Odd this day

It is, today, the anniversary of the opening of Norwich Station, which must mean it’s time to talk about pissing in the street. Railways opened up the country, you see, encouraging tourism, but public toilets only really came in with the Great Exhibition of 1851…

…and only became common in Norwich in the 1890s. A little rudimentary maths tells us that this leaves a gap — one which was, apparently, characterised by streams of urine running through the streets of Norfolk’s county town.

Even after public toilets were introduced, they were often locked at night, long before the pubs shut, and men would inevitably head for ‘urine corners’.

The nooks, crannies, and alleyways of Norwich’s 30 medieval churches provided perfect natural cover for the full of bladder, so, feeling that Something Must Be Done, someone came up with

quadrantal brick or concrete features fitted into the angles of … buildings

I am eternally grateful to Jeremy Noel-Tod, Associate Professor, School of Literature, Drama and Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia, who discovered a fabulous publication about anti-urination devices one day in 2020.

I looked for my own copy when I was there a year or so ago, and couldn’t find one, but I was able to point some AUDs out to The Boy Teenager. He was unimpressed by his father’s erudition.

You can find out more about author Ray Loveday here:

Retired Norwich teacher's quirky theory about devices to stop people urinating in city streets

His pamphlet, if you can find one, features pictures of six ecclesiastical anti-urination devices — “five from Norwich and one from Diss”. (Because, as the famous Dr Seuss book tells us, You Must Not Piss on Diss.)

Sorry.

The point is, though, that if you’ve ever idly wandered around a cathedral precinct and idly wondered what that-rounded-bit-which-doesn’t-quite-look-like-it-belongs-there is — it’s not part of the original architecture, it’s an AUD.

When Norwich did finally start opening bogs, it did it in style. This decagonal example (just one in a whole, glorious thread of pissoirs) is thought to be the oldest one of its kind, and is Grade II listed:

You can read more about that, too, if you like:

'It may seem absurd': The story of Norwich's 10-sided toilet

Or you can read about AUDs in more depth without tracking down the pamphlet:

Anti-urination devices in Norwich

That page even includes an old ‘committ no nuisance’ ghost sign (which does, indeed, mean ‘do not piss up this wall’).

But I have digressed, and there is an important aspect of AUDs which we have not yet discussed…

The more astute among you will have noticed that these devices have been exclusively designed with gentlemen in mind. Funny, that. (But how marvellous it is to live now in more enlightened times.)

The old myth that the Criminal Law Amendment Act 1885 did not prohibit lesbianism because Queen Victoria didn’t believe in it is still a myth, but we think it’s believable because it fits with our picture of the 19th century: women simply weren’t considered.

But presumably that had some small advantages for ladies. If you were caught short in crinoline, you could hunker down behind a gravestone and find quiet happiness, leaving passers by none the wiser (unless they happened to notice you leaving a puddle behind).