Steve Ainsworth looks into the back story of an artefact in everyday usage

According to the 16th century French satirist Francois Rabelais, the finest thing for a post-lavatorial clean-up is a swan’s neck. But he was joking. Probably.

Certainly, swans’ necks are seldom found on pharmacists’ shelves these days. Nor are cute labrador puppies – though the toilet paper they are used to advertise is readily available. But autres temps, autres moeurs [other times, other customs], as Rabelais might have said.

In the distant past – and in the more remote parts of the world even today – a bunch of grass, a few leaves, or even a fistful of snow took the place of toilet paper. Rags, wool and raw cotton, too, have had their place.

Two thousand years ago, the Romans introduced toilets to Britain. No cubicles for privacy in those days, however: just seats set in open lines in the imperial public conveniences. And worse: a shared wet sponge-on-a-stick for any clean up afterwards. Such arrangements may have suited the occupying Romans; but whether the more fastidious and privacy conscious Ancient Britons were equally happy is something Julius Caesar failed to record.

Paper is, of course, far more fit-for-purpose than a communal sponge. It’s certainly more hygienic.

Inventors

The Chinese invented paper and printing, and were the first people to use paper for purposes other than writing. Marco Polo, the Venetian explorer who visited China in the late 13th century, may have been the first European to use toilet paper.

Remarkably, the very first known reference to toilet paper is as far back as 589 AD, when the Chinese scholar-official Yan Zhitui (531–591) wrote: “Paper on which there are quotations or commentaries from the Five Classics or the names of sages, I dare not use for toilet purposes”.

In 1393, during the Ming Dynasty, a century after Marco Polo’s visit to China, it was recorded that an annual supply of 720,000 sheets of toilet paper (two by three feet in size) was produced for the general use of the imperial court at the Chinese capital of Nanjing. That same year, the Imperial Bureau of Supplies recorded that, for Emperor Hongwu’s imperial family alone, there were 15,000 sheets of special soft-fabric toilet paper made, and that each sheet of paper was perfumed. Europeans had to wait much longer to experience such exquisite luxury.

Even within living memory, the enjoyment of today’s patented, perforated, two-ply perfection was unknown to many Britons. Squares of cut-up newspaper, threaded on a piece of string and hung from a nail in the ‘lavvy’, were still commonplace well into the 1960s.

Within living memory the enjoyment of today’s perfection was unknown to many

So when did modern toilet paper first appear? Quite a long time ago in fact.

Joseph Gayetty of the USA is generally credited with being the inventor of modern commercially-available toilet paper. Gayetty’s toilet paper, first introduced in 1857, was still available as late as the 1920s. Gayetty's Medicated Paper was sold in packages of flat sheets, watermarked with the inventor’s name.

Original advertisements for the product used the tagline: “The greatest necessity of the age! Gayetty's medicated paper for the water-closet.” Sold in flat packs of 500 sheets, British pharmacies began selling Gayetty’s toilet paper within a year of its appearance in the USA. Rolls of perforated paper were another US invention. The once tiny Scott Paper Company of Pennsylvania first began selling perforated rolls from a handcart in 1867.

Quality was not always very good. Even as late as 1935, the Northern Tissue Company of the USA advertised its ‘splinter-free’ toilet paper. The implication needs no elaboration! Britain’s Perforated Paper Company made its first toilet paper in 1879 – though, oddly, the paper wasn’t perforated but had to be torn to obtain a suitable length.

Another British firm, Jeyes, began producing small flat boxes of toilet paper in the 1890s. The hard paper was commonly used as tracing paper, whilst, wrapped around a comb, it could be used to construct a ‘kazoo’, a uniquely annoying ‘musical’ instrument popular with small boys. Hard toilet paper was part of normal life. Epitomised by the iconic Izal brand of medicated toilet paper, it was still found in almost all public facilities long after soft tissues became commonplace elsewhere – perhaps because it seldom got stolen.

Soft paper tissues, originally intended for removing make-up, were introduced by US firm Kimberly Clark in 1924. The firm’s ‘Celluwipes’ were renamed ‘Kleenex’ tissues in 1930.

Arriving in Britain

Where the USA led, Britain would soon follow. The name Andrex comes from St Andrews’s Mill in Walthamstow, and was first used in 1936. Andrex soft toilet tissue was first made in 1942. A world-first, the concept of two-ply luxury paper had been inspired by the Kleenex facial tissues being used by American women as witnessed by the man who created the name Andrex – the firm’s managing director, Ronald Keith Kent.

The Andrex Puppy first appeared on television in 1972; since then there have been 130 different advertisements featuring the pup. And, despite Rabelais’s endorsement, the firm has no plans to make future ads featuring swans.

But maybe Rabelais knew something we don’t. After all, he was a doctor, and, as all pharmacists know, they are always right!