The Great Exhibition of 1851 was the home to many firsts – the first major display of photography as art and science, the first demonstration of mechanical cooling (foreshadowing modern fridges) and, lest we forget, Paxton’s Crystal Palace was the first large-scale prefabricated building in the world. It was also the first time that the public could use flushing toilets – over 800,000 people paid a penny to ‘spend a penny’, hence the phrase. The man responsible was the engineer and master plumber, George Jennings. Nearly 75 years later, the capital is not flush (sorry) with loos, but instead suffering from an extreme lack of convenience.
Peter Mandelson could have done with one of these in London this week, as he was caught urinating against a wall in Notting Hill, after spending the evening at George Osborne's Notting Hill home. Is it any wonder, when so many public loos are being sold off for profit, as with these in West Norwood?
