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Saturday Guest Lecture: Tudor Hygiene

by eaglesoars ( 33 Comments › )
Filed under History, saturday lecture series, Uncategorized at March 12th, 2016 - 6:00 am

*Saturday’s Guest Lecturer is Eaglesoars*

Tudor England was beyond filthy. In the cities, animal carcasses were left to rot, sewage systems were almost non-existent, and the water was undrinkable. Environmental diseases, e.g., cholera, were the norm. Was there any concept of cleanliness? There was, but it had nothing to do with what we know as germ-theory and everything to do with spiritual purity. A person who was clean spiritually was clean physically. Cleanliness in one’s person and home was their version of ‘virtue signaling’.
Bathing and washing were entirely different activities. Medieval England had common baths open to the public. But over time, they earned, rightly or wrongly, a reputation as brothels, and disappeared. By the time Tudor England rolled around, habits had changed. . Bathing was an activity enjoyed only by the wealthy because it was incredibly labor-intensive. A tub large enough to hold a man up to his neck with his knees slightly bent was needed. Usually it was made of wood. The craftsmanship needed to make that did not come cheap. The tub would have been lined with coarse sheeting to protect the bather from splinters and then filled with hot water. HOT WATER. Buckets and buckets of it carried by the poor servants from the fireplaces in the kitchen to the bedchamber on other side of the house. And yes, they used scented bath waters and scented soaps. The soaps used for personal bathing were made from olive oil instead of the animal fat used in soaps for household cleaning. Household manuals with recipes for soaps and washing waters included scents from herbs such as rosemary, camomile and, for the really wealthy who had access to the fruit, orange peels.
How often did they go through this rigamarole? Not very. In addition to the work and expense involved in taking a bath, their theory of disease was that bad humours – especially plague – were airborne and bathing opened the pores, allowing corruption to enter the body.
So people’s daily ablutions were all about washing. They washed their face, hands and feet. All done?
No. Now they had to get dressed, and believe it or not, underwear, or what they called ‘linen’, was paramount. This was the layer of clothing worn next to the body, called a smock or shirt, and its purpose was to wick away the sweat and body odor. It was changed every day, even by the lowliest if at all possible, and by the better off, several times a day. Outer clothes would be worn day after day, but linen had to be practically sterile.
And, continuing the virtue signaling, white linen was the brightest signal of all. Basic, untreated linen is greyish/cream. To turn linen white, it has to be bleached during the laundry process. And that process was not pleasant.
First, the ‘black soap’. This was a jelly-like concoction made from boiling pig fat with lye. Soap manufacturing was a large industry in England, because really, who wants to make their own? Although I can’t find how or if bleach was manufactured or provided by the household, I wouldn’t think they’d want to make their own bleach either. It was made by combining lye with human urine.
Ok, that’s A LOT of pee. I haven’t found a ‘recipe’ showing ratios of black soap to water to bleach but there was a lot of laundry being done and that’s A LOT of pee!
I wonder if anybody ever figured out how to sell it.

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