The RCP library’s collecting remit has always been fluid and this is never more ably demonstrated than by two books on subjects of a rather personal nature.
In Clean and decent: the fascinating history of the bathroom and water closet... by Lawrence Wright (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1960), the author looks at the history of ablutions from the time in antiquity, when ‘man became house-trained’, to the tragic days of cholera and the emergence of the purpose-built bathroom and millions of toilets in the early twentieth century.
Throughout history adherence to a sanitary regime of regular washing seems to have varied greatly, with no straightforward chronological pattern. More ancient civilisations such as the Minoans and the Romans often had greater access to natural resources and a more established culture of bathing than later ones such as the Victorians (although even amongst the Romans social status was a significant factor). As Wright puts it, ‘until a civilisation is sufficiently advanced to have slaves – or better still, water-pipes – baths at home are just not worth while’.
Wright notes that the Christian church’s relationship with washing has been enormously problematic and harmful to public health. In the early days of the church, holy saints and venerated clergy often propagated the idea that frequent washing was actually bad for the soul. St Francis of Assisi ‘listed dirtiness among the insignia of holiness’ and St Agnes proudly ‘died unwashed at the age of thirteen’. Monks were allowed to wash in cold water but only to cool the passions and banish ‘worldly thought’. Washing was a punishment rather something to be enjoyed or seen as a virtue in itself.
In the overcrowded slums of Victorian Britain bad sanitation was also endemic, leading to disease and high infant mortality. In 1848 it was found that ‘The old rookery of St Giles had 95 small houses containing 2,850 people, and was flooded by its own sewage’. To exacerbate the problem, new working-class houses were built back-to-back without ventilation or drainage, and precious little natural light. Even in the higher echelons of society, the sanitary situation was dire: ‘In 1844 no less than fifty-three overflowing cesspits were found under Windsor Castle, to explain the sore throats and worse ailments long suffered by the servants’.
The history of underclothes by C. Willett and Phillis Cunnington (London: Michael Joseph, 1951) explores the history of public health as influenced by the nation’s sartorial habits. With illustrations of intimate garments long since overthrown – including drawers, petticoats, chemises, pantaloons, bustles, crinolines, knickerbockers and corsets (for men and women) – the book charts the way in which we have gradually moved towards more comfortable and hygienic manners of dress.
To look at some of the garments illustrated now is to observe instruments of torture designed to restrict the individual’s freedom, however at one time they were essential garments for men and women of society. Until the 1850s and 1860s the author records how:
The well-groomed gentleman, corseted and gasping in the tightest of surtouts and pegtop inexpressibles, and the lady, staggering under the burden of multitudinous petticoats, were the prisoners of etiquette.
The development of what was called ‘country fashions’ momentarily allowed for greater freedom of movement but this was quickly counteracted and curtailed by restrictive, life-endangering fashions such as the crinoline. As the author states: ‘Its physical dangers were certainly real, for many wearers of crinolines were burnt to death by inadvertently approaching a fire’.
As well as raising serious points about public health and hygiene in times past, the book undoubtedly has a sense of humour and some of the illustrations are highly amusing from a twenty-first century perspective. Indeed it is probably one of the most amusing in our twentieth-century collections. Some of the attitudes it contains may seem a little sexist on reflection but it is ‘of its time’ and unassuming and innocuous in nature.
Whether it's toilets or ‘unmentionables’ that you’re interested in, the above books have something for you. Hygiene, sanitation and public health issues continue to interest the RCP and we have many other books on these topics in the Wellcome Reading Room.
Claire Sexton, collection development librarian
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