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Why the Revolution: Potty Talk

A Closer Look with Tyler Putman

This is a chamber pot. It's been broken into pieces and reassembled here at the museum. 250 years ago someone lost it or dropped it here on the site of the museum as part of their trash. People lived here. And before we opened our building, we excavated into the ground looking for traces of past lives.This particular chamber pot is a gray ceramic, with beautiful blue decorations. And embossed on one side, in raised letters, GR, Georgius Rex, King George.What would you do if there wasn't a toilet in your house? One solution in the 1700s was using a chamber pot. This one is a replica, it's not as fragile as the one we have on display with GR on the side of it.And it would have been the job of someone like a kid, or a servant, or an enslaved person to empty the household chamber pots every morning. They might take them out behind the house and dump them into a hole in the ground, a privy, that was your outdoor toilet. And maybe that was how ours ended up thrown out here on our site, dropped and discarded.You might be used to wearing logos and symbols on your clothing today on a baseball cap, or putting a sticker on the side of your water bottle. But can you imagine loving something so much that you put its symbol on the outside of your toilet? That's exactly what someone did with a chamber pot they used right here in Philadelphia in the 1770s. People were so enthusiastic about the young King George III, and about British monarchy, that they put his symbols on all sorts of things, even on the outside of their chamber pots.

Broken and reconstructed blue and white pot with pieces missing

Collection Highlight: "GR" Chamber Pot

Detail of pot featuring the letters "G" and "R" inside a painted blue flower

Side view of broken and reconstructed blue and white pot showing spaces where missing pieces belong

At the same time they protested the taxes imposed by <span class="wordDefine" tabIndex="0" data-term="Parliament" data-def="An assembly of individuals functioning as the legislative branch of the British government. British Parliament consisted of a House of Lords and a House of Commons.">Parliament, many Americans saw King George III as the protector of their rights as British citizens. Americans proudly used and displayed a wide range of household objects decorated with symbols representing the king. One of the most common symbols was “GR,” short for Georgius Rex or George the King. “GR” was often used on ceramics, including mugs, jugs, and chamber pots (portable indoor toilets), like this one.

A common symbol representing King George III was “GR,” short for Georgius Rex or George the King, often found on household items like this chamber pot.

GR Chamber Pot

"GR" Chamber Pot

Pride and Protest

Visitors of the Museum of the American Revolution in the Liberty Tree gallery which features a Liberty Tree

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Inside the Declaration of Independence gallery featuring a copy of the Declaration of Independence

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War and Independence

A high up view of the War at Sea gallery in the Museum of the American Revolution featuring a sloop

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A New Nation

Inside of the Revolutionary Generation gallery in the Museum of the American Revolution featuring photographs of the revolutionary generation

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Timeline of the American Revolution

"GR" Chamber Pot

Details

A Closer Look with Tyler Putman

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