This is a History Extra production.

What was it like to do your business in a Roman communal toilet?

Why was the devil thought to lurk inside medieval privies?

Did constipation turn Henry VIII into a tyrant?

And how did Victorian sewers revolutionise Britain's cities?

I'm David Musgrove, and in this four-part series, Toilets Through Time, I'm heading down the U-Bend in the company of leading historical experts to see what we can learn from the most universal of all experiences, going to the loop.

From the sociable long drops of Roman Britain and the

draughty medieval guard robes to the plush water closets of Henry VIII and the

cesspits of the Victorian slums will revisit lavatory's long past to uncover

what we can learn about our ancestors from their toilet habits.

In our last episode, we have finally reached the era of avant-garde surrogate systems and shiny porcelain systems.

Yep, it's the Victorians.

But before you begin thinking that all the nasty stuff is behind us,

this was also the era that saw appalling sanitary

conditions which sparked debates on the public health of Britain's cities. Professor Gerry White,

author and expert in the history of London, join me to explain more and share some rather unusual

toilet-based euphemisms. So Jerry, we're talking about toilets in the 19th century. What do we know? Give us a kind of

a top-line summary of what we should know about toilets in the 19th century in Britain.

They were very varied and they varied fundamentally by class. If you were an agricultural

labour in the countryside, then you wouldn't have had mains drainage

and your toilet would have been basically a box.

Every time you used it, you would cover it with ash or some fresh soil,

...