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Kitty Calash

~ Confessions of a Known Bonnet-Wearer

Kitty Calash

Tag Archives: historical myths

Smell Ya Later

16 Tuesday Jun 2015

Posted by kittycalash in Clothing, Fail, History, Laundry, Living History, Reenacting, Research

≈ 9 Comments

Tags

19th century, 19th century clothing, authenticity, clothes, Clothing, common people, historical clothing, historical myths, historical reenactors, history, interpretation, laundry, smell

Wool on hooks, cat on prowl

Wool on hooks, cat on prowl

One of the most common questions you get when you’re wearing historical clothing is the undying, “Aren’t you hot in those clothes?”

A heavily perspiring visitor wearing practically nothing usually asks this question, and the standard reply is a variation of “Aren’t you hot? In really warm weather, everyone is hot. But natural fibre clothing wicks the moisture from the skin and helps to keep you cool.” My internal response (vocalized only once) is, “Why yes, I am—and thank you for noticing. I work hard for this look.”

The “aren’t you hot” question is often followed by, “Wow, and they didn’t bathe, so everyone really smelled.” You try not to think of that Monty Python sketch about Britain’s deadliest joke program in WWII and move the conversation on to weekly laundering of body linen, multiple shifts, shirts, and under-drawers, and the general hygienic practices of the past.

What struck me after a sticky weekend is how much I noticed the smell of modern people.

two tailors and a tailoress

two tailors and a tailoress

My traveling companions and I bathed on Friday morning, drove for 7+ hours in muggy weather, slept in our clothes, wore wool, cotton and linen in rain and thick humidity, sweated in the tailor’s shop, slept in our clothes again, and spent another warm, close, day in muggy weather, including grave digging and pall bearing. But as feral as my shift may have been on Sunday night, I never smelled us.

Mr H reported that his wool trousers were really stinky in the rain, and I think his white Spencer was well-seasoned even before this weekend, but I didn’t notice anything. Mr S’s soaking greatcoat was whiffy only at extremely close range.

What I did smell were modern perfumes, deodorants, and hair products. Those linger around their wearers and trail behind them, sometimes eye-watering in their intensity. I encountered lingering perfume in a bathroom at the museum, and we were overwhelmed by cologne at diner Monday morning: wow, people must really smell now, of petrochemicals.

more wool

more wool

This is not to say that homeless people and sulky teenagers don’t smell of unwashed bodies and clothes, but people in the past may not have smelled quite as badly as we think. They washed, if not bathed (bathing being full immersion washing) and by changing body linen and airing their clothes, they kept reasonably clean.

There was plenty to whiff in the past: wastes of all kinds, stagnant bodies of water used as dumps, rotting foods and corpses. But I’m not convinced that we haven’t simply exchanged one set of smells for another of different origin and intensity.

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Aspirational Shopping

11 Saturday May 2013

Posted by kittycalash in History

≈ Comments Off on Aspirational Shopping

Tags

18th century, 18th century clothes, advertising, common dress, consumer culture, historical myths, history, newspapers, Providence, Research, resources, Rhode

So, I always thought that window shopping was a product of the late 19th or early 20th century, the plate glass windows of the Bon Ton, and The Lady’s Paradise.

Providence Gazette and Country Journal, 4-18-1772

Providence Gazette and Country Journal, 4-18-1772

I was wrong.  Check out the last line in this ad from the Providence Gazette and Country Journal of April, 1772:

“Any Person not wanting to purchase, but having a Mind to see the greatest Pennyworths, shall be waited on with great Chearfulness, by their very humble Servant, PAUL ALLEN.”

In case we forget, the past is there to remind us that the consumer culture started much, much earlier than we think it did. Stop blaming Don Draper: I give you Paul Allen.

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Petticoat Burns

05 Tuesday Feb 2013

Posted by kittycalash in History, Living History, Reenacting

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

18th century, Clothing, common dress, cooking, food, hearth cooking, historical myths, history, living history, myths, The Public

Per Hillstrom, Kitchen Scene

You know this site, right? History Myths Debunked examines the stories about the past many like to think are true, and Death By Petticoat is one of the favorites. Here it is on an English site catering to reenactors. There’s a variation I’d never heard, about wetting petticoat hems to keep them from engulfing the wearer in flames. (OK, mild exaggeration: to keep the petticoat from igniting fully, thus… hat tip to Back Country Maiden for pointing this out.)

As someone who just finished mending a petticoat, you’d think I’d leap at the chance to drench my hem in water to prevent future mending episodes, but not so. For one thing, in the house or in the camp, that’s water I had to haul or cause to have hauled, and I’m not wasting it. Wet the hems and what’s next? Caked lumps of ash, mud, and.or other filth. No thanks.

High-tech historical cooking

High-tech historical cooking

The burns I got in my dress were acquired at the end of the day when we were hearth cooking and were practically in the fireplace ourselves. That is where you must be if you wish to stir the sauce until it thickens, and there was the hoisting of roast in its pan a couple of times, and general playing with fire in pursuit of food. My ca. 1799 dress is longer than my 1770s petticoats and gowns, and the extra inch or two probably contributed to the burns. But I wasn’t engulfed by flames, because the damn thing is wool. Self-extinguishing wool, worn with linen and wool petticoats and a linen apron. not going to go up in flames. Also not going to get dipped in water–and wouldn’t that result in steam and hence scalded shins?

I don’t know where these rumours start, but they could have started with a cynical curator joking with house tour guides who failed to get the joke. Not that I know anything about a story of about Providence kitten named Georgie in honor of George Washington’s visit to a large brick house on a hill .

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