Appearances have evolved dramatically over time, however, one of the most extravagant and over the top periods was the Elizabethan era. During this time the female appearance was controlled to such an extent that cosmetics become dangerous and sometimes even lethal.
While the Queen herself was the most influential in the Elizabethan fashion market, not everyone approved of the time and effort put into cosmetics and clothes. Thomas Becon, using the Bible as him main source, wrote “I will… that women array themselves in comely appeal, with shamefacedness and discrete behaviour, not with braided hair, gold or pearls or costly array.” While Thomas Tuke’s book, ‘A Discourse against Painting and Tincturing of Women’ first published in 1616, stated “Fucus is paint, and fucus is deceit, and fucus they used, that do mean to cheat”. Even one of Shakespeare’s sonnets scorns and makes fun of the ideals of Elizabethan beauty;
People have always had to relieve themselves whether it was the Roman use of running water to carry off waste or the Middle Age use of chamber pots that would be emptied out a window in the morning. Sir John Harrington invented a type of flushing toilet for his Godmother, Queen Elizabeth I, in 1596 as a way to get back in her good graces after a falling out. It took the 1832 epidemic of cholera in Europe which killed millions to make people realize that poor sanitation was responsible for the spread of disease. It led to sewers being cleaned and rebuilt in France and the British passing of laws that required houses to have some sort of flushing toilet.
In 1872 British plumber Thomas Crapper developed a flushing toilet but his main achievement was the refinement of the tank that held the water and made flushing quieter. American soldiers returning from England during World War I referred the toilet as the Crapper. The toilet was a status symbol for Victorian age and was frequently decorated with hand paintings or sculpture.
Isaiah Rogers designed Boston’s Tremont Hotel in 1829 which was the first hotel to have indoor plumbing and boasted 8 toilets on the first floor. By the decade of the 1860s many flushing toilets had been imported from England by wealthy Americans. These units had tanks mounted well above the bowl and were operated by pulling a chain. The water tank moved closer to the bowls and by about 1920 the tank and bowl became a single unit and took on the design of the toilets we are familiar with today.
The effort to conserve water has led to low flow toilets that only use 1.6 gallons of water or units that recycle water from the sink into the toilet tank. We are all familiar with the rural outhouse and the half moon shape on the door or images of people dashing across their yard in urgency. Indoor flushing toilets have become a ubiquitous part of society and are taken for granted but the next time you flush a toilet be thankful for the development of indoor plumbing.
| The evolution of society invariably altered the customs and cultures of our ancestors while leaving a multitude of relics in its wake. We offer our patrons a grand selection of museum quality replicas that we hope will awaken a interest in those bygone eras. Choose from reenactment gear, historical display items, functional technology reproductions, replica ships and many more items! |
Tags: 1596, 1832 Cholera epidemic, 1860s toilets, 1872, 1920s toilets, Boston’s Tremont Hotel, Cuirassier’s Toilette, Cuirassier’s Toilette 1806. Scale Model Kit Andrea Miniatures Spain 1:32 (54mm), development of 1.6 gallon water toilets, Grand Resorts, Grand Resorts II, History DVDs & History CDs, history of flushing toilets, history of sewers, history of the toilet, history of toilets, Hotel del Coronado, Hotel Hershey & Mohunk Mountain House DVD Grand Resorts, Hotel Hershey & Mohunk Mountain House DVD, Isaiah Rogers, Middle Age chamber pots, Mission Inn DVD, origin of the word "crap", Queen Elizabeth I, quiet flushing, Roman toilets, sanitation and disease, Sir John Harrington, The: Grand Hotel, The: Greenbrier, Thomas Crapper, Victorian toilets, World War II Newsreels 4 DVD Film Library World War II Newsreels 4 DVD Film Library
Queen Elizabeth I is considered by many to be one of Britain’s greatest leaders. Her strength and resolve in the face of overwhelming odds, as the Spanish fleet entered waters with the threat of land invasion, remains one of the Empire’s most enduring stories. The attack of the Spanish Armada of 1588 began in mid May and was the culmination of conflicts between Britain and Spain. 
The rebellion against the Roman Catholic faith was widespread with rioting and destruction of popish artifacts taking place in Europe’s major cities. King Phillip was Dutch but leaned towards his Spanish possessions which had only increased after the abdication of Charles V and the break up of the Hapsburgs territories. It was a tumultuous time across Europe as old and new ideas clashed, often violently. When Philip sent troops to the Netherlands to quash the rebellion, he only created more resentment and confused loyalties. 
The Spanish set sail for Britain in May of 1588 accompanied by their German and French allies. The armada consisted of approximately 130 ships and they were making straight for British waters with the plan to invade the country. But the Spanish fleet was a miss match of vessels from cargo ships to small boats and many never made it to English waters. After rough weather and the loss of several ships, the Spanish went to harbor only to sail again in June. They reached Calais in July where they anchored making ready to attack England. 
England’s highest military advisors held counsel with the Queen to determine the best course of action given the circumstances. The British Navy had increased its strength in the previous months and needed now only the rallying cry of a Queen to get them motivated for the fight. It was Elizabeth’s words to her troops that helped spur the British fleet onto victory and have gone down in history as one of the world’s greatest speeches. 
Duly inspired by a determined queen, the British attacked. They began by sending eight ships covered with ignited pitch (tar and straw on fire) into the Spanish fleet causing chaos and a number of other fires. Then the guns began to boom. Both sides were heavily armored but the rumored 190 British ships carrying 17,000 men quickly claimed victory. Although Spanish vessels weren’t captured by the British navy, they were forced to flee and hopes of a respite, rendezvous and return attack quickly fell from favor. The British were determined to win and the British Isles remained free of foreign invasion then and to this day. 
The man who had come to be known as “Queen Elizabeth’s Merlin,” John Dee, was born in London in 1527 but, by the age of fifteen, had already moved on to the halls of Cambridge University. There he established a routine that he would maintain until his death the age of eighty-one: two hours for meals, four hours for sleep and eighteen hours for study.
Following Elizabeth’s ascension to the throne, Dee spent the next twenty years as royal authority on matters of both astrology and science for the Queen– then viewed as intertwined fields – and even provided advice on exploration of the New World, coining the term, “the British Empire,” in the process. It’s even said that Elizabeth chose her 1559 coronation date on the advice of her personal mystic.
As the Spanish and Portuguese empire expanded in Central and South America, The British established a tenuous presence in North America in 1607 with settlements that stretched along the east coast from Florida to Newfoundland. By 1733, the British Empire had carved out an empire as formidable as their Spanish counterparts. Originally, the entire coast was named “Virginia” after Queen Elizabeth I the “Virgin Queen”, who in the 1580s enlisted the explorer Sir Walter Raleigh to discover new lands for the British Empire. Though Raleigh’s initial attempts to establish a colony in Roanoke Island in 1584 failed, his experience would later pave the way for the successful colonies that followed. The defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588 signaled the dawn of British naval dominance and permitted Great Britain to continue its exploration of the New World virtually unchallenged.
St. John’s and Newfoundland were early colonies as was the Roanoke Colony, founded in 1585 and the Jamestown Settlement, founded in 1607. The Plymouth Colony, originally intended for Virginia, was actually established in Massachusetts in 1620. A flow of colonies followed these original ones along the northeast coast of North America, including the Massachusetts Bay Colony, founded in 1630. In the decades that followed, the British formed the original thirteen colonies that supplied the crown with spices and other commodities at great economic cost to the colonies. The British imposed heavy taxation policies that eventually led to an increasingly hostile political climate between the colonies and the Royal government. The original thirteen British colonies were Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, New York, Connecticut, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia. 
The British would eventually take control over most of the originally settled lands through either hostile campaigns or commercial ventures, as they did in 1664 when they took the Dutch colony of New Netherland including the New Amsterdam settlement. Parts of Delaware and Pennsylvania had also been colonized by the Dutch prior to British dominance. In 1713 England acquired the French colony of Acadia as well as the rest of New France and, in 1763, the Spanish colony of Florida. In 1776, the thirteen original colonies rebelled against the British crown over representation, local laws and tax issues which by that point had become intolerable to the colonial population, this rebellion or revolution eventually led to the creation of the United States of America.
