Hygeine 1950s - 2020s

Anyone else remember having Dettol in their bath?
Yes. Dettol and Vicks Vapour Rub were the answer to everything and Beecham's Powders if you felt really ill.

We had Imperial Leather, Palmolive and Knight's Castile soap.

The immersion heater was put on for an hour on Sundays and all 6 of us would have a bath. Always hoped that there would be enough hot water left to sit in about 2 inches of warm water. Hair wash at the same time with washing up liquid.
Mum and I went to Butlins for a stay when I was about 9. Don't know why it was just us without my brothers but so exciting to have a full bath each evening. Mum bought a little bottle of bubble bath and I thought it was wonderful.
Still love my bubble baths !

Bath on a Saturday morning, hairwash Saurday evening. Communal towels and flannels. Shampoo was a powder in a sachet. Strip wash every evening at the kitchen sink. Can't remember how often we changed our clothes. I think knickers were worn for 2 or 3 days. DM thought the family next door but one were proper 'Bohemian' because they all had a bath every day.

Nowadays I don't feel clean unless I've showered every day.

We had baths on Saturday nights-church on Sunday. We had a council house with a bathroom. My grandmother lived in a house without a bath and my aunt- ten years younger than my mother used to come at the weekend and stay to have a bath

I had a bath once a week if I remember rightly, and a wash every other night. I definitely had a toothbrush and paste but my mother was lazy and never supervised any washing and teeth cleaning. We had to make our school uniform last all week and we were only allowed clean knickers every two or three days. Socks were changed once in the week. I wasn’t allowed white socks except for Sunday school because mum said they had to be washed daily. As I said, my mother was lazy. She had a washing machine too, but she wanted to keep the laundry down.

Oh yes, Vicks and Beecham’s. Parrish’s Food too. Didn’t that have arsenic or some other poison in it?

Jaffacake, I still think a bubble bath is luxurious. Indeed, even a daily bath is luxurious, I’m grateful to have both!

Our family of five all had a bath every day in the kitchen, in the tin bath filled from the gas water heater. On Saturdays it was the big tin bath in front of the fire. When I was small I had my bath in the sink and remember how uncomfortable it was lying on the draining board with my head in the sink for a hairwash. We got a bathroom and inside loo when I was twelve.
I still love my daily bath.

We had a bath on Sunday nights, and as we had no hot running water, we had to boil a kettle every morning to have a wash. It wasn’t a very thorough wash, just face and underarms.
Outer clothes were worn for a week, but I can’t really remember about underwear.
We all had a flannel, and a towel, I hated that someone else could just pick up my towel and use it.
When I moved into student accommodation, there was one bath, no shower, and three loos for twenty girls!

As a primary school aged child we lived at the top of a large multi-occupied house. Bathroom was about three floor down. As the only running water in our four attic rooms (apart from that running down the walls) was a tiny corner sink on the landing with a cold tap, - had to go to large shared, bathroom to get ready for bed each night. Bath had geyser - which had to be fed with money. Most nights I had a bath.

Can remember that I used to wear large, baggy navy knickers - and Mum always insisted that I had a smaller pair of white ones underneath. The navy ones were changed weekly, the white ones every three of four days.

Once I went to Grammar school - and by then we were living in a Council House and had our own bathroom, the gym slip shapeless garment) was sent to dry cleaners during school holidays, but sponged down by Mum every weekend. OF course, as soon as I came home from school, I had to change out of this into more easily washable clothes.

Socks were changed (I think_ every 2-4 days, but shoes cleaned every night. Even when I started going to work, at the age of 15 yrs, the idea of changing my outer clothes every day did not occur to me. I changed clothes when they started to look grubby - not before. And underwear usually twice a week.

Of course, this was all way before home washing machines, my Mum went out to work, and all laundry was carried out via the bagwash - and one bag a week for Mum, Dad and me was considered normal, plus a once a month 'Best Wash'.

Think it was in the early 1960s that I started to realise the need to change underwear every day, and outer wear at least every 2-3 days.

Think it was in the mid-150's that deodorants arrived and we all suddenly became more aware of body odours.

Growing up in the fifties - bath once a week. Two school blouses, one worn for 3 days and one for the other 2. Bath on Friday night and we couldn’t go to bed till our hair was dry (no hairdryer) so mum kept our hair very short even though it didn’t suit us. Come to think of it, I think she must have cut it as I don’t remember going to the hairdresser. I think everyone in my Primary School was probably a bit grubby.

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.

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.

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 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’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.

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.

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.

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.

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!

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.

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!

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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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

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!

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"