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Journal of Design History 2001 14(1):35-51; doi:10.1093/jdh/14.1.35
© 2001 by Design History Society
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A World of Unmentionable Suffering: Women's Public Conveniences in Victorian London

Barbara Penner

Bartlett School of Architecture


  Abstract

In this paper, I provide an in-depth analysis of a dispute that broke out in 1900 over the proposal to construct a women's public lavatory in Camden Town, using the often conflicting evidence provided by the St. Pancras Vestry Minutes, the St. Pancras Gazette and the Vestryman, George Bernard Shaw.

The aim of this paper is not to reconstruct one true version of the controversy; rather, it is to provide a detailed account of how the decision to build an everyday object such as a public lavatory for women was implicated in producing, maintaining and contesting the patriarchal power structure of late Victorial London.

Consequently, this paper considers the following two points: first, how the design and siting of a women's lavatory is not a neutral act but one that is shaped by historically and culturally specific notions; and second, how an everyday space such as a public lavatory actively positions (and re-positions) its users in relation to the existing power structure, providing an opportunity for small resistances to the status quo to occur.

Key Words: feminism • Great Exhibition • water-closets • women's public conveniences • women's suffrage


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