Another similar design was the hopper closet, illustrated here. In this kind of toilet the pan, which might be straight sided like this, or a more rounded bowl called a ‘cottage basin’ like the Sirex, was connected to a water-sealed trap. Both parts were boxed in wood or brick, beneath a hole in a wooden seat. Initially, before towns installed integrated sewer systems, the waste was typically flushed into a cesspit. There were no metal valves, levers or springs, so there was less to go wrong, and it could be sold at a fraction of the cost of the more-sophisticated water closets descended from Bramah’s design.

Such a toilet might be flushed from a high-level cistern or, in places without an adequate piped water supply to the privy, by simply throwing a bucket of water down the pan. That usually resulted in soaking the seat, and sometimes emptied the water trap through siphonic action, allowing smelly gases to rise into the privy. Occasionally, mains water was connected directly, and simply opening a tap let water into the pan.

Whether the flush came from a cistern or a tap, though, the flow of water was often too weak to adequately clean the pan or drive waste out of the trap, so many of these closets became filthy and clogged, particularly where outside privies were shared between multiple households.