When people used newspaper (instead of loo roll) in the toilet in the past, did they flush it?

[splatfrog]

I'm just curious if it blocked the pipes? I can't imagine putting newspaper down the loo nowadays. Modern loo paper is pretty thin & looks like it dissolves easily.

@onepieceoflollipop I loathe the term 'sanitary towel'. Shudder

Our downstairs loo blocked last week due to a single emergency use of kitchen roll (waiting for the Sainsburys man and the nameless culprit CBA to go upstairs).

At least 7-8 times a year I have to resort to caustic soda to deal with a barely explained blockage. I’m always muttering about “modern plumbing” like a archetypal old fart.

That’s exactly the kind of explanation that makes me feel I’m not going mad. So thank you!

My grandparents didn't have a flushing toilet until the mid-70s. They had an outhouse that had a bench made from a wooden plank with a hole cut in it, and a pit below it that was emptied a couple of times a week. Newspaper cut into squares on a rusty nail for loo roll. It was horrible and all of us grandkids hated it and were very relieved when they eventually got a toilet plumbed in. They never had central heating either, just a range in the kitchen. They had ten kids in that house (which was rented). Different times, hard to believe it was only two generations ago.

I'd completely forgotten about tracing paper in the school loos!

Yeah that tracing paper, zero absorbancy. I shall consider a high level cistern next time I ever refit a bathroom. Interesting conversation!

Izal medicated toilet paper. 😫

Ah, tracing paper loo roll!

My junior school was split site - two buildings - one was really new and modern, soft toilet roll. When you moved up to the big building the horror stories about tracing paper bog roll were actually true - I can still see the painted over metal holders that the boxes of loo paper used to slide in. Gloomy, smelly, damp, dark stalls in an 1800s-built school.

My grandparents were very poor and couldn't afford to bin anything that could be burned on the fire <grim> their used newspaper went on the fire.

Using pads is unthinkable? Is it?? Gosh, whatever we do is wrong isn't it. I had no idea about this though so I'd love to know!
The shops still sell them. I still use them at night (scared to death of getting TSS after the tampon lady at school gave us 'the talk,' aged about 12) What are women 'supposed,' to use instead?

When MIL was a girl their outdoor hole in the ground toilet was emptied by the man with the 'honey cart'. I think it's a regional name. More polite than it could have been though!

I remember that tracing paper stuff at primary school too!
Was there actually a point to it or was it to just stop kids using and blocking the loo with too much paper? (Fairly frequent issue at the primary I work in.)

Mooncups apparently or period pants. Or any rag that can be shoved in the washer....

You're not supposed to flush tampons.

I think schools should do a sewer tour to teach kids what can anc can't be flushed and see the consequences of it. Then it can be carried on into a new generation of adults who don't flush tampons.

I don't want to see someones used tampon on the beach because someone can't be bothered to use a bin. Just stop it maaan.

Are you for real!

Why are there still people who flush tampons down the loo?!!

I’ve been menstrual since 1995 and it’s always been on boxes, packets and in the leaflets the Tampax rep handed out in all my time

Oh nooooo is this where we're at? I'm old fashioned then- tampons and pads for me from now till the joy that will be the menopause!
I will never use a mooncup. I have no idea what period pants are- some kind of nappy type item I'm guessing? And as for an old rag to throw in the machine...grim. give me strength!
Sometimes it's hard to be a woman....

We were told at school (1990s) that tampons are flushable, pads must be binned. I only knew a few years ago that you weren't meant to flush tampons anymore. I still do out of habit occasionally if I forget!

Outside dunnies used to be like composters so paper would decompose.

I agree with the PP who suggested kids should be taken out round sewerage systems - and the different types. In my previous house we weren't on mains sewerage (like a huge number of rural houses) so we had a septic tank shared with the next door house. One day I came out to find the garden flooded with sewage and suspicious white bits. Turns out the neighbours had had a lodger who thought it was fine to flush wet wipes and other garbage down the loo blocking the natural drainage.

And on a grand scale in towns, cities and villages with sewage systems we get fatbergs - sometimes restaurants disposing cooking oil illegally, but mixed in with wet wipes, our own oil based stuff and eg tampons. It costs billions each year to break them up.

I'm not sure what we should be doing because all these products need to go somewhere. Not down the drainage systems but at least into incineration or biomass.

No!!!!! Do not do this!!!

I don’t see what’s grim?

I can remember a primary school trip to the sewage works/water treatment place. They gave us key rings that were little green rubber wellies, I had it for years. Still flushed tampons until a few years ago though as I didn’t realise you weren’t meant to 😳

Nothing wrong with any of that.

mooncup works brilliantly for me. Reusable pads work for others, just as disposable pads/tampons work for some too.

period pants are relatively new- they just look like normal pants but have a super absorbent gusset. Good for teens, or as a back up for tampons in case of leaks.

do what works for you, but no need to be judging others that prefer a different solution.

Lots of European countries are on septic tank systems, France is nowhere near 100% mains drainage. Septic tanks only cope with natural waste. At one time had to have special toilet paper.

How did it not just get blocked up all the time?

@SheWoreARaspberryBeret123

I think it did get blocked up sometimes, but the main reasons it didn’t were due to more water being used for the ‘older’ type flushes so it was more powerful.

plus most of the pads were made of different materials which kind of melted in water (apart from the plastic waterproof layer). They were bulkier and very different to the ‘always’ type pads that weren’t around till maybe late 80s/early 90s.

I was born very early 70s. When I was a teen, ‘stick on’ or ‘press on’ pads were still mainly called sanitary towels and were still seen as quite modern compared to the looped towels that my aunt was using…

they were bulky, wings weren’t invented but they were a big improvement on the old ‘Dr Whites’

Tampax or lil lets we’re available thankfully.

I remember the school office giving my friend a pad with pins to hold it in place, can you imagine doing that to a 12 year old now?!

’Always’ was introduced to the UK 1984 - which seems a very long time ago now!