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NEWS BRIEFS
W.Va. museum examines early plumbing
PARKERSBURG, W.Va. (AP) — A new exhibit in Parkersburg takes a look at the origins of a modern convenience: indoor plumbing.
The unusual show opened this month at the Blennerhassett Island Museum of Regional History. It’s called “Behind Closed Doors — American Bathrooms Through the Ages.”
The Charleston Gazette says the exhibit features chamber pots, bedpans and early flush commodes and other pre-bathroom items before the arrival of indoor plumbing.
The museum’s historian, Ray Swick, said a few decades ago such an exhibit might have been considered in poor taste. He says most folks have since “loosened their corsets” a bit.
Among the exhibits is a “close stool.” It’s a box-enclosed sit-on-top chamber pot used in the Parkersburg home of Arthur Ingram Boreman, West Virginia’s first governor.
