EHL252. Thomas Crapper drain cover. Location: 99 Cavendish Place, Eastbourne. what3words: boring.shower.divisions

Cast iron inspection cover c1890.  The close-up picture on the right of the covers centre shows the wording ‘T. CRAPPER & Co LD, SANITARY ENGINEERS, MARLBORO WORKS, CHELSEA, LONDON.’

Wikipedia: Thomas Crapper was born in Thorne, West Riding of Yorkshire.  In 1853 he was apprenticed to his brother George, a master plumber in Chelsea and thereafter spent three years as a journeyman plumber.  In 1861 Crapper set himself up as a sanitary engineer with his own brass foundry and workshops in nearby Marlborough Road.  In the 1880’s Prince Albert (later Edward VII) purchased his country seat of Sandringham House in Norfolk and asked Thomas Crapper & Co. to supply the plumbing, including thirty lavatories, thus giving Crapper his first Royal Warrant.  The firm received further warrants from Edward as king and from George V.  In 1904 Crapper retired, passing the firm to his nephew George and his business partner Robert Marr Wharam. Crapper died on 27th January 1910 and is buried in Elmer’s End Cemetery (London Borough of Bromley).  In 1966 the Crapper company was sold by then-owner Robert G. Wharam (son of Robert Marr Wharam) upon his retirement to its rival John Bolding & Sons.  Bolding went into liquidation in 1969.  The company fell out of use until it was acquired by Simon Kirby (c1998), 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.

Simon Kirby: Much of the time Thomas Crapper is credited with too much; he did not invent the W.C., the cistern, the syphon, or the water trap, but he did have his own factory (the ‘Marlboro’ Works’) and produced his own goods from there in addition to having special and exclusive items made by others to his specifications. He also ‘bought in’ standard lines from other manufacturers, as almost everyone did in those days.  Crapper was a shrewd businessman and a self-publicist.  In the process he promoted sanitary reform and brought sanitaryware ‘out in the open’ – up until then bathroom suppliers and manufacturers were discretely situated in side-streets.  Imagine the fuss when Crapper opened a showroom in the King’s Road, opposite Royal Avenue, with W.C. bowls in the windows!

Crapper & Co.’s manhole covers were especially important to the company – they were their own products and held patents for them. ‘T. Crapper’ on a manhole cover means exclusive to, patented by, and installed by Crapper & Co. 

Wikipedia: It has often been claimed in popular culture that the slang term for human bodily waste, crap, originated with Thomas Crapper because of his association with lavatories.  A common version of this story is that American servicemen stationed in England during WWI saw his name on cisterns and used it as Army slang, i.e., "I'm going to the crapper.’’ The word crap is of Middle English origin and predates its application to bodily waste. Its most likely etymological origin is a combination of two older words: the Dutch krappen and the Old French crappe (siftings, waste or rejected matter, from the medieval Latin crappa).  In English, it was used to refer to chaff and also to weeds or other rubbish.  Its first recorded application to bodily waste, according to the Oxford English Dictionary appeared in 1846 (when Thomas Crapper was just 10 years old) under a reference to a crapping ken, or a privy, where ken means a house.

Simon Kirby: As far as etymology is concerned, ‘crap’ is a very old word although it fell out of use in Great Britain in the 1600’s. However, the Founding Fathers took it with them so Americans have always used the term. It was not used in Victorian Britain so Crapper’s name was not amusing or remarkable.

During the Great War the American servicemen stationed in London DID find it funny – they saw it on so many Water Closets that they began to call the W.C. a "Crapper". Though crude, the sobriquet made sense and it stuck. Therefore, ‘crap’ is an old word but "Crapper" for the W.C. is named after our man. In etymological circles, this process is called a ‘back-formation’!