Did You Know About the Electric Lighting in the Toilets?
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Did You Know About the Electric Lighting in the Toilets?
In August 1911, Cunard’s naval architect Leonard Peskett was onboard Olympic to check out the competition. One of the details he noticed was the sanitary ware, supplied by Messrs. Doulton and ‘equal in quality and similar in design to…the Franconia, the only difference being that the wash basins are fitted in marble slabs and the WCs are flushed by lifting a lever handle instead of pushing a button’.
He also noted the automatic electric lighting in the ship’s public bathroom facilities:
The electric lights in the WCs are put on automatically by closing the door. When the door is closing it presses on a button fitted in the architrave near the top hinge of the door, and puts on the light, the light going out immediately the door is opened. For WCs this is considered to be better than a switch, as so many lights are left on when not required.
This innovative feature reduced unnecessary use of electricity, because the toilet cubicles were only illuminated when they were in use and the door was closed. (The Holland America Line’s Willem Piek Jr., by contrast, criticised this as ‘not pleasant and, in my opinion, not conducive to cleanliness’ in December 1911.)
Peskett thought that the third class sanitary accommodation was ‘a little better than usual [sic] provided by White Star. The WCs are of the pedestal type with levers at [the] side for flushing’. There seems to be a modern-day misconception, seen in some online forums and memes, that the third class toilets all flushed automatically because the White Star Line did not think passengers would know how to operate them. As Peskett’s comments confirm, this was not the case.
