had been banished from court for telling risqué stories, and exiled to Kelston near Bath.

During his 'exile', 1584-91, he built himself a house, and devised and installed the first flushing lavatory, which he named Ajax.

Eventually Queen Elizabeth forgave him, and visited his house at Kelston in 1592.

Harrington proudly showed-off his new invention, and the Queen herself tried it out! She was so impressed it seems, that she ordered one for herself.

His water-closet had a pan with an opening at the bottom, sealed with a leather -faced valve. A system of handles, levers and weights poured in water from a cistern, and opened the valve.

In spite of the Queen's enthusiasm for this new invention, the public remained faithful to the chamber-pot.

These were usually emptied from an upstairs window into the street below, and in France, the cry 'gardez-l'eau' gave warning to the people below to take evasive action. This phrase 'gardez-l'eau' may have been the origin of the English nickname for the lavatory, the 'loo'.

Cumming's water closet  patented in 1775
(source: http://www.theplumber.com/closet.html)

It was almost two hundred years later in 1775 that a flushing water-closet was first patented by an Alexander Cummings of London, a device similar to Harrington's Ajax.

In 1848 a Public Health Act ruled that every new house should have a ' w.c., privy, or ash-pit'. It had taken nearly 250 years for Sir John Harrington's water closet to become universal …it cannot be said that the British embrace all new inventions with enthusiasm, despite Royal Approval!

© E.P.C.