I was trying to find a post that would pertain to the Christmas Season, and I thought and thought, but all I could come up with was “toilet paper.” When I was quite young, we learned a poem in the school playground with this connection, and it goes:
In days of old
When knights were bold,
And paper was not invented,
They wiped their ass
On a blade of grass,
And walked away quite contented.
Mark Twain once remarked about blushing: “Man is the only animal who wipes himself, or needs to.”
Before we used toilet paper as we know it today, we used the Eaton’s Catalogue, especially in the farm Back House, where we could sit and contemplate last years bargain prices in the pages of the catalogue that had not yet been crumpled up and used. If we were sick or it was too cold during our Manitoba winters we used the Chamber Pot, (the Guzzunder, because it goes under the bed).
The evolution of wiping can be traced back to the Ancient Civilizations, with their varied civility of treating the wiping function. In Roman times the common people used Public Toilets where they were issued saltwater soaked sponges on sticks. The rich Romans who had their own private toilets preferred wool soaked in rose water for their wiping procedures. People who were less civilized used all sorts of objects for wiping like seashells, leaves, or just plain sticks, thus the beginning of the term, “he’s got the wrong end of the stick.” Others just resorted to use their bare hand. This has caused Historians to speculate that the tradition of shaking with the right hand was started because of the practice of wiping with the left hand. Those living in the Northern parts of the world, in particular, the Inuit, used tundra moss when available in the summer months, and handfuls of snow during the balance of the year.
Down on the farm, the corncob was favoured until the catalogue and newspapers became ubiquitous. Catalogues were popular in out houses until about 1934, when the retailers switched from newsprint to coated paper, I just cringe at the thought of wiping with shiny paper.
The flush toilet did not gain popularity in the United States until after World War I, when American troops came home from England full of talk about a "mighty slick invention called the crapper." The American slang term for the toilet, "the john," is said to be derived from the flushing water closets at Harvard University installed in 1735, and emblazoned with the manufacturer's name, Rev. Edward Johns.
It was not until 1884 when Mr. Thomas Crapper (1837-1910), (that was his real name), and a Plumber was supposed to have invented the flushing toilet, but he just improved on the old style, that toilet paper became a household necessity because corncobs did not go down the W.C. The flush toilet required a wipe that was small, disposable, and finally after a few decades, soft!
The Scott brothers of Saratoga, New York invented and manufactured a paper product they called “Waldorf Tissue.” It was rather a primitive tissue compared to what we have today. It was packaged in a box, not on a roll, and it was named after Manhattan’s ritzy Waldorf-Astoria Hotel because they thought that no one but a Hotel would be willing to purchase toilet tissue. Their advertising slogan was: “soft as old linen,” an apt slogan because at the time, it was what Royalty was using in their wash rooms. In 1871, the first U.S. patent for “perforated wrapping paper” was awarded to Seth Wheeler of Albany. The paper was wound into rolls and could easily be torn off at the perforations. Toilet paper was already manufactured in rolls: now the only step required was of perforation during the production, either with a row of holes or short cuts. This was the start of the debate that has ended marriages as to whether toilet paper should roll off the top of the roll or the bottom.
As toilet paper gained more public acceptance in 1896, the Scott Company began producing toilet paper under its own brand name. By 1925 Scott had become the world’s leading producer of toilet paper. Kimberly Clark eventually acquired the Scott Company in 1995.
In 1935, the Northern Tissue Company advertised, “Splinter Free” toilet paper. Yes you read it correctly, early paper manufacturing techniques sometimes left splinters embedded in the paper. In 1942, the St. Andrews Paper Mill of Great Britain introduced two-ply toilet paper. Scott kept their name on toilet paper until 1957, when Procter & Gamble bought Charmin Paper Mills of Green Bay, Wisconsin, and started a toilet paper war. P&G was the soap giant of North America and one of the most market orientated companies of the day. Their market research department discovered that North Americans wanted a softer, more durable toilet paper. I cannot find a sample of the questionnaire.
At this time in history the name ‘tissue’ was a joke because it actually resembled newsprint. P&G had to change the coarse paper to soft, and so they changed the manufacturing process at Charmin by air-drying the finished product instead of squeeze pressing it dry. The new product was much softer and to educate the public as to this, their advertising department created one of the most memorable characters in history. The character was known as “Mr. Whipple” a Supermarket Manager who had to keep asking his costumers, “Please, don’t squeeze the Charmin.” No one thought of squeezing toilet tissue before the Ad. but now everyone was squeezing it and what was more important, they were buying it.
Kimberly Clark, Georgia Pacific, Fort James, and Proctor and Gamble are the major manufacturers of toilet paper in North America. There are approximately 86,000,000 rolls of toilet paper produced each day worldwide. That’s about 30 billion rolls of toilet paper per year, which equals about 3 rolls produced per second, seven days a weeks, 365 days a year.
Toilet paper has been adapted by ingenious humans for many uses, such as packaging material, eyeglass wipes, wiping noses, removing makeup, and toilet seat covers, just to mention a few.
To bring my little tale of toilet paper to an end, just remember that the next time you skip to the loo you can thank your lucky stars that we live in Canada because President Bill Clinton
Signed into law the Toilet Paper Tax of 1996. This law increased the price of each toilet paper roll 6 cents. There is no end to the insanity in the United States.
Note: I was thinking before I wrote this that with all the excessive eating and drinking over Christmas and New Years we would all be visiting the Water Closet Room more often.
Source: Short article by Vince Staten, in the book: A trip inside the local Drug Store.
More:
http://www.victoriancrapper.com/Toilethistory.HTML
I wish all ebrandon members and visitors a Merry Christmas, drink Responsibly, and drive Safely.