Hygeine 1950s - 2020s

I had a bath and my hair washed once a week on a Saturday night, so that I was clean for Church on Sundays. My hair was quite long and my mother used Vosene family shampoo, but no conditioner. I can still remember sitting on the floor in front of the coal fire in my clean vest and pyjamas having my hair dried. My mother would vigorously rub my hair with a towel and then comb out the tangles - I hated that and sometimes it hurt so much that I cried!

When I was about 14, I got a job in a local hairdressers as a 'Saturday girl'. They used to give us any spare sample sachets of shampoo and conditioner to take home - absolute bliss! My mother bought a Pifco hair drier - it was so heavy it had to sit in a stand on the table with a hose coming out of the nozzle into a big plastic bag that went over your head. I used to put my mother's hair in rollers and cover them with a net, then she would sit there until she was 'done'.

I remember wearing the same school blouse for two or three days running. My tie, skirt and blazer were brushed and sponged once a week. As for underwear, I had clean knickers every day, but my vest lasted a week and socks were changed every other day. I wore my lace-up school shoes every day.

I don't remember wearing deodorant until I went to University, a sticky roll-on called MUM I think.

We had a clean sheet every week Barmeyoldbat - the top sheet was put on the bottom and the clean one was put on top, then the blankets and eiderdown.

Was an only child so more fortunate in that I didn't have to share my things.
However, I can recall coming home from school one day to find both of my parents crying!
My father was a farm worker and we lived in a tied cottage. The farmer had sold two farms and then the new owner went round to say who would go and who would stay.
So...out of work and out of a home.
We were allocated a 3 bed 1930's built council house in the nearby village.
Moved a few weeks later by tractor and trailer (fortunately it was a dry day). Just like Tess's family moved in Tess of the D'Urbervilles.
However, the house we moved into had yet to be modernized, so had to get used to the outside privy.
Sounds very unhygienic, however, can't recall any tummy bugs during our time there.
But bath time was always once a week on Sunday, as hot water was a luxury!
Always clean socks and shoes.

Hair wash and bath on a Sunday night ready for school. Don, use all the hot water we were always told. Clothes, well it was the same clothes until Wednesday or maybe Thursday then we had a complete change. We had strip washes during the week and I am sure we all shared the same flannels and towels. Unheard of these days. Dad was in the RAF and all the furniture and bedding was supplied by the RAF. Once a week was sheet change day when we would put the top sheet to the bottom and then take a bundle out to the sheet changing lorry and exchange for clean sheets and pillowcases. It was a different world then.

Alishka

I remember sharing the Sunday bath with my sister. I had to sit at the taps end. It wasn't fair!!

I also shared the bath with my sister every Sunday night in preparation for school. As I was the youngest I too had the tap end of the bath - not fair!!!!

Granny Activist, my childhood during 1930s 1940s was like yours. At home and at boarding school hair washing was once a fortnight by Matron and Headmistress presumably so they could detect nits or bugs. I went to boarding school in 1944 and baths were allocated twice a week but we had to strip wash once a day. Deodorants were unknown.
When I began work as student nurse in 1948 I owned three pairs of knickers, however baths were unlimited. The Sister Tutor demanded we had bath or strip wash every day.

I’m sure that being allocated a council house must have been pure joy. I can’t really remember, but we had lived in a tiny terraced cottage, with a row of four loos between them, and apparently it was riddled with mice.
A bland flimsy council house with indoor plumbing must have seemed like paradise.

We are living history aren't we? Such great stories telling of such positive social changes. And what a wonderful system council housing turned out to be giving us access to hot water, indoor loos, the luxury of our own bathrooms and the ability to keep ourselves as clean as we were inclined?

For the first 7 years of my life we had an outside toilet and a po under the bed for during the night however there was a bathroom in my bedroom with a sink and bath with a geezer for hot water. I don't actually remember having a bath in there much as it was freezing but do remember sitting on my mum's knee in front of the fire being washed. When we moved we lived in a flat above the shop my parents bought where my dad put in a new bathroom - bath night was Sunday when I had my hair washed ready for school. I only had two school blouses and two pairs of grey school knickers - I was probably about ten when I started to hate not having clean ones every day so would put another pair on under them much to my mum's annoyance. She was fastidiously about housework but was of the generation that you didn't need to change clothes every day ? I soon learned how to use the twin tub washer and started to wash my own clothes!

I suppose back in the day showers were unheard of and it used too much hot water to run a bath every day so strip washes were the norm.

Reading most of these comments, I think the 20 somethings would be amazed at how we lived. I remember the first that i lived in after leaving home had a geyser to heat the hot water. It was old and probably dangerous. It was scary to light.

Artaylar Was it Wandsworth by any chance? In the late 60's I share a flat with a colleague - lots of space but not bathroom so we used to trot down the hill to the slipper baths regularly. As you say, lots of hot water.

Why were they called slipper baths?

Once a week bath ? Now I shower every day. My first husband was from over seas was of the opinion that the British could be shower dodgers generalisation based on few people he knew, but reinforced by our time in Australia together when we frequently heard the phrase "clean as a pommie's bath towel"

My nine year old only has a bath once a week and her hair washed then. She has a strip wash every day though. More frequent bathing aggravates her eczema. Unless she’s particularly muddy and then she gets chucked in the shower - which she’s not a fan of!

Sorry Humbertbear but you really tickled me when you wrote about having no hairdryer and so your mum made you all have short hair ‘even though it didn’t suit us’!
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Sadly times were very hard for some families. Not so bad if you knew you were loved I suppose, but still...

Some poignant posts on here read like excerpts from a Catherine Cookson novel don’t they? x

and our toenails cut so short we limped until they'd grown a bit. you can always make me laugh MissA.
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We had a bath every week as children in the 50s and a daily strip wash morning and night, by the fire in the kitchen in the winter. When I was about 11yrs old we got a shower attachment over the bath and an immersion heater, so I had a shower each evening.
Mum washed our clothes by had in the sink, scrubbing white socks each day. She had a wringer and a clothes horse that pulled up to the ceiling in the kitchen, always laden with washing on wet days. Sheets were washed in the bath. Like many here, dad polished the shoes every night.

At junior school we had some very poor families and I remember being surprised when we had a talk about teeth brushing and discovered some of the children had no toothbrush. Often these same children smelt "poor" which I now recognise as the smell of clothes left damp. They came to school with clean face and hands but a tide mark around their necks. I realise how lucky we were.

At grammar school we had to wear fleecy lined navy knickers. They definitely needed changing daily!

Had a bath and hair washed every Saturday, so we were clean for church on Sunday. Only hands and face washed on the other days. 2 clean school blouses a week and knickers and socks too. I can remember so wanting a clean blouse every day and started cleaning my own shoes when I was very young. We were never encouraged to brush our teeth, but think this is because all our parents' generation had false teeth and they just presumed as adults we would too! It was the last year of juniors that I really became aware of the importance
of cleanliness and I became really fanatical about it; I began to brush my teeth twice a day and either strip washed or had a bath every day. I even started to hand wash all my own clothes (which I did until the day I got married!). I vowed when I had children that they would have daily baths and a full set of clean uniform every day. I was still laying out, every night, their clean uniform when they were 18! I'm sure it must have driven them mad, but they never complained.

My mother, when we were still on speaking terms, used to say I made work for myself, my children were always in clean clothes every day, sometimes twice a day, she thought this was ridiculous, and I should let them ‘dirt them out’
Same with the house, my idea of total chaos, was her idea of ‘lived in’ I had an aunt, who she always accused of being house proud, as if it were a dreadful vice!

Lovely memories that this thread is bringing back.

My aunt and uncle, had a tiny cottage with a bath in the kitchen and a board over the top, until they modernised it a bit.
When I went out to work, at 16, I was amazed that one of the office ladies used to wash her jumpers after just one wearing.

Slightly different, but when I’d grown out of my jumpers, my granny wound unpick them and knit them up for some smaller family member, or unpick the sleeves and hem, and put a stripe in.
They had a bath off the kitchen which had to be pulled in and filled up with the kettle, I don’t think that happened all that often, the bath had a board over it, and was used as storage space.

We had a bath on a sunday night, our ears poked around, and our toenails cut so short we limped until they'd grown a bit.

A strip wash every day (with mum keeping an eye on our necks, in case of "tide marks")

We also had clean clothes every day, and if we went to visit anyone, mum would turn our socks inside out, so they looked clean on the way home. She even did it when we had gone 6 doors away to our nan's.

All the whites were boiled up in a bucket, and spun with the trusty spindryer.

I’m sure we must have been very smelly, but I suppose if we all smelled the same it didn’t matter so much.
There was a family of four girls at our school, who really stank, so I can’t begin to imagine how dirty they must have been.

Bath and hairwash once a week. We did have a bathroom but the Ascot gas water heater was terribly inefficient so the tin bath downstairs in front of the fire was often used instead.
Sometimes Brian from next door shared my bath as they were even poorer than us.
One strong memory is the lack of shoes. I never went shoeless but only ever had one pair at a time which were worn until they fell apart. I think this is why I love buying shoes now and have quite a few pairs.
We had an old gas boiler in a shed out the back. Washing day was a nightmare of getting the darn thing to light, then hauling the washing out with big wooden tongs and rolling it through the wooden mangle. In school holidays I always had to help with this and hated it.

I think I had a weekly bath and hair wash (hair rinsed with water from a plastic jug). I don’t remember a daily wash apart from my hands and face, but maybe that did happen. What I can distinctly recall is being called “Smelly .....”! (My surname after the word Smelly) by one particular boy at junior school. I wasn’t bothered much about that at the time apart from minor embarrassment, but when I think of it now, I’m mortified! We didn’t have a washing machine and dad used to take our laundry to a launderette every Monday morning - he’d leave it there and collect it later. Everything there, all in one bag - sheets, towels, underwear, shirts etc - for a family of four for a week!! Mum would iron it all on Monday afternoons. I loved the smell of that clean washing! I can smell it now and hear the whoosh of the water in the steam iron - lovely! We did have toothbrushes, toothpaste and regular visits to the dentist (which I dreaded). I always recall that dad had cleaner habits than mum. My dad had spent 12 years in the Army before my sister and I were born - well trained and disciplined! Bless you, mum - you weren’t the cleanest person in the world, but we were well loved and we had a good life. I remember my little sister often had a dirty neck as a child. That makes me feel sad when I think if it now.

Bath night was Sunday ready for school.
Mother bought one sachet of White rain shampoo and she put it in cup and diluted it so that it stretched to wash all the family's hair.
As far as I remember my clothes were always clean but never seemed to have much in the way of underwear and socks.

SD, yes I remember Dettol very well. Mandatory in final rinse of hair 'to prevent head lice' but I was given a flannel to protect my eyes as it could sting. Hated that bit. Mind you we did have 'Drene' shampoo. If it was good enough for Margaret Lockwood, it was right for us! Happy days.