A cruddy afternoon out?


Take a trip to the Dorset Museum* to see a monument to Dorset civilisation and a symbol of the county's place at the forefront of human progress - the Moule lavatory.

No, this is nothing to do with the toxic aftermath of eating mussels, but was the invention of  Rev. Henry Moule (1801 - 1880), vicar of Fordington (now a suburb of Dorchester, but previously a separate village and its own Liberty).

During the mid nineteenth century cholera outbreaks, Rev. Moule not only cared for his parishioners but also bent his mind to how to improve their situation, and so invented the ‘dry earth closet’.

Dry earth and/or ash was loaded into the hopper.  Once one had done one’s business into the bucket, pulling the handle at the bottom (if I may) of the hopper would dispense a layer of fine earth to cover the detritus.  This prevented contamination and smells, and encouraged it to decompose.  Once full, the contents of the bucket could be hygienically buried, probably in the vegetable patch.

Rev. Moule took out a patent (no. 1316) for his design in 1860, and wrote several books and pamphlets on the subject, including “On the Inoffensive, Safe and Economical Disposal of the Refuse of Towns and Villages”.

The BBC claims that he disapproved of the water closet on moral grounds, but does not give a source.  It seems more likely that his poorer parish did not have the drains to connect water closets to, nor the piped water supply to flush them.

His invention took off.  On the other side of the Atlantic an 1869 household manual, Catharine Esther Beecher’s “The American Woman’s Home” (on “economical, healthful, beautiful and Christian homes”) was full of praise that it “relieves the most disagreeable item in domestic labor” and shows how far, and how quickly, his idea spread.  The Indian government adopted it for its lunatic asylums, and awarded Moule £500 in gratitude.

There was even a Moule Earth Closet Company, about which I can find little except that the railway engineer John Sutherland Valentine was a director of it.

Sadly my admiration for Rev. Moule is not complete, since he was apparently also responsible for stopping the Dorchester horse races.  But helping stop the spread of cholera is definitely to his credit.

There is almost a nice coincidence that the earth closet’s great rival, the ultimately successful water closet (the ‘Ajax’, a gloriously bad classical pun, “jakes” being then popular slang for a toilet), was invented by the Elizabeth courtier Sir John Harington in “a great house in the West”.    English Heritage claims that this was Old Wardour Castle, which is sadly just over the county border in Wiltshire.  A little closer and Dorset could have been home to both of the rival toilet systems!


* entry charge, or free with the excellent National Art Pass



Location: High W St, Dorchester DT1 1XA, UK

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