Bathing in the old days?

Question

Serious question: If in the old days people didn't bathe but twice in their lifetime I hear (once when they marry and I forget the other time), did they at least give themself a sponge bath and cleanse their privates?

Answer 1

Depends on the area, really. I mean the area where the people lived...oh, you know what I mean.

For instance, Mayans were (and still are) obsessed with showers and cleanliness and often showered twice a day. Them's some good-smellin' folks! No lie--their grocery stores are like half health and beauty aids. It was a total shock when I went from Gainesville, FL, filled with smelly hippie-types to Merida (Yucatan peninsula, Mexico) and the people there smelled sooooo good. Even in the hot summer, when I was an exchange student.

Now, Greeks often used oil to clean themselves--cover the body in olive oil, scrape clean, rub off excess if needed. Clean without the water.

Many people in hot, yucky climates loved baths--Romans had extravagant steam sauna bath houses, Egyptians and Babylonians dug baths, Turkish baths were also famous, and early British folk (like Romans and Celts) loved a good soak (and myths and archaeological evidence back this up.)

As far as the nasty folk with the twice-in-a- lifetime baths...I don't think they cared much. Their homes were infested with lice, fleas, bedbugs (clothes and bodies, too) and they smelled horrible and died early of gross preventable diseases. Very Monty Python-esque. I doubt they cleaned much of anything. Their houses were foul and often filled with farm animals. They slept on filthy straw. They threw food scraps and bones on the floor for the farm animals to root around and find. Very tough and nasty being broke in the Dark Ages. Though bathing was pretty frowned-upon in, say, France in about Marie Antoinette's time, too. Big crazy hairdos that never got washed--they sprayed themselves with perfume but didn't wash their clothes or bodies. They kept special scraper/scratcher things around to scratch their dirty bug-infested bodies and people scratched their naughty (dirty, literally dirty) bits in public.

Who said the good ol' days were good? I say creative anachronism is the way to go. Let's have Medieval Faires with bathing--authenticity isn't all it's cracked up to be.

Answer 2

Bathed twice in a lifetime! Eeegads! Never heard that one. At that rate how could they possible even mate? Sit at the same table with each other? Don't know why but I assumed they bathed once a week before Sunday-go-to-Meeting time...at least since the 1950's. I can only think you are referring to the age of the Viking invasions. Now that you have posed this question I can never quite look at those eras in quite the same light....Phew!
phew! phew!

Answer 3

I think a lot of that is just old tales. I do recall when we used to take the Saturday Night bath. when you used a wash tub & water heated on the stove. Some just jumped in the creek.

Answer 4

Get some cotton balls, and dip them in heat water and ring them out, wipe the kittens section to scrub it. Giving it a bathtub will placed the kitten in ask your self and probally kill it.. do no longer use wipes reason they're to no longer elementary for a kittens backside..

Answer 5

oh no they left their priviates dirty.lol i dont know that was the old days and im olny 33 i know i take a bath every day. do you know how ewwwwww that would be 2wice in a life time lol i kills me to think of it. good luck with your question

Answer 6

Not true, they may have washed less without, showers, and preheated water but what they did was they heated water on the fire, the water would be used to fill a tin bath.

whoever told you this was either very dirty, or having a joke

Answer 7

I dont know which "old days" you are talking about but even in the early frontier days they bathed even if it was in a river. Where did you get your info?????

Answer 8

This is one of those "Duh.." questions, a very dumb one in fact.
I am sure that either they took a regular sponge bath or everyone was so used to how nasty everyone smelled. Or squirted themselves with lots of what they called "toilet water" which is usually perfumed with roses or something.

Answer 9

LOL!

They bathed.. they just didn't bathe like we do with loofa sponges and clinque body wash. :)

Answer 10

They did bathe, just like we do. I don't where that rumor started.