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Family Fortunes: An outhouse in the pre-flush days

Our outside toilet was a ‘tippler’ – when it did tipple, it was with a roar of rushing water that scared the living daylights out of any poor wretch who happened to be sitting on it

An outside toilet. Photograph: Thinkstock

Jeannie Buckland
Thu Oct 9 2014 - 12:00

It was out there in the corner of the yard, 10 steps from the bright kitchen door but a million miles away and the stuff of nightmares for small children afraid of the dark and hairy-legged spiders. Our outside toilet: a tall and ancient, majestic, brown-clay “tippler” that would decide at random times to tilt its dark, deep shelf and drop the contents into goodness-knows-what-hell even deeper below.

When it did tipple, it was with a roar of rushing water and echoes of dark, dangerous depths that scared the living daylights out of any poor young wretch who happened to be sitting on the worn wooden seat at the time. “Put the plug in the sink, Mammy,” we would shout as we headed out there, hoping not to set off that necessary tipple because of an overload of washing-up water or because Daddy was having a shave at the kitchen sink, the only sink in the house at the time.

Indoor plumbing was basic, baths were taken in front of the polished black range in a tin bath stored on a nail on the yard wall. Overnight toilet needs were directed into hard plastic potties kept under the bed and emptied each morning. Daddy tried to help by putting a light in that small outhouse, but it gave little illumination. At Christmas, he would put coloured bulbs in there, changed each day.

One day my four-year-old brother tipped the entire contents of Da’s tool box down it, followed accidentally by the battery torch he was using so that he could chart the progress of the spanners and screwdrivers.

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When I was seven, the whole street got new flush toilets to replace their tipplers, although the new toilets remained outside in the same little windowless sheds. To this day I can still imagine that round plastic rim on my backside in the middle of the night as I had a desperate pee in the potty, before I slid it under the bed and rushed to get back under the bedclothes to warm up.

We want your family memories, anecdotes, traditions, mishaps and triumphs. We’ll pay €50 for each one published. Email 350 words to familyfortunes@irishtimes.com with your nostalgia, family traditions, recipes or photos

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