Tudor toilets were rudimentary, commonly consisting of "privies" or "jakes"—planks with holes over cesspits, buckets, or, in castles, stone "garderobes" dropping into moats. These, along with chamber pots, were often communal and located in drafty, unhygienic, and odor-filled rooms. While the first flush toilet was invented in 1596 by Sir John Harington, it was rarely used.
Toilets were known as privies and were often a simple plank of wood with a hole in it over a deep pit called a cesspit. Henry VIII's palace at Hampton Court had many toilets which emptied into the River Thames.
In the Tudor period, high-society ladies liked to use goose feathers to clean their delicate behinds. Also at that time, though, a far more uncomfortable alternative was to use the shells of oysters or mussels – presumably scraping rather than wiping.
In tudor England the great houses and palaces had toilet rooms just like ours. The tudor name was "jakes". But the waste from the jakes didn't get washed away. It fell down into a pit.
For women, under your dress you would have worn a simple, thin, white dress called a chemise. A chemise was seen as underwear for a lady and is the strange catalyst for history's most weird fashion item: the ruff.
Why castles stank horribly (The truth about toilets)
Why is there a bow on the front of ladies knickers?
Well, it turns out there's actually historical reason for that. A long time ago, panties did not have elastic waistbands in them. So, women had to hold them up with either a drawstring or a ribbon. They tied a little bow, kept their panties on all day, everyone was happy.
Wool and linen cloths were used by Tudor people to clean their teeth – there were no toothbrushes at this time. Worn out clothes were torn and used as cloths; larger pieces were used as household cleaning cloths, smaller pieces for washing bodies and cleaning teeth.
Although menstruation was a taboo subject during the Tudor age it was an everyday and very common occurrence. All girls of the time expected to get their period and as such it was believed when they did that they had come of age and that they had the capability to conceive.
The words 'gardy loo' would be shouted, accompanied by (if the person in the street were lucky) a pause of second or two, allowing them to take shelter against the wall of the building, before the filth was, ahem, defenestrated…
In many Amish homes, rags are a common toilet paper alternative. These rags are typically old clothes that have been worn out. After simple processing, they become practical cleaning tools. After use, they are washed clean and can be reused multiple times.
It was thought that if you can produce hairs you can produce heirs – the two going in tandem. Men thus wore their beards as a mark of pride. To pull a man's beard in Tudor England was considered an insult. On the whole, there was limited technology for shaving in the Renaissance, so shaving was more of an effort.
Vikings (and really, anyone living outdoors before mass-produced paper) would have used whatever soft, absorbent natural material was around—moss, leaves, grass, snow, even smooth stones.
Options included rocks, leaves, grass, moss, animal fur, corn cobs, coconut husks, sticks, sand, and sea shells. Water and snow were also used to wash and clean. The material used depended on various factors, such as socioeconomic status, weather conditions, social customs, and location.
The office again fell into abeyance with the accession of Queen Victoria, though her husband, Prince Albert, and their son, Edward, Prince of Wales, employed similar courtiers; but when Edward acceded to the throne as King Edward VII in 1901, he discontinued the office.
If one could not be bothered for such a laborious bath, they would have sponged themselves down daily with clean water to wick away sweat, dirt and grime. Historian Ruth Goodman goes one step further and suggests that the Tudors would have had a “dry” bath if they did not fancy the full routine.
Poor people washed their linen underwear but did not wash their outer clothes. The smell of wood smoke from their fires acted like a deodorant to help mask their bad smell. Rich people slept in strong wooden beds with a canopy over the top and curtains around the bed to help keep the warmth in.
Sir, You say (“Mary Rose emerges from the mists”, May 30) that the average height of Tudor seamen was 5ft 8in. In our regimental archive in Bodmin we hold records of the Duke of Cornwall's Light Infantry recruits who enlisted between 1914 and 1918. Their average height was 5ft 5in.
Henry's enema was a pig's bladder with a greased metal tube fixed in it, which was inserted into the king's behind. The pig's bladder contained a pint of a solution of salt and herbs, and would stay inserted for two hours. Sounds hideous....but, apparently, it worked.
The average age of menarche dropped from 14–15 years in the early 20th century to 12–13 years in the present, but girls in the 19th century had a later age of menarche (16 to 18 years) compared to girls in earlier centuries. A large North American survey reported a 2–3 month decline from the mid-1970s to the mid-1990s.
Tudor childbirth involved going into confinement in a warm, dark room sealed from any fresh air or daylight, as this was thought bad for the health of you and your baby. You remained in this sealed room for another three days after your baby was born, before fresh air was finally let in.
Tendrich and Haas's tampon was made of tightly compacted absorbent cotton, shaped like a bullet, and had a string attached at the base that allowed for easy removal from the woman's body. Some tampons had a plastic or cardboard applicator, while other digital tampons could be inserted with a finger.
You may know Henry VIII as the portly one with all the wives, some of whom he executed. He was also known for having sore and stinky legs. In fact, they said the rotting flesh dangling from his left leg could be smelled from three rooms away.
She used either a special herbal mixture that included salt, thyme and marjoram, or perfumed sachets of sweet almonds, pine nuts, and lily bulbs which had been designed especially for her baths by her perfumer. Sometimes she ate breakfast in the bath!
