ABOUT a century ago a founder in Soho sought to improve the pan-closet, but notwithstanding his improvement, and the many other improvements made in it since that time, it is still the most unsanitary closet made - a thing to " point a moral and adorn a tale."

2. Among some of the improvements made in pan-closets during the last century are the following, viz.: (a) reducing the size of the container, N, fig. 124; (b) porcelain enamelling the interior of the container; (c) increasing the depth of the pan, o, to hold more water, and for it to stand higher in the basin; (d) making the pan of copper, and tinning its interior; (e) improving the shape of the fan or basin-spreader, and making it of copper, with its exposed surface tinned; (/) making the basin, m, with a flushing-rim; (g) fixing a vent-pipe to the top of the container, s, and continuing it out to the open air, instead of allowing the bad smells and the gases generated in the closet (and in the D-trap) to escape under the closet-seat into the room, to " hurry up " its daily visitors.

In fixing this vent-pipe, S, to the container of the closet some plumbers showed gross ignorance of sanitary knowledge, for they often connected the other end of the vent-pipe to the soil-pipe, or to the ventilation-pipe of the soil-pipe, making " the remedy worse than the disease."

Fig. 124. - Transverse Vertical Section of a Pan-Closet.

3. I can think of three reasons why the pan-closet should have been more extensively used during the past century than any other closet: (a) its price, being much cheaper in its common form than the valve-closet; (b) its capability to stand rough usage, and, having no basin-valve, being less likely to get out of order than a valve-closet; and (c) want of sanitary knowledge, the general belief being that all closets, like polecats, must have a distinguishing characteristic of their own. The amount of dried excrement which can be cleaned out of the container of an old pan-closet, when it is " taken up to be sweetened," is about 2 lbs., as an average.

4. The exposed surfaces of a pan-closet, leaving out the inner side of the basin, which can and which, in use, does get fouled, is equal to about 5 ft. sup., or more than four times greater than that of a good valve-closet. And this evil is much aggravated, for whilst a scouring flush can readily be brought to bear upon the exposed surface of the valve-closet for keeping it clean, no frictional flush can be sent over the interior surfaces of the pan-closet.

In my work "Dulce Domum," I have given a graphic view of the interior of an old pan-closet; and after what was said about it there, and at the lectures, and its exposure and condemnation by all authorities, as well as its inhibition by the Local Government Board, one would have thought, at any rate, that not a pan-closet would be made now, in this last decade of the nineteenth century. And yet, after making inquiries, I find that hundreds are still being made. Probably I should not have referred at all to pan-closets here, but for this reason; and, also, because that one or two students seemed by their answers to have been tainted with the pan-closet fever. Fortunately, now that colours can be photographed, we shall be able to show the interior of an old closet in its true colours, if it does not very soon become quite extinct.

4. The light of a candle does not die down all at once. Often in its last flickering moments it extends its flame with so much vigour that a stranger to its ways may be pardoned for thinking that it had recovered its lost energy, and was coming back to life and light again. And so it is with the pan-closet; practically extinguished some years ago, it is coming back to use again, but only to give the registered plumber and the technological student the job of pulling them out again.

5. It has been well said that there can be no true progress without pain of some kind. The pan-closet having advanced Great Britain a stage in the knowledge of water-closets, is now about to do the same for Russia, where, as I am informed, thousands have been sent in the last year or two. But the pan-closet is not the only unsanitary closet made.

6. It would occupy too much space to examine into the merits and demerits of the very great variety of closets which have been springing up like mushrooms, here, there, and everywhere, in the last ten or fifteen years; but as the new kinds can all be more or less discussed under two classes, viz., the "wash-out" and the "wash-down" - whether of the pedestal kind, the basin and trap being in one piece; or the separate kind, the basin and trap being in two pieces - it need not occupy much space to compare the two classes.

Then, as to the closets with a mechanical contrivance for keeping water in the basins, the pan-closet being already placed hors de combat, it will need but few words to dispose of that impostor, the plunger-closet," under whatever name or guise it may come up for examination; and so leave the valve-closet, where Bramah stood it more than a century ago, the chief of closets.

7. I am quite able to discuss and compare the merits and demerits of the "wash-out" and "wash-down" classes of closets impartially, possessing as I do patent rights for both kinds.

My "water-battery" wash-out closet, though it has a greater depth of water in the basin than most of that class, and is so constructed that the basin and trap are more easily flushed out and freed from foreign matters than the majority of that kind, I do not consider it a perfectly sanitary closet, for, in common with all closets of this kind, it possesses the following demerits:-

(a) The water in the basin being too shallow to submerge a costive stool, the fumes from the upper part of pyramidal excreta pass into the room so freely that with a long seat-holder the state of the atmosphere becomes and remains unbearable for some minutes to any other visitor.