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Revision as of 23:58, 1 February 2004 by David Gerard (talk | contribs) (more bio, company history)(diff) ← Previous revision | Latest revision (diff) | Newer revision → (diff)Thomas Crapper (baptized September 26, 1836-January 27, 1910) was a plumber who founded Thomas Crapper & Co. Ltd. in England.
Thomas Crapper & Co. Ltd.
Crapper was born in Waterside, Yorkshire (near Thorne), in September 1836 (the exact date is unknown). His father Charles was a steamboat captain. At the age of 14, Crapper was apprenticed to a master plumber in Chelsea, London. After his apprenticeship and three years as a journeyman plumber, in 1861 he founded his own company at Robert Street, Chelsea. In 1866 he moved the business to nearby Marlborough Road (now Draycott Avenue).
One common myth has it that Crapper invented the flush toilet, but none of the nine patents he held, three of them for water closet improvements, such as the floating ballcock, were for that particular device. Alexander Cummings was the inventor of the flush toilet.
The manhole covers with Crapper's company's name on them in Westminster Abbey are now a minor tourist attraction.
The original Thomas Crapper & Co. Ltd. was sold by then-owner Robert G. Wharam to their rivals John Bolding & Sons in 1966. Bolding then went into liquidation in 1969. The name fell out of use until 1998, when it was acquired by a new owner, a historian and collector of antique bathroom fittings, who relaunched the company in Stratford-upon-Avon, producing authentic reproductions of Crapper's original Victorian bathroom fittings.
The word "crapper"
In the United States, the word "crapper" is a dysphemism for "toilet", although it is not clear if this has anything to do with Thomas Crapper. It has been reasonably suggested that U.S. soldiers stationed in England during World War I (some of whom had little experience with indoor plumbing) saw many toilets printed with 'T. Crapper' in the glaze and brought the word home as a synonym for 'toilet.' "Crapper" remains an Americanism.
The noun crap is old in the English language, one of a group of words applied to discarded cast offs, like "residue from renderings" (1490s) or in Shropshire, "dregs of beer or ale", meanings probably extended from Middle English crappe "chaff, or grain that has been trodden underfoot in a barn" (c.1440), deriving ultimately from Late Latin crappa "chaff." As an occupational name, Crapper may be akin to Thresher.
The verb to crap, meaning "to defecate" is recorded since 1846, and according to one theory, the word "crapper" simply developed from this. According to another theory, Crapper's advertising of flush toilets caused his name to become a synonym for them, and people then assumed they were his invention.
Reference
- Adam Hart-Davis, Thunder, Flush and Thomas Crapper: An Encycloopedia (ISBN 1570760810, ISBN 1854792458 or ISBN 1854792504) addresses many of the myths surrounding Thomas Crapper and his inventions.