I found an academic blog about the history of women's public toilets and the 'urinary leash'

There were still rooms marked ladies’ and men's waiting rooms on some stations when I was a child in the 1980s. Though, I think long disused. My nan always insisted on sitting in the one for women.

By sheer chance I happened to find an academic blog about the history of women's public toilets and the impact of the urinary leash. I was searching for something using the words 'women owned logo' (which is a business promotion scheme in the USA) and my finger slipped off the 'g', leaving me with a search for 'women owned loo'!

It's an interesting blog and what stood out to me is that the big London department stores only introduced women's toilets for commercial reasons, as they realised that it would help women to spend more money. Perhaps there is a lesson in that for the issues of today? I remember that in America they had the 19th century women's 'Rest Rooms' movement in big cities. I think those facilities were more similar to waiting rooms, in that they had a sitting area as well as the toilets, but anyone who has been to a hotel built in that era knows that ladies loos often have a sitting area as well as the toilet facilities. So there was a understanding of the privacy/safety need, as well as hygiene.

Women’s rights and the “loo leash”: the fight for public toilets in the UK | Water, Sanitation and Health (WASH) Blog

Thank you to the author for putting this article out there.

I have some modern hoops, and you can do just that. But working class women were probably still wearing the original crinolin, which was actually stiff fabric and would have been much less easy to manipulate.
I have often wondered how women in the early 1800s managed menstruation with see-thru muslins. Anyone know?

I saw the same video, apparently you could just flip the hoops up at the back. Rather like you can with a hula hoop!

I think Edwardian long and straight or even ‘hobble’ skirts must have been more of a nuisance. But that was also when the rational dress movement was picking up pace.

In Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina there’s a reference to her going into the ‘First Class ladies waiting room’ at a station. Although obviously it might be different in the original Russian.
I'm sure I've read fiction by UK authors referring to a First Class ladies waiting room as well. I think it might be one of those things that did exist but which is lost to history.

By sheer chance I happened to find an academic blog about the history of women's public toilets and the impact of the urinary leash. I was searching for something using the words 'women owned logo' (which is a business promotion scheme in the USA) and my finger slipped off the 'g', leaving me with a search for 'women owned loo'!

It's an interesting blog and what stood out to me is that the big London department stores only introduced women's toilets for commercial reasons, as they realised that it would help women to spend more money. Perhaps there is a lesson in that for the issues of today? I remember that in America they had the 19th century women's 'Rest Rooms' movement in big cities. I think those facilities were more similar to waiting rooms, in that they had a sitting area as well as the toilets, but anyone who has been to a hotel built in that era knows that ladies loos often have a sitting area as well as the toilet facilities. So there was a understanding of the privacy/safety need, as well as hygiene.

Women’s rights and the “loo leash”: the fight for public toilets in the UK | Water, Sanitation and Health (WASH) Blog

Thank you to the author for putting this article out there.

Oh, erm, I watch a youtube called called Prior Attire, mostly because I sew a bit and am interested in how clothing was constructed. The furthest I have ever gone is a cheats version of a kirtle, not from this channel, she's proper authentic.

Anyhow, the woman whose channel it is addressed this issue, because the people watching asked her to, I think it was the most asked question.. All those cages for crinolines and bustles collapse and fold really easily, they aren't even heavy, as she demonstrated with various receptacles. Not actually demonstrated in case anyone is worried! Getting into a cubicle and managing it would be tricky tho, depending on the cubicle.

I can't put up a link but the video is called "How did Victorian women go to the toilet, a remake"

I also think that working and middle class women had lesser versions or no versions of cages under their skirts, especially working class women. It would get in the way and also use far to much fabric as you'd need to be able to afford yards of the stuff for a crinoline

Corset myth busting also available on same channel.

I saw the same video, apparently you could just flip the hoops up at the back. Rather like you can with a hula hoop!

I think Edwardian long and straight or even ‘hobble’ skirts must have been more of a nuisance. But that was also when the rational dress movement was picking up pace.

Did the availability and design of public toilets have an effect on the decline of the huge crinolines? I can't imagine how a woman could use a loo while wearing one of those huge petticoated and hooped skirts 🤯

It was not just working-class women finding a quiet spot to urinate. If you scour Victorian accounts of everyday life you find indicators that middle-class women did so too; there's a striking passage in "My Secret Life" which talks about how middle-class women would find places to urinate in public parks. Mid-Victorian crinolines helped a lot. The trend which is apparent - and this is true with many forms of social change - is the introduction of public toilets acts both as a cause and an effect. Public urination becomes more socially problematic, so public toilets become more common, but at the same time the growing availability of public toilets draws disapproval to public urination.

Also, one must be careful about talking about prostitution in Victorian Britain. Because of the disapproval from some quarters as to sexual relationships outside of marriage, any sexual relationship outside of marriage might be labelled as prostitution, even where no money would change hands. There's a very telling investigation of prostitution in the fourth volume of "London Labour and the London Poor" (written by Bracebridge Hemyng, and not Henry Mayhew, who wrote most of the rest of the series) where you have, for instance, unmarried cohabitation described as prostitution. Whilst the scale of prostitution in Victorian London was undoubtedly large, it was also confused by a certain kind of social commentary which was very common.

Best read on women in Victorian London: "City of Dreadful Delight" by Judith Walkowitz, published in 1992, and still the best book kind-of-but-not-really about Jack the Ripper. It's about narratives of danger facing Victorian women, so heavily focused on perception, but a great book, and very relevant to the modern world.

My understanding is that working class women just went anywhere they could when they were out of the home: alleys, side-streets, field edges, behind hedgerows…Long skirts helped.

I think the ‘chaperone’ principle applied too because women would walk together, wait for each other or shield each other from view while toileting. There’s a scene like this in ‘The Piano’.

Unfortunately working class women and girls were subject to a lot of sexual harassment by both men of their own class and middle class men, who regarded female shop-workers, milliners and factory workers as easy game.

Dr Barnado was as much concerned about child prostitution as poverty. Unfortunately prostitution was absolutely rife in Victorian London, which is one of the reasons why he began setting up homes for girls. 😕

Yes, but in Victorian terms those women who worked for a living didn't count because they were working-class and, therefore, didn't have the sensitive natures of middle-class and upper-class women. They were to be pitied and managed by religion and charity.

To this day, I still think the UK and Irish States/NGOs view working-class women as less important when it comes to crime prevention and less easily distressed than women from the middle and upper classes.

https://www.peaked.news/p/you-meet-more-perverts-when-youre

I was reading a history of New York (random I know!)
Not at all! That must be fascinating. Could you share the title?

In Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina there’s a reference to her going into the ‘First Class ladies waiting room’ at a station. Although obviously it might be different in the original Russian.
I'm sure I've read fiction by UK authors referring to a First Class ladies waiting room as well. I think it might be one of those things that did exist but which is lost to history.

Posh department stores in the 70s often had an attendant who supervised the ladies' room and toilet. People generally left her a tip.

It’s like working class women never existed for some historians.