Ask and ye shall receive--this is so cool!

Laurie Viera Rigler, author of Confessions of a Jane Austen Addict, a book that I absolutely LOVED, read my post last week about Regency bathroom etiquette and emailed me some answers. How cool! : )

Here's what she had to say:

"I do know that dining rooms often had chamberpots concealed in sideboards or, as in One Royal Crescent, Bath, which is a fascinating house-museum open to the public and furnished as it would have been in Georgian times, there is a chamberpot concealed behind a folding screen. One imagines that when the ladies withdrew to the drawing room after dinner, the men would take that opportunity to relieve themselves. Perhaps the drawing room had similar accomodations for the ladies. Or perhaps the ladies might also have had access to the dressing closet (dressing room) belonging to the mistress of the house. There was also a house-museum from that era that I visited in London, which had a ground-floor water closet. Although an early form of water closet existed then, the chamberpot was still very much in use."

Chamberpots in the dining room! How fascinating...and kind of icky!!! But I love that the decorum of the era is preserved in that men most likely waited until women left the room to use the "facilities." : ) Very hard to be charmed by someone at dinner if all that is going on while you're still in the room, I would imagine.

Thank you, Laurie, for sending me the info and letting me share it here! You rock!!! : )

If you haven't read Laurie's book yet, you're missing out on a rare treat. (Beck, I know you'll love it, my fellow Jane Austen addict). You can read what I wrote about it here.