Talk:Latrine

2004
"Latrina is the Latin term for "latrine." There were many public latrines in cities across the Roman Empire, and they were generally unisex. Men and women sat down together "cheek-to-cheek" on the seats (which had no partitions) and talked with one another as they went to the bathroom, but one example of the relative lack of a "privacy" ethic in the ancient world. After going to the bathroom, the users would wash their hands under a stream of running water which also flushed the toilet." Moved here from stub "Latrina". If any of this is true, work it into the entry. Wetman 02:44, 12 Aug 2004 (UTC)

A section on warfare
Warfare section seems a bit out of place. I suggest moving it to the talk page until it is rounded out a bit more than some random seeming fact.Pengortm (talk) 19:36, 1 April 2012 (UTC)


 * Agreed. I moved it below rather than deleting it as I was so tempted to do.

Warfare
The Jordanian army broke down stones from graves on the Mount of Olives and used them for army latrines.

Merge latrine article with toilet article? I would say no
The question has been asked if the latrine article should be merged into the toilet article. I would say no. Reason: latrine has a different connotation to toilet (I tried to explain that in the article), and is also more related to "historic things" and "communal things". I think one day in the future, we will probably only have toilets and the word latrine might be phased out. So far it is still common in the term "pit latrine". So I would say this short article on latrines should stay.

If some people have more information about historical aspects of those Roman latrines or latrines during warfare, this could be added here.

I also saw the word latrine used in documents about prison camps, concentration camps and alike. Might be interesting to explore this a little bit further in this article (by someone else). EvM-Susana (talk) 08:55, 24 October 2014 (UTC)

Added information on slit-trench and shallow trench latrine
I have moved some information across that was formerly on the page for pit latrines: Slit-trench and shallow-trench latrines. It fits better here. We could also add more information on deep-trench latrines (use the same references as that provided for the shallow trench, i.e. publication from WEDC). EvM-Susana (talk) 10:14, 27 October 2014 (UTC)

Use content from the French version of the latrine article? Merge latrine and toilet?
There is now a note that there is material in the French version of Wikipedia on the French "latrine". I had a quick look at it. What they have put there seems to be what we have in the English version in the article on "toilet" (including dry toilet) or "pit latrine". If we find useful content, this could be moved across. However, the English page for latrine should in my opinion say small like it is now, and focussed on the historical usage of the word latrine and perhaps those army latrines and emergency latrines as mentioned above. I had a look in the German Wikipedia and there, "latrine" redirects to "toilet", i.e. no separate page for latrine (this Latin word appears more or less the same in English, German, French, Spanish). This would also be an option for the English version to do such a merger. I actually had argued against that abbove in this talk page in October 2014. But the question might be worth re-visiting if the two pages shouldn't be merged. See also talk page of [User:EChastain|EChastain] for related discussion. EvM-Susana (talk) 08:36, 28 February 2015 (UTC)

Unlike modern installations...

 * unlike modern installations, the Romans saw no need to provide privacy for individual users

May I question this statement? If there had been stall walls, probably they would have been of wood. They would have disappeared within a few years. --2A02:908:898:9780:113A:CE27:5B9A:FFE4 (talk) 21:22, 24 February 2023 (UTC)