The debate over who Thomas Crapper was - or even if there was a Thomas Crapper at all - continues. His contributions to the plumbing industry are even more suspect. But with this article we intend to replace myth with fact, for we have found a cadre of Thomas Crapper scholars who have made it their life's work to prove that Crapper is more than just a slang term brought home by the World War I doughboys.

For this article we interviewed Dr. Andy Gibbons, historian of the International Thomas Crapper Society, and Ken Grabowski, a researcher and author who is writing a book on Crapper’s life.

Myth: Thomas Crapper as a person never existed.

Fact: Though we do not know his actual date of birth, we can now say the man Thomas Crapper probably was born in September 1836, since he was baptized the 28th of that month. Crapper did have a successful career in the plumbing industry in England from 1861 to 1904.

The date of Crapper’s death has also been a source of confusion for many years. For example, Chase's Annual Events, the authoritative book for listing special days and dates, has listed January 17 as Thomas Crapper Day and January 17, 1910 as the date of his death.

After all his research, Gibbons was certain that Chase's was 10 days off. The actual date of Thomas Crapper's death was January 27, 1910. The error probably resulted from an honest typo in "Flushed With Pride," by Wallace Reyburn, says Gibbons, "but I waged a 10-year battle with Chase's to get them to change the date." He finally won his battle this year after supplying them with a photo of Thomas Crapper's tombstone, notes from a living descendent, and a copy of the man's official death certificate.

Myth: Thomas Crapper invented the toilet.

Fact: No one in the know about Thomas Crapper would ever make this statement. In his research, Grabowski has created a detailed history of Crapper's business life. The man holds nine patents, four for improvements to drains, three for water closets, one for manhole covers and the last for pipe joints. Every patent application for plumbing related products filed by Crapper made it through the process, and actual patents were granted.

The most famous product attributed to Thomas Crapper wasn't invented by him at all. The "Silent Valveless Water Waste Preventer" (No. 814) was a symphonic discharge system that allowed a toilet to flush effectively when the cistern was only half full. British Patent 4990 for 1898 was issued to a Mr. Albert Giblin for this product.

There are a couple of theories on how Thomas Crapper came to be associated with this device. First, is that Giblin worked for Crapper as an employee and authorized his use of the product. The second, and more likely scenario, says Grabowski, is that Crapper bought the patent rights from Giblin and marketed the device himself.

Myth: Thomas Crapper never was a plumber.

Fact. Oh yes he was. He operated two of the three Crapper plumbing shops in his lifetime, but left the business three years before the final and most famous facility on Kings Road in London. When Crapper retired from active business in 1904, he sold his shop to two partners who, with help from others, operated the company under the Crapper name until its closing in 1966.

Several of London's current plumbing companies trace their trade roots to Thomas Crapper. One, Mr. Geoffrey Pidgeon of Original Bathrooms (Richmond upon Thames, Surrey, Great Britain), continues the trade of his great uncle and grandfather, both of whom apprenticed under Thomas Crapper.

Thomas Crapper did serve as the royal sanitary engineer for many members England's royalty, but contrary to popular myth, he was never knighted, and thus isn't entitled to use the term "Sir" before his name.

Myth: The word "crap" is derived from Thomas Crapper's name.

Fact. The origin of crap is still being debated. Possible sources include the Dutch Krappe; Low German krape meaning a vile and inedible fish; Middle English crappy, and Thomas Crapper. Where crap is derived from Crapper, it is by a process know as, pardon the pun, a back formation.

The World War I doughboys passing through England brought together Crapper's name and the toilet. They saw the words T. Crapper-Chelsea printed on the tanks and coined the slang "crapper" meaning toilet.
The legend of Thomas Crapper takes its flavor from the real man's life. While Crapper may not be the inventor of the product he is most often associated with, his contribution to England's plumbing history is significant. And the man's legend, well, it lives on despite all proof to contrary

 

from : Plumbing and Mechanical, June 1993

The reader wishing even more information on this topic is referred to Plumbing and Mechanical Magazine.

Otto Titsling: Myth & Reality

The realm of popular wisdom is replete with well-traveled factoids that found their way into our culture via a deliberate hoax or playful leg-pull. Such is the case with the notion that the brassiere was invented by the so appropriately named Otto Titzling.

According to an inventive history of the undergarment that is now widely believed, Titzling came to invent the item while living in a New York boardinghouse in 1912. One of his neighbors was a buxom opera singer named Swanhilda Olafson, and the structural engineering problems she presented inspired Titzling  to create a contraption to uphold this lady's ample bosom. In the early 1930s, a French fellow named Phillip de Brassiere began producing a similar undergarment. Titzling sued, but Brassiere won in court, and that is why today we call a lady's frontal uplifter a brassiere instead of a titzling.

It's a great story, but there's no truth to it. The madness began with a 1971 book by Wallace Reyburn titled Bust-Up: The Uplifting Tale of Otto Titzling and the Development of the Bra. Like his 1972 send-up, The Inferior Sex: A Treatise on the Inferiority of Women, Bust-Up was a work of satire. (Reyburn wasn't always a jokester, however. Although his biography of Thomas Crapper has often been dismissed as a hoax, Flushed with Pride: The Story of Thomas Crapper was actually on the up-and-up, if somewhat inaccurate.)

The brassiere has been around in one form or another at least since Greek women wore a chest binding called a mastodeton or apodesmos while exercising. When to date the invention of the modern brassiere to presents a bit of a problem -- it depends on how one defines the contraption.

Metallic constructions that looked like bras and did serve to hold matters rigidly in place were around as early as 1859, as a patent granted to Henry S. Lesher of Brooklyn, NY, shows. However, to think of this monstrosity as a garment would be to equate medieval armor with a leisure suit.

Closer to the concept was Clara P. Clark's 1874 "improved corset," a fabric construction that bore a resemblance to today's long-line bra. The fundamental element of her design was the pattern for a fabric breast pocket system held up by shoulder straps that crisscrossed the back.

Olivia P. Flynt's 1876 "bust supporter" could possibly be pointed to as the original brassiere provided one accepts shoulder straps that look more like the shoulder yokes of an ordinary blouse. Flynt designed a fabric garment that fit around the upper half of the torso, holding each breast in a fabric pocket supported by shoulder straps. Though the illustration used to support her patent application showed an unadorned garment, written notes accompanying the sketch indicated that the straps could both be made thinner and adorned with lace. She also provided for a double-walled version which permitted the insertion of additional padding to enhance an underdeveloped lady's charms.

Charles Moorehouse came up with an inflatable breast enlarging garment in 1885. It featured air-filled rubber cups that held each breast, and the strapping design is not so far removed from today's undergarments to render his creation unrecognizeable as a proto-bra.

Most experts, however, point to 19th-century French feminist Herminie Cadolle as the true inventor of the brassiere and the date of the invention as 1889.

Upon moving to Argentina in the mid-1800's, Cadolle opened a shop selling fancy French underwear. The enterprise flourished, turning Cadolle into a globetrotting businesswoman. Her active lifestyle and busy schedule soon convinced her there just had to be a better foundation garment for women like her than the then-universal and very uncomfortable corset.

In 1889 she moved back to Paris, there to set up her main shop. She soon after began work on the task of engineering a better undergarment. The top half of her 1889 two-part invention was "designed to sustain the bosom and supported by the shoulders." (The bottom half was a corset that covered only the waist and rear.) Cadolle named this two-piecer le bien-être (the wellbeing).

By 1905, the two-piecer had become two separate pieces, with the top half coming to be called a soutin-gorge (throat support).

How and when the modern bra gained the name we now know it by remains unclear. "Brassiere" is an ambiguous word to attempt to trace because it was around a long time before anyone thought to use it as the name for a woman's breast-holding undergarment. It had been employed since 17th century by the French, originally meaning a soldier's arm guard or shield. Eventually, it came to mean any kind of upper-body harnass with arm straps. By the beginning of the 20th century, "brassiere" had come to be synonymous with "bodice." By the 1920s, it had come to identify cupped breast support garments, which is where the word remains today.

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the word means "a woman's undergarment worn to support the breasts."

Who connected that word with that meaning, however, is unknown and possibly unknowable. Some say an American named Charles de Bevoise christened it thus in 1902. Others assert that the word turned up in an 1890 issue of Vogue magazine, and others dispute them, saying it didn't appear there until 1907.

Barbara "bra brawl" Mikkelson

Sightings:   Bette Midler sings about Otto Titzling and his wonderful invention in the 1988 movie Beaches and on her 1986 album, "Mud Will Be Flung Tonight." Also, a Trivial Pursuit game card incorrectly gives the inventor of the bra as Otto Titzling.