"Raise your glasses, please, to the Crapper who installed the royal flush!”
Adam Hart-Davis, English scientist and broadcaster
With his name as manufacturer proudly cast in the iron of countless toilet cisterns the world over, Thomas Crapper (1836-1910) is unlikely ever to be dissociated with visits to the lavatory. But one of the most disappointing of facts relating to inventions is that he did not himself invent the flush toilet. He did, however, popularize and endorse the flush toilet, and he was indeed a plumber. As a young child in the mid-nineteenth century he was apprenticed to a master plumber, gaining the same title himself at the age of twenty. His plumbing was exceptional and he even did work for members of the Royal Family.
Crapper's invention of the ballcock was one of nine patents he received, and one of three that were related to improving toilet design. The ballcock was a simple, air-filled, and watertight float that was attached to a valve inside a toilet cistern by means of an armature. As the cistern gradually filled up with water from the mains, the float would be lifted by the rising water level; at a preset point it caused the valve to close and stop the cistern from overflowing.
Crapper was a shrewd businessman and formed his own plumbing and bathroom fixtures company one of the first in the world to feature a public showroom. Thomas Crapper and Co. Ltd. continues to make high-quality bathroom fittings, including faithful replicas of the originals designed by the man himself.
Today in Westminster Abbey, London, there are manhole covers bearing Crapper's company name. Fascinating to some, they have become a tourist attraction in their own right.
