The flush toilet was invented by Elizabeth I’s godson, the poet John Harington.

1596

He installed one at home and reportedly another for the queen at Richmond Palace, but the much-mocked idea was forgotten for two centuries.

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The event

• Harington’s flush toilet1596 · Kelston, near Bath. The courtier-poet John Harington built a flushing toilet with a cistern at his house and described it in his 1596 satire The Metamorphosis of Ajax. The title was a pun on “jakes”, slang for a privy.

16th century

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