FOREIGN CORRESPONDENCE--
Toilet Collapse Victim

Dispatches from the field

by Alice Shirrell Kaswell, AIR staff

The following note arrived at Annals of Improbable Research shortly after the announcement of the 2000 Ig Nobel Prizes. It pertains to the 2001 Public Health Prize, which was awarded to Jonathan Wyatt, Gordon McNaughton, and William Tullet of Glasgow, for their alarming report, "The Collapse of Toilets in Glasgow." [published in the Scottish Medical Journal, vol. 38, 1993, p. 185]. The note:

Do pardon this intrusive e-mail but I have a sneaking feeling that I could be one of the victims of a collapsing toilet mentioned in the research paper published in the Scottish Medical Journal, vol. 38, 1993, p. 185.

While working as a temporary schoolteacher in Coatbridge near Glasgow in August 1971, I sat on a toilet in the school which collapsed and caused severe lacerations of my buttocks and back.

Sadly, I cannot get ready access to the Scottish Medical Journal to check it out and if you can send me a copy of the article, I shall be very grateful indeed. Alternatively, if you have an e-mail address for either Dr. Wyatt or Dr. McNaughton, I shall e-mail them directly.

Thank you in anticipation,

Alasdair Baxter
Nottingham
England

© Copyright 2001 Annals of Improbable Research (AIR)

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