An Analysis of the Medieval Latrines of Hogwarts and of JK Rowling’s ‘relieving themselves where they stood’ Tweet
I am not a fan of JK Rowling and I harshly condone all her remarks but in this essay, I will explore her claims concerning bathrooms, defecation and Hogwarts.
To start off, we must analyse her tweet. She stated that initially, Hogwarts did not always have bathrooms. But instead, before the adoption of Muggle plumbing methods in the eighteenth century, magic users would simply relieve themselves “wherever they stood” and then would spell away the evidence.
What can be gleaned from this is that until the advent of the ‘modern’ toilet, Hogwarts had no sewer system or plumbing at all. It was completely devoid of any plumbing. But the thing is, that historically, some things here are not matching up. Plumbing can be defined as the system of pimples, tanks, fittings and other apparatus required for water supply, heating and sanitation in a building and therefore it can be said that many early toilets had no plumbing (though exceptions exist) as they lacked the flow of water and various other things.
First of all, one thing we have to get out of the way is the analysis of the building you see in the films. Most of these exterior scenes are shot on location at Alnwick Castle and views of the exterior of the school are Durham Cathedral but with an additional spire added thanks to the help of modern movie magic. The first of these buildings date back to the 11th century where it was built following the Norman Conquest and has been said to have been renovated and remodelled numerous times. Similarly, Durham Cathedral’s construction was begun in 1093 and ended in 1133 with addition to it occurring until 1490.
I have not found any information relating to the toilets (their historical naming being “Garderobes” but I will use “toilet” in this essay), of these two buildings but I have information on other toilets dating back from the same time period like Chepstow Castle in Wales and Corfe Castle in Dorset.
These often ‘came out of’ the wall in the form of corbels and one would defecate and then this waste would drop down below into the moat, courtyard, bailey, a river or off a cliff (as was seen in Peveril Castle which was first mentioned in the historical record in 1066). They also had waste shafts, which included, as I defined earlier, no plumbing as it was simply built inside the wall. According to Ancient History Encyclopedia, these were short whereas some reached almost to the ground where the waste would collect in a pit called a cesspit, but these cesspits were mostly introduced into buildings and popularised during the 16th century due to increasing urbanisation. And then they’d cleared out by what in Tudor England was called a gong farmer. This manure would then be spread on fields as fertiliser.
Also, it has been said that another design of these toilets was to essentially have one ‘collection’ point for the sewage as the shafts all lead to the same place, so essentially, a cesspit. And another castle these shafts would empty into the same courtyard basement.
So long story short, the castle that Hogwarts is modelled on would have had functioning toilets which weren’t the “muggle plumbing” of the eighteenth century. And the thing is, even in the Harry Potter lore, Hogwarts was founded in 990 A.D. which means that for seven centuries, magic users were defecating and relieving themselves in the hallways and the floors of Hogwarts (though the act of relieving oneself in hallways wasn’t uncommon before ‘modern’ toilets as people would do that in Versailles). All of this clearly exhibits JK Rowling’s knowledge of ‘toilets’ built into the walls of medieval constructions and just generally, the history of western toilets in general.
The thing is, if you approach the tweet she made, from a non-historical perspective, it still has so many holes to be poked into it. What the tweet builds its foundations on is the idea that all people in Hogwarts had the ability to spell away the ‘evidence’. But if you were to look at Harry Potter lore, you would quickly realise that her tweet was poorly throughout. This is because there are people who would be on the Hogwarts grounds who cannot utilise magic for example Squibs. A Squib is someone who is unable to use magic but was born to wizard parents, therefore, they would have been sent to Hogwarts in order to learn magic but quickly realise that they can not remove the evidence of their defecation and the evidence of them relieving themselves. But one could argue that this might mark part of the longstanding prejudice directed at this people, even with the invention of ‘modern’ plumbing but I really doubt that JK Rowling ever thought that far about anything she said or her world-building.
But one could argue that Squibs are rare and then dismiss all of what I just said. But this also ignores people who, like Hagrid are forbidden from wielding magic, incidents involving broken wands, and most commonly: first-year students who have not yet learnt to wield magic. This would most likely result in these utterly useless first-year students, struggling to spell away their so-called evidence of the floor or god knows where. This was clearly not thought about either before JK Rowling made her damning tweet.
So we must ask ourselves: what happened to the original toilets in Hogwarts? Well, what happened was that they would have historically existed but in the Harry Potter lore, due to one singular badly throughout tweet, Hogwarts was canonically toilet-less for seven centuries.
And the thing is, she really has no excuse as the first flushing toilet was invented in 1592 by Sir John Harrington for Queen Elizabeth I. And during the industrial revolution, the modern toilet ‘emerged’ and during the late-19th century, this toilet started being mass-produced (though these toilets were already being installed in homes during the 18th century). And the Romans also had toilets with flowing water under them with plumbing and sewers.
In conclusion, with one small tweet, JK Rowling has cemented herself as a person who lacks the ability to think about the ramifications of her world-building and her historical illiteracy. Of course, this pales in comparison to her statements about transgender people which are downright awful and harmful to large swathes of people, but as someone who finds joy in nitpicking statements concerning history, I had to point this out.
