Clochemerle: What’s with the pissoir in the town square?

WHEN I was a boy, I think my mother had a problem with toilets. Not the functions but the architecture.

Mum was quite “distressed” by the outhouse, which was situated some 10 metres from the house, out in the back yard.

Hence, the one horror story she recounted of my early childhood was that I would habitually knock on the outhouse door, while she was in there, and ask, rather loudly, “Mum, what are you doing?”

I was an otherwise perfect child if the lack of other or worse stories was any indication. I was inquisitive.

Clochemerle and the politics of a pissoir

Equally, I remember her anguish and annoyance when a BBC production of a French story, Clochemerle, written by Gabriel Chevallier (3 May 1895 – 6 April 1969), appeared on our television guide.

Clochemerle was satirical, originally political, which, I suspect, the BBC funded as a shot at the French.

It involved a small French town in the Beaujolais region, which put in a public urinal, a “pissoir”, in the town square, outside the Catholic Church.

Mum mumbled imprecations against the BBC for weeks.

Toilets, childhood and civilisation

They’re funny things, toilets, aren’t they? More funny peculiar than funny Ha!Ha! Though not if you’re a little boy of a certain age or, sometimes, not so young.

In a way, though, they define civilisation. The earliest sewer systems known were in the Indus Valley; a technology present in almost every house in the cities of Harappa and Mohenjo-daro more than 8000 years ago. The Romans had them.

More than 5000 years ago, the dwellings at Skara Brae, in the Orkney Islands, were all connected by a sewerage system.

Gabriel Chevallier, the author of Clochemerle, was born on May 3, 1895, in Lyon, France, and died on April 6, 1969. Chevallier’s work is celebrated for its satirical wit and keen insights into human nature, particularly in the context of small-town life and the quirks of provincial France.

Thomas Crapper and the great toilet myth

I would like to clear up one misconception before I sign off. It is an urban myth that the flushing toilet was invented by Thomas Crapper.

Though he held patents on numerous toilet-related inventions, Thomas did not invent the flushing toilet.

His greatest claim to fame is that he invented and patented the ball cock system that made flushing toilets more efficient and is still in use today.

The wily amongst you will no doubt have discerned another connection between Mr Crapper and toilets.

Yes, it does seem that a form of his name has come down to us in a colloquial term for the function one performs when using the toilet.

As with all things, there is some debate about this, but let us leave the topic entirely, as I’m sure my mother would have wished.

A pissoir similar to the one featured in Clochemerle, the satirical French tale about a small town thrown into uproar over a public urinal.

Editor’s note

This article was first published in the Maryborough Herald in 2020, when Jocelyn was editor. Following the closure of the paper, the original article is now available via The Courier Mail’s site. It has been lightly edited for Jocelyn Magazine.

About the author

Peter Woodland is a contributor to Jocelyn Magazine. A former teacher and school librarian, his interests include computing, geography, palaeontology and good food.