The Weird History of Toilet Deaths

Toilets may seem harmless, after all - we use them multiple times a day - but don’t be fooled. These disarming devices have caused a surprising number of deaths throughout history. Let’s take a look at a few of them today.

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Created by Daniel Turner (B.A. (Hons) in History, University College London)

[Simplehistory]

Answering the call of nature can be deadly

[Imagenation]

Love the professionalism of that toilet hitman. He took his time and made sure the job was done.

[sebastianmartellisr.]

The actual Assassination through a toilet was literally the one that scared me the most, Literally the worst way to die in that entire category

[curraheewolf]

When I was in the Army, the NCO's would tell everyone (starts at 02:30) the story about the hunchback. The story was told in a different version to us. It was hard to assassinate him. Everyone thought it was impossible to do, since he had so many guards around him. There was only one place he didn't have guards and that was his bathroom. An archer snuck into the castle bathroom and waited for the hunchback to use the bathroom. Then he shot a big arrow up the king when he went to the bathroom. The moral of the story for us was, that nothing is impossible.

[wesleybruington]

There was actually an assassination similar to Godfrey the Hunchback's:
One of the kings of medieval Britain (I forgot his name) was at war with the Vikings at this time. So one day, the king sat down on his toilet (which was like one of those old ones where you sit on a hole, and all the waste fell down in a giant hole, like a porta potty bathroom) but it turns out that a viking was hiding out in the hole where the manure goes and the Viking stabbed him right up through the butt. So yeah.

[History-Secrets]

If I ever die on a toilet.. It's at least Historically Correct! 😂🚽💥

[willmarsden]

That assassin story reminds me of a book I read a while ago where a supernatural strong assassin climbed a latrine tower, sawed out a larger, undetectable ring around the toilet seat and his target sat on it and inevitably plunged all the way down the tower to his death.

[vaclavbenes]

3:11 Something similar happened in Bohemia in 1038. The former duke Jaromír was an old man, blinded and castrated by his own brothers. Before he retired, he managed to incense the powerful family. One night he went to the latrine and the killer stabbed him from below so hard that the spear stopped in old man's pelvis ...

[schizoidboy]

I'm surprised the people at that dinner didn't smell the sewage coming up from the bottom of the floor before it collapsed. As for taking certain things in this video seriously, while building up sewer gases are dangerous in of themselves, it's hard to take anything seriously when talking about exploding toilets while playing the 1812 Overture.

[shamefulfox]

another interesting toilet death was one of a prisoner who was sentenced to death by electrocution, however it was later decide he would serve life instead, after a while he later electrocuted himself on the metal prison toilet because of handmade headphones.

Edit: it was an accident. (For those wondering if it was suicide, no it was not)

[collectingonthecheap]

Just repaired one today, but despite the inconvenience of manually flushing it by turning the water on to fill the tank, and turning it off when full, our modern systems are relatively safe as we figured out how to keep the waste away from our homes, and figured out that straight down is not good.

[dovlacro]

In Slovenia there was similar toilet attack but(t) with cannon (Location: Predjama castle; victim/target: Erasmus of Lueg)

[themuskratianempire]

Can’t forget Henry I of England, who had horrible diarrhea once and died pooing. Or Edmund II (Saxon), who got a sword shoved up his bum by a Viking assassin.

[RB-prly]

Takes, “don’t fall in” to a whole new level

[Dsdcain]

The first story you talked about with around 60 nobles getting killed actually sounds like a really crappy assassination TBH. 🤣

[justdoingitjim]

An EMT friend of mine explained why we hear so many sirens in the mornings. He said most of it wasn't cop cars going to car accidents. He said it was from people having strokes and heart attacks on the toilet. He explained that your blood pressure is highest when you first wake up. You get out of a nice warm bed, step onto a cold floor which induces a little shock to your body. Then the first thing lots of people do is go to the bathroom. Imagine sitting there and you're kinda constipated. You're straining real hard to get things moving, your blood pressure peaks and BAM...stroke or heart attack! This is why they sometimes find people dead, sitting on a toilet.

[justinbond]

*And here I am, worried about a potential snake coining up from the toilet. Never once thought about a spear!*

[SirHenryMaximo]

When I was little, my mom told me about this young woman who was sitting on her toilet when it broke. Broken ceramic can be as sharp as a scalpel, and severely hurt her. If I remember it was a quality control issue, but I heard my mom's advice on never climbing on a toilet.

[CowCommando]

My friend told me a story of how during a siege of a castle a traitor on the inside told the besiegers which toilet on the castle wall the leader on the inside used. He signaled when the leader was inside, and the enemies outside shot the toilet with a cannon killing the leader and ending the siege.

[cougark]

Thanks to Simple History, I now appreciate modern sanitation system and toilet which I used to take for granted before watching this video.