On Spending a Penny
By CLARE FRY
THE architectural papers have an excellent habit of making surveys of different kinds of buildings, particularly places of public resort, and showing by illustration the worst and best features of what is provided for us. They will take, for instance, the subject of shop facades or interiors, the refurbishing of restaurants, the lay-out of stations (railway or bus), the accom- modation at air-terminals and even a comparison of telephone kiosks and other street furniture.
There is one survey, however, that I have never yet seen them undertake, although it is pre-eminently one for architects, in con- junction with town-planners on the one hand and health authori- ties on the other. If the survey were undertaken in a really workmanlike manner, and presented with the usual profusion of excellently photographed buildings and equipment, I am sure it would be followed by a determined effort on the part of the public and the authorities responsible to raise the standard of the service to a level suitable to a civilised community. At present the public seems to have been trained to keep its eyes scrupulously from- observing its public lavatories, and, if only it were weaned from this habit of non-perception and would really observe, it would be shocked at its former patient endurance. But it is not only the appearance and equipment of the buildings that are already provided ; it is the numbers available (or not available), their situation in relation to the general planning of the town, the means taken to indicate where they are, and a hundred other aspects of the problem on which the public must have a view but which it appears to be too modest to express.
I can only speak for one half of the human race in this matter, and perhaps conditions generally are better for men. I suspect ideas of arrangements for the convenience of women are still based on the notions of fifty years or so ago, when women were not supposed to wander far from their homes. The inadequacy of public provision is brought out only too clearly by the develop- ment among the big department stores of rest-rooms. It is one of the oddities of the modern world that private enterprise should provide free as an incidental a clean wholesome service, while the publicly-owned lavatory, with or without attendance, charges for admission to a place that is only too often squalid in the extreme.
Most women, beating around their customary haunts, have unconsciously made their own private little survey and know where to turn—perhaps to the department store, the restaurant or even hotel, though it is difficult to walk in and out with the properly nonchalant air if patronage extends only to the cloak- room. But when one is in a strange town or in a strange district, then often there is no help for it but to go slumming. It is true that not all public lavatories are revolting ; some authorities, especially in holiday resorts, provide a very good utilitarian "comfort station." These, however, are more than counter- balanced by the railway-station cloakroom, which is usually a horror. I cannot believe that women who are perfect ladies in department stores become hooligans after buying a railway ticket, or, alternatively, as the proverbial visitor from Mars might think, that women who travel by train are of a more primitive species than those who lunch in Lyons.
What we want, as I said before, is a good booklet by the architectural Press, or even exhibition by the Building Centre or the Council of Industrial Design, showing favoured arrange- ments and types of equipment. I am sure it is as useful a public duty as showing arrangements of drawing-rooms or kitchens and bathrooms for the private citizen. It is much more important that what one might call the public citizen should be provided with good equipment and harmonious surroundings in those places of public resort he is forced to penetrate and obliged to pay for. A similar neglected area to which the public interior decorator might pay attention is the Health Service waiting-room or surgery. Some of these, I believe, would tie with the public lavatories as beinA the most unhealthy areas of infection known to us. In this field, too, there must be existing examples of pleasant and harmonious solutions of particular problems which only need to be brought to the notice of the careless and unimaginative for reforms to be carried out I have suggested -that some consideration should be given to the means whereby lavatories are indicated to the public. The South Bank Exhibition set a good example of what can be done in this way. What I would like to see is the stan'dardisation of some symbol, suili as the police-station's blue lamp, together with standard pointers within fixed distances of the lavatory, together with standard nomenclature for the type of accommoda- tion offered. An excellent idea developed in a Sussex village was nearly spoiled for me recently by a failure on my part to realise that a penny spent on " Toilet " entitled me only to the -facilities of a pleasant cubicle in which to wash and do my hair. Another aid to the traveller that the, authority might consider is the display of a notice on each building indicating where alternative accommodation can be found. At seaside resorts I have seen queues whose length is such that a half-mile walk inland to a quieter district would take less long than to shuffle determinedly to the head of the queue.
There is one last aspect of the public lavatories to be con- sidered, and this aspect I have no doubt the architects would leave severely alone. What a pity Dickens never had the oppor- tunity of meeting some of the characters who pass their late middle-age in chaperoning the public lavatories. A teetotal Sairey Gamp might have adopted this profession had she lived. I have never known one among them do any cleaning except under protest ; they are adepts at hoarding the toilet-rolls. Occasionally, again under protest, the female Cerberus can pro- duce one penny for two halfpennies, but never six pennies for silver. Usually she adopts the traditional posture of the chaperone, and sits with her back against the wall regarding with a cynical look the antics of the young. On the other hand, about a third of them are very energetic women, who marshal the queue and snatch their pennies from them to be followed by an ostentatious display of putting the pennies into the slot provided. Such blacklegs as they are, to break the time- honoured tradition of women, who, in both camaraderie and courtesy, always -hold open the door for their successors. But is it really worth while—to pay women for the sole purpose of ensuring the receipt of the pennies ? Clochemerle reeently scored a great success in this country, but I hope one of the Gallic points of view expressed there will not be considered the last word here: "Better the scandals accompanying the public convenience than no - convenience at all.'
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