The History of Workplace Bathrooms
When factories first started cropping up in England in the 1800’s, factories didn’t have actual bathrooms for their employees. They would provide an area outside where people could relieve themselves. To be fair, this wasn’t much different than what people had available to them at home. For the longest time, there were only male bathrooms. In 1919, the UK law changed to end discrimination against hiring women. However, many of these factories used the excuse that they didn’t have space for a female bathroom, and therefore couldn’t hire women. It wasn’t until 1974 that the law changed, demanding that there need to be both male and female toilets.