(Published in Mint Lounge, February 14 2026)

Death comes for people in the strangest of places, in the most unexpected ways. And in 1016 CE, legend has it, it came for Edmund Ironside, king of the English, while he was seated on his toilet. The facility was probably of the typical, unfussy medieval type—a wooden board with a hole, placed over a pit. Except that unknown to poor, relaxed Edmund, concealed below was an assassin. Indeed, the story goes, shortly after his bottom moved into position for the royal expulsion, he was “stabbed…from beneath with a sharp dagger”. And “leaving the weapon fixed in (the king’s) bowels”, the killer fled the scene. Interestingly, Edmund was nicknamed “Ironside” for his great daring and prowess. But when relieving themselves, even warriors are exposed to peril.

From the richest and most powerful, to the humblest of folk, in fact, the toilet has in some ways been a great leveller—a reminder that ultimately every human being is a mass of flesh emitting unfriendly smells and substances. Catherine the Great of Russia—a fearsome woman who may have had her husband murdered for power—was in the lavatory when she had a fatal stroke. Snarky accounts claimed that the constipated queen was probably straining too much in the run up to the end. Centuries before in Germany, a whole host of aristocrats died in the Erfurt Latrine Disaster—they had assembled to discuss business when the floor gave way and dozens drowned in human waste. Their social pretensions did not save them from the shit.

While defecation is not usually a subject for polite society, it has nevertheless been an essential, unavoidable part of human life—and sometimes, the afterlife. In the tombs of Egypt’s ancient elites, thus, in addition to cosmetics and ointments, actual toilet-stools and commodes too were occasionally placed. That way the dead soul would have all the necessary conveniences at hand. In Roman cities, there were public latrines where people sat in close proximity, over holes carved into stone slabs. Given that they allegedly shared sponges to wipe afterwards, one presumes they also chatted away merrily in these settings. There were risks, however—of rats biting your nether regions, and apparently even explosions from the build-up of diverse gases.

Toilet waste disposal, meanwhile, has its own intriguing history. There were, for instance, some emperors in Rome who taxed the urine trade. Pee, after all, is a source of ammonia; for this reason, it was much in demand in the tanning industry and among launderers (who used it to whiten woollen garments). When as a prince the future Emperor Titus complained to his father that the urine tax was embarrassing, the latter held up a coin—signalling that even piss could generate money. In China, meanwhile, as late as the 18th century there were shit-collectors in cities who then traded the commodity as manure. Evidently, emissions from the rich were more expensive. The prosperous ate better, and their faeces was deemed to be of higher quality.

Society being what it is, the toilet could also, unsurprisingly, be used to exhibit and assert power and status. Thus, when Ptolemy XII of Egypt—on the run after a revolt by his people—sought an audience with a powerful Roman general, the latter obliged. Except, it is claimed, that the visitor had to see Marcus Porcius Cato while he was sitting on the toilet, having taken a laxative—as much a matter of convenience as a political statement of superiority. In the 17th century, Louis XIV of France made a rather theatrical ritual of his daily toilette—he distributed favour and in effect also controlled his nobles by deciding what degree of access they might have. And being in the king’s company when he was on his throne-like commode was a signal honour.

Indeed, services in the toilet commanded considerable prestige. In Britain there used to be a “Groom of the Stool” whose job was to serve the monarch in matters of personal hygiene and track the royal bowels. Given that this job entailed close intimacy with the king, it was keenly sought. An ancestress of Winston Churchill watched over Queen Anne’s toilet, for instance, while one of George III’s “grooms” would become Britain’s prime minister. Notes were taken—with Henry VIII, thus, we have a report on how at 2 o’clock one morning in 1539 he had a “very fair siege”. While the output from His Majesty’s body was collected in tin vessels, the actual stool he used was cushioned with fabrics of velvet and silk.

For courtiers and physicians, in fact, royal excreta was also daily analysed for variations and concerning features. In China, this is how doctors tracked the emperor’s health, recommending changes in diet and nutrition based on their analysis. Even today, powerful men’s shit comes with political concerns—Vladimir Putin is said to always travel abroad with a “poop suitcase” to carry back all his bodily waste. For it is a security risk if foreign forces are able to analyse the material for clues on the state of his health. One assumes he does not have “grooms of the stool” but there are likely individuals in the Russian President’s retinue whose duty is to manage and transport the “poop suitcase” and its guarded contents.

In terms of technology, it appears that the earliest flush toilets—using water to push the waste into drains—existed both in the Indus Valley Civilisation and on the island of Crete 4,000 years ago. Despite our continuing open-defecation problem, that is, Indians can claim bragging rights for inventing relatively advanced toilet mechanisms. But human participation remained a part of the process—as historian Nayanjot Lahiri writes in the context of Lothal in Gujarat, “the piss flowed free while the potty got soaked up in cesspits”. Every now and then these would need emptying, for which there was probably “a caste or class of personnel whose lives were devoted to cleaning up after their social superiors.”

The result in India, then, was that toilets and the people servicing them came to be associated with “impurity”. At the palace of the maharani of Travancore, for instance—now a medical research facility—you will still see doors on the first floor opening out into thin air. If one were to exit, one would fall and break multiple bones. But these doors were there for a reason: toilet cleaners could not be allowed to “defile” the palace. So, they’d place ladders from the outside, get in via these first-floor doors, and do their work unobtrusively. It was due to stigma of this nature that Mahatma Gandhi was so obsessed with having everyone—including his reluctant wife—learn to wash toilets and chamber pots. And to get over it.

There is, in other words, no need to be fussy or embarrassed about toilets; if anything, they lend us a sense of perspective and teach a basic humility about our place in the world. Or as a wise man once declared, “Kings and philosophers shit, and so do ladies. Even on the highest throne in the world, we are seated still upon our arses.”