What Was Victorian Era Hygiene Like?

Comments · 1.6K

• LI

  @lizadivine3785 · 2 years ago

  Fun fact: women started carrying wedding bouquets to help them smell better on their wedding day

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• AP

  @Apryltaurus · 2 years ago

  Ppl be stinking up everywhere they go now and we have all kinds of products to help I can’t imagine the funk back then 😭

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• 27

  @27Zangle · 2 years ago

  A lot of people, "I couldn't live." or "Glad I didn't live during that time." etc. Yes you could because you wouldn't know any different and it would've been the normal. With that said, I am super happy to live now and not then 🙂

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• DE

  @Debi-knits · 2 years ago

  When I was growing up in England we lived in old  Victorian row house, the toilets were in a row in the back area. We had to take baths in a portable tub that mom boiled the water for. We had to move due to the fact the houses were part of slums in Birmingham and were being torn down.

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• MA

  @marchess923 · 2 years ago

  When you spend your whole life around everybody else who stinks, you don't notice. Victorian era hygiene is an oxymoron.

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• CA

  @carrieamoreno · 2 years ago

  They walked so we could run.

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• BO

  @bobblowhard8823 · 2 years ago

  First of all, everybody just calm down. Let's go back way before the Victorian era. Say, a few hundred thousand years ago, when humans did not bathe at all, save for the occasional dip in a lake or stream or ocean, weather permitting. Somehow these people were able to still come in close contact with each other say, for intimacy. Did they smell horribly bad and just put up with it?  No. They actually did not smell bad at all.  A few years back, a researcher decided to do a research project on this very issue. She decided to stop bathing or showering to see what would happen. She had several colleagues smell her every few days. After a few days, she started to smell pretty bad, as expected.  After a couple of weeks, she smelled even worse.  Then something unexpected  happened. After about six or seven weeks of not bathing at all, her colleagues noticed she did not smell bad at all. She didn't smell "flowery" or anything like that, but she just smelled "neutral".  Why? Apparently, it has to do with bacteria. When we bathe or shower often, say every day, we kill all bacteria: the "bad" bacteria that causes odor, but also the "good" bacteria that kills the "bad" bacteria, just like in our gut with pro biotics.  Well, after all that time the "good" or beneficial bacteria that would normally be there for us, took over and killed the bad, odor-causing bacteria, and she stopped smelling bad. THAT is how we humans were able to be with each other, even intimately, many eons ago. Today, we bathe or shower constantly, killing all bacteria, good and bad, and the only thing we can do to continue to not smell bad, is to keep showering and bathing. We humans are a peculiar species.

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• TE

  @TermiteVideo · 2 years ago

  Quite honestly I remember people smelling much worse in the 1960s. It was still uncommon to bathe more than once a week in certain households. Clothes were not washed as often, deodorant was not worn by many people, especially men, and perfume would be reserved for very special occasions.

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• LI

  @lizadivine3785 · 2 years ago (edited)

  My grandma told me girls/women used rags during their periods. They washed one out and wore another while the first dried. Then they just switched back and forth.

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• HI

  @hitthestreetsphoto1253 · 2 years ago

  The only thing worse than a strong odor of BO is the smell of BO mixed with a cologne or perfume.

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• QU

  @Queen-in-the-North · 2 years ago

  You didn’t mention the saying of ‘don’t throw the baby out with the bath water’ originating from the same time period as when the youngest family member would take their bath last! I remember my grandmother living in a house without a bathroom. She had a tin bath and an outdoor toilet. This was fairly normal for the area at the time. Her kitchen also was primitive, she washed her clothes in a dolly tub and scrubbed them on a wash board before putting them through a hand operated mangle to get the excess water out. They were then hung up on a washing line to dry. This was in the 1960’s.

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• DA

  @DanielJohnson-ec8rk · 2 years ago

  I’m a 50 year old man that bought a bidet toilet seat about 5 years ago. I will never again go without one in my home

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