Coronavirus etiquette: Is it toilet or lavatory in the great paper debate?

Shopping restrictions are now in place at some supermarkets.

BRIAN Sheridan refers to lavatories becoming known as toilets (The Yorkshire Post, March 20).

In the early days of passenger rail travel, coaches had relief facilities at the end of the carriages. On one side was the compartment with the lavatory and on the opposite side of the carriage was the hand-wash compartment known as the toilet.

Fans were urged not to take toilet rolls and soap at a recent Castleford Tigers game before coronavirus curtailed the sporting programme.

I believe it was the French who worked out that if the two compartments were combined into just one, revenue could be increased by extending passenger seating into the area where the washing cubicle had been situated.

The question then arose about what the combined facility would be called – lavatory or toilet – and toilet was chosen. Mr Sheridan is, of course, quite correct when he says lavatory was, and I believe remains, the name by which the room with the lavatory is known by posh people.

From: Thomas Reed, Harrogate.

ONCE coronavirus has passed, will we take public health and cleanliness of public toilets/ lavatories (delete as appropriate) far more seriously as a nation?

That’s the real issue, not the holier-than-thou snobbery of pontificating pedants.