Visually something of an improvement, the new vespasiennes nevertheless continued to ‘...place the bodily function they serviced in plain conceptual view, the narrow bands of metal... barely obscuring the physical act itself.’ ** Nor was it long before a campaign was launched to provide urinals for women, although there is no extant indication of how these might function. At their urological peak, there were as many as 1,230 pissoirs in Paris, but by 2006, only one remained, on Boulevard Arago, a monument to a Paris d’autrefois and a something of cause célèbre. You will still find pissoirs in more remote towns and villages, vital destinations for those of advancing years who, needs must, never knowingly pass one.
C'est la vie...
* Ress, Paul. Shaggy Dog Tales: 58½ years of reportage. (Xlibris Corporation, 2006)
**. Pike, David Lawrence. Subterranean Cities: The World Beneath Paris and London, 1800-1945. (Cornell University Press, 2005).