Clergyman's Composting Toilet

Dorset clergyman, Henry Moule’s claim to fame was the invention of the earth closet toilet. Born in 1801, he was the sixth son of twelve children of a solicitor, went to Cambridge University and was appointed Rector of Fordington in 1829 -  now part of Dorchester. In 1860, he patented his invention.

At the time, Fordington had an inadequate water supply from polluted shallow wells. All the closets in the village were cesspits or privies and as a consequence fever was hardly ever absent. Conditions were ripe for the spread of cholera and he became convinced that its spread was caused by appalling sanitation. Cholera outbreaks in Fordington in 1849 & 1854 had a devastating effect on the clergyman. The village suffered in particular from crowded dwellings, filthy courtyards and a poverty stricken population. When administering to a dying man, Moule witnessed sewage bubbling up through the cottage’s floor. Within a space of no more than five acres some 1,100 people were congregated.

He once wrote:

“Their filth is consequently cast either into the open and wretched drain in the street or into the mill pond. And into this mill pond from which, moreover, the people draw most of their water for washing and sometimes even for culinary purposes the ‘conveniences’ of more than half of these 1,100 people empty themselves together with the filth of the county gaol and some portion of the other three parishes of Dorchester."

Moule experimented by mixing his own excreta with soil and within a few weeks it had become odourless and had completely broken down. He wanted to save his Fordington parishioners from cholera by devising a set up where no clean internal piped water was available. Only disadvantage from his invention was that someone had to load the hopper with earth and then empty out the bucket. Moule claimed as a clergyman that his invention was inspired by the Bible words of Moses.

He set up the Moule Patent Earth Closet Company which manufactured earth closets including expensive ones made in oak and mahogany. He wrote a number of pamphlets promoting his invention including ‘The impossibility overcome or the inoffensive, safe & economical disposal of refuse of towns and villages’ (1870).

For a while, the earth closet toilet was quite popular and Queen Victoria had one installed in Windsor Castle. In 1868, the Lancet reported that 148 dry earth closets were used by 2,000 soldiers at an army camp in Wimbledon ‘without the slightest annoyance to sight and smell.’ Moule disapproved of the discharge of sewage into rivers and the sea. Apart from its pollution, he felt it was a waste of nutrients which he felt should be returned to the soil.

In 1874, he put forward a plan to extract gas from Kimmeridge Shale.

Recently, one of the Moule’s patented earth closets was sold for £320. While during the renovation of an old courtroom in Suffolk a Moule Earth Closet was discovered for the use of magistrates when they sought relief during long court sessions. It was restored and then put on display. Today, his invention would be called a composting toilet.

Reverend Henry Moule died in Fordington in February 1880.