Added to the English language by the Scottish people of Edinburgh, gardyloo is similar to the golf term ‘fore’, but much grosser. Invented at a time when chamber pots were common, the word is an amalgamation of ‘guard below’ and ‘loo’ a British term for the toilet.
Scottish people would shout gardyloo before emptying their chamber pots out of their bedroom windows, giving the people below a few seconds to get out of the way.
Say what? People threw their crap out onto the street???
Apparently that is still the case in India.
The street and the sewer were one and the same.
CC
“People threw their crap out onto the street???”
I’ve heard that’s the reason why, when a lady and gentleman are walking together, the man is on the outside. It started because the trajectory of the crap thrown out the window would be more likely to hit the far side of where people were walking.
IDK if true — just what I’ve heard.
Yes. They were adding it to the piles of horse droppings that already littered the street.
They still have open sewers in many parts of the world.
Say what? People threw their crap out onto the street???
= = =
They weren’t homeless. They had a window to toss from.
They were mostly dirt or stone lanes with vegetation on either side, and already piled with horse, goat and sheep crap. The more civilized folks who lived in rowhouses piled the poop all together at the corner, high. But day to day, out the window:
The wealthy had servants to clean out their castle toilets:
Those turrets on castles were toilets. The waste would fall into the moat below.
