Skipping to the Loo!

Joining the Queue

Marylebone railway station is rather a nice place. Some splendid Victorian architecture, a florist, coffee bars and an airy, friendly atmosphere. A pleasant place to arrive, until you leave your busy train and need to access the ladies loo quickly. Looking around you might notice an odd little construction advertising the dubious joys of Bicester village and staffed by enthusiastic young people in fancy dress. Nestling behind it and near to the posh chocolate stall, you will spy the weary queue for the toilets. You know that queue. Your visits to cinemas, theatres, motorway services, festivals and other events have taught you all about recognising that queue and all its implications.

But, hey, you’ve actually found the loos. And they are open.  And at least you are not visiting one of those places where you have to take potluck on the likelihood of finding anywhere at all. Sometimes you are fortunate and find a central, visible, well signposted, clean and fully functioning loo. More often you have to take refuge in a pub, a coffee bar, a petrol station or a convenient bush. A little nagging anxiety is always there at the back of your mind, particularly if you have children with you, or have to manage a health problem.

Why are women’s queues much more common than men’s? It relates partly to some spurious attempt at parity, where the floor space allocated for women’s toilets in buildings was expected to equal the space allocated for men. Idiotic, of course, since men’s urinals don’t take up the same amount of space as women’s cubicles. It’s changing a bit now in newer buildings, but telltale signs - like those hooks on the backs of cubicle doors that can only be reached by six footers – can still reveal the hand of an unthinking man.

Spending a Penny

In 1879 about 150,000 women were in employment in London. The construction of the underground had made it easier for working women to travel across the city, but it took until the end of the century before decent public toilet facilities began to appear. Middle class women could manage issues rather more easily, by using facilities in department stores, restaurants and hotels, or by placing a discreet receptacle in their personal carriage. And even when public toilets began to be erected, the charge of one penny was quite beyond the means of many women. George Bernard Shaw, a strong supporter of women’s suffrage, described an extraordinary row in 1900 where men (who were increasingly well provided with facilities) were expressing moral outrage at the very thought of women having access to public conveniences, calling it an ‘abomination’ and claiming that women had ‘forgot their sex’.

Although ‘spending a penny’ is still in common usage, there is no consistency over payment for using a toilet. There was outrage in Scarborough some time ago when the local authority imposed a fee of 40 pence for all its public lavatories. Plymouth has a 50p charge, but that’s cheap compared with the £1 fee charged in Kinlochleven in the Scottish Highlands.

At least the dreaded turnstiles have been phased out, thanks to the great work of Barbara Castle and other women MPs in the early 1960s. They argued passionately, presenting clear evidence about how dangerous, stressful and frightening turnstiles could be for the infirm and elderly, for pregnant women and women with children. Memories of those spiky iron devices can still cause some of us to shudder.

The Regulations

It is quite astonishing that there is no statutory requirement for local authorities to provide public toilet facilities. The Public Health Act of 1936 states that:

‘…. local authorities in England and Wales have a power, not a duty, to provide toilets…’

In 2008 the Communities and Local Government Committee produced a strongly worded report on the Provision of Public Toilets, recommending that Government should place a duty on each local authority to develop a strategy on the provision of public toilets in their areas. The evidence given was strong and powerful. One piece of evidence concluded that:

‘If we really had an equal society, public toilets would be provided without question……let us not be ashamed among the nations of the world because we are so mean that the government won’t even provide for its people’s most basic needs, dignity and comfort’.

The most recent Government intervention, in August 2023, proposed regulations for new buildings, requiring them to provide separate single-sex toilets for men and women, or self-contained toilets. Gender-neutral toilets will only be allowed when lack of space allows only a single toilet.

But if there is no statutory requirement for public toilets, it is probably going to get even more difficult to find clean and accessible public toilets as local authorities scrabble around for funding and have to make ever more decisions about where to make their cuts and which public facilities can be closed.

Campaigns

The formidable Dame Ethel Smyth, a famous composer and a militant supporter of the Suffragette movement, reportedly made a rather spectacular protest in 1913. She was in Egypt, at Cairo railway station, and needed to use the lavatory. As she could not see any provision for women, she hitched up her skirts on the platform and relieved herself in full view. She saw it as a protest against women being actively discouraged from accessing public places and later wrote to Emmeline Pankhurst about it. Unfortunately, it rather misfired as she had failed to see that there actually WAS a sign to the ladies' lavatory!

The British Toilets Association (BTA) is an organisation committed to promoting high standards of hygiene and provision in all ‘away from home’ facilities in the UK. Their current campaign - Use Our Loos - is focused on keeping more public lavatories open and encouraging more businesses to make their facilities publicly available.

Women are generally pretty good at protesting about issues that affect us. We are probably all aware of the recent high-profile campaigns about childcare, male violence, online abuse and pensions. All women will have had dismal experiences of waiting in lengthy queues, of enduring filthy conditions or worrying about where the nearest toilet might be found. Are we too tolerant, or do we feel that there is no point in complaining? Is it time for more of us to support those who are persistently campaigning for a national strategy? 

Sharing the Information

The BTA is compiling a ‘Great British Toilet Map’ which will eventually show all the publicly available facilities in Britain.

In the meantime, here’s a challenge. It is often stated that all betting shops are required to have publicly accessible toilets. Does anyone know if this is true? Has anyone tested this out?  Please email us if you have an answer. And by the way, the queue at Marylebone station might be a bit of a pain at times, but at least the loos are free and there’s a helpful attendant. And you can always treat yourself afterwards to something from the posh chocolate shop.