George Jennings

George Jennings (10 November 1810 – 17 April 1882) was an English sanitary engineer and plumber who invented the first public flush toilets.

Josiah George Jennings was born on 10 November 1810 in Eling, at the edge of the New Forest in Hampshire. He was the eldest of seven children of Jonas Joseph Jennings and Mary Dimmock. He was educated at the local school run by his uncle-in-law Joshua Withers. At 14, after his father's death he was apprenticed to his grandfather's glass and lead merchandising business, before moving to his uncle John Jennings's plumbing business at Southwick, Southampton. In 1831 he became a plumber with Messrs. Lancelot Burton of Newcastle Street, London where his father had been a foreman before him.

He married twice, having four children by his first wife, Mary Ann Gill who died in 1844 (only 31). He remarried Sophia Budd (aged 16) some 14 years later, and had 11 children with her. One of these was Mabel Jennings who married the English organist and composer, Basil Harwood. In 1838, Jennings set up his own business in Paris Street, Lambeth (later moving to Great Charlotte Street, Blackfriars) when he received an inheritance from his grandmother, Anne Jennings.

Jennings specialised in designing toilets that were "as perfect a sanitary closet as can be made". However, he also excelled in public sanitation projects such as the design of the underground 'public convenience'. The entrances to these were elaborate metal railings and arches lit by lamps, with interiors built of slate and later, of ceramic tiles. A beautiful example of a public convenience from a period a little after Jennings's death is the Gentleman's Convenience at Wesley's Chapel, City Road, London built in 1891, by Thomas Crapper, in a manner Jennings would have liked. Jennings' own most famous installation was for The Great Exhibition in the Retiring Rooms of The Crystal Palace but does not survive.

Prince Albert presented George Jennings with the Medal of the Society of Arts for his 'indiarubber tube taps and tube' for water supply. By now he was prospering and had also established George Jennings South Western Pottery manufacturing water closets, salt-glaze drainage, sanitary pipes and sanitaryware at Parkstone Pottery in Dorset. Parkstone was the site of several industrial undertakings, the largest being George Jennings South Western Pottery, which had its own steam locomotive, that ran on a private branch line from Parkstone Station.

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