Whittington's Longhouse (or Whittington's Longhouse and Almshouse) was a public toilet in Cheapside,[1] London, constructed with money given or bequeathed by Richard Whittington, Lord Mayor of London. The toilet had 128 seats: 64 for men and 64 for women. It operated from around 1 May 1421,[2] until the seventeenth century.[3]
The Longhouse, though it was not London's first public toilet, was the first public toilet in the capital with separate provision for the sexes.[4]
The Longhouse, and the similarly financed almshouse for five[5] or six parishioners constructed above it, was built by the parish of St Martin Vintry, on a long dock over the Thames.[4] It was on Walbrook Street, at the time an actual brook,[6] approximately where the modern Bell Wharf Lane is,[7] and was "flushed by the Thames".[6] The waste was deposited in a gully which was washed by the tides twice a day – the Thames being tidal there.[8]
Rexroth in his 2007 book Deviance and Power in Late Medieval London argues that with the construction of the almshouse above the privies: "pauperes were assigned new households" where shame had been banished (due to the gender segregation).[4] By the seventeenth century the almshouse was being let on a commercial basis,[7] possibly even as warehousing.[9]
The Longhouse was destroyed in the Great Fire of London and rebuilt on a more modest scale.[9] The new building had six male and six female seats, and, apart from a period where the lessees kept it locked, continued in use until at least 1851, as it is mentioned in an 80-year lease that commenced that year. In a 1935 lease, however, no mention is made, and it is assumed the facilities were by that time closed.[10] After the Second World War, the site was rebuilt in 1953 as part of "Redevelopment unit number 10".[10] There is, however, as of 2015, a Bell Wharf Lane public toilet.
The Longhouse and the other gifts to London, notably improvements to the water supply and a more substantial almshouse as well as schools and hospitals, are credited with raising the profile of Dick Whittington among Londoners, and for leading to the legends that surround his name.[1] Longhouse became a byword for privy, presumably derived from Whittington's Longhouse.[10]