science

Thomas Crapper

Thomas Crapper is a science topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Thomas Crapper rather than just read about it. In short: Thomas Crapper (baptised 28 September 1836 – 27 January 1910) was an English plumber and businessman. He founded Thomas Crapper & Co in London, a plumbing equipment company.

Key takeaways

Thomas Crapper belongs to science; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Thomas Crapper to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Thomas Crapper from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Thomas Crapper (baptised 28 September 1836 – 27 January 1910) was an English plumber and businessman. He founded Thomas Crapper & Co in London, a plumbing equipment company. His notability with regard to toilets has often been overstated, mostly due to the publication in 1969 of a tongue-in-cheek biography by New Zealand satirist Wallace Reyburn. Crapper held nine patents, three of them for water closet improvements such as the floating ballcock. He improved the S-bend plumbing trap in 1880 by inventing the U-bend. The firm's lavatorial equipment was manufactured at premises in nearby Marlborough Road (now Draycott Avenue). The company owned the world's first bath, toilet and sink showroom in King's Road. Crapper was noted for the quality of his products and received several royal warrants. Manhole covers with Crapper's company's name on them in Westminster Abbey have become one of London's minor tourist attractions.

Life Thomas Crapper was born in Thorne, West Riding of Yorkshire, in 1836; the exact date is unknown, but he was baptised on 28 September 1836. His father, Charles, was a sailor. In 1853, he was apprenticed to his brother George, a master plumber in Chelsea, and thereafter spent three years as a journeyman plumber. In 1861 Crapper set himself up as a sanitary engineer with his own brass foundry and workshops in nearby Marlborough Road.

In the 1880s Prince Albert (later Edward VII) purchased his country seat of Sandringham House in Norfolk and asked Thomas Crapper & Co. to supply the plumbing, including thirty lavatories with cedarwood seats and enclosures, thus giving Crapper his first royal warrant. The firm received further warrants from Edward as king and from George V, both as Prince of Wales and as king. In 1904, Crapper retired, passing the firm to his nephew George and his business partner Robert Marr Wharam. Crapper lived at 12 Thornsett Road, Anerley, for the last six years of his life and died on 27 January 1910 due to bowel cancer. He was buried in the nearby Elmers End Cemetery.

Posthumous fate of the Crapper company In 1966 the Crapper company was sold by then-owner Robert G. Wharam (son of Robert Marr Wharam) upon his retirement to its rival John Bolding & Sons. Bolding went into liquidation in 1969. The company fell out of use until it was acquired by Simon Kirby, a historian and collector of antique bathroom fittings, who relaunched the company in Stratford-upon-Avon, producing authentic reproductions of Crapper's original Victorian bathroom fittings.

Achievements

As the first man to set up public showrooms for displaying sanitary ware, Crapper became known as an advocate of sanitary plumbing, popularising the notion of installation inside people's homes. He also helped refine and develop improvements to existing plumbing and sanitary fittings. As a part of his business he maintained a foundry and metal shop, which enabled him to try out new designs and develop more efficient plumbing solutions. Crapper improved the S-bend trap in 1880. The new U-bend plumbing trap was a significant improvement on the "S" as it could not jam, and unlike the S-bend, it did not have a tendency to dry out and did not need an overflow. The BBC nominated the S-bend as one of the 50 Things That (have) Made the Modern Economy. Crapper held nine patents, three of them for water closet improvements such as the floating ballcock, but none for the flush toilet itself. Crapper's advertisements implied the siphonic flush was his invention. One such advertisement read, "Crapper's Valveless Water Waste Preventer (Patent #4,990) One movable part only", even though patent 4,990 (for a minor improvement to the water waste preventer) was not his, but that of Albert Giblin in 1898. However, Crapper's nephew, George, did improve the siphon mechanism by which the water flow starts. A patent for this development was awarded in 1897.

Origin of the word "crap" It has often been claimed in popular culture that the vulgar slang term for human bodily waste, crap, originated with Thomas Crapper because of his association with lavatories. A common version of this story is that American servicemen stationed in England during World War I saw his name on cisterns and used it as Army slang, i.e., "I'm going to the crapper". The word crap is actually of Middle English origin and predates its application to bodily waste. Its most likely etymological origin is a combination of two older words: the Dutch krappen (to pluck off, cut off, or separate) and the Old French crappe (siftings, waste or rejected matter, from the medieval Latin crappa). In English, it was used to refer to chaff and also to weeds or other rubbish. Its first recorded application to bodily waste, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, appeared in 1846, 10 years after Crapper was born, under a reference to a crapping ken, or a privy, where ken means a house.

References

Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Thomas Crapper

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Thomas Crapper claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In science, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Thomas Crapper before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Thomas Crapper ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Thomas Crapper

In research: Thomas Crapper appears in science research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Thomas Crapper in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Thomas Crapper is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 1836 births, 1910 deaths, 19th-century British businesspeople, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Thomas Crapper outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Thomas Crapper in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Thomas Crapper means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Thomas Crapper out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Thomas Crapper in simple terms?

Thomas Crapper (baptised 28 September 1836 – 27 January 1910) was an English plumber and businessman. He founded Thomas Crapper & Co in London, a plumbing equipment company.

Why does Thomas Crapper matter?

Because it connects several science ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Thomas Crapper?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Thomas Crapper.