Have you ever walked into a public restroom with where the lavatories were exposed with no privacy barriers? Yes, yes, men we know you use the urinals without a thought many times. Well, the experience nowadays may send some ladies running for the hills but in bustling 18th century London, these were the types of public restrooms you got if you went somewhere posh. While public restrooms weren't as common as they are today you could find them in popular watering holes for the rich such as Henry Kingsbury portrayed in his satire of the Vauxhall Garden Ladies Room. His satire was an excuse to portray well-to-do, fashionable ladies doing something everyone does behind closed doors (just as many satires of women did) but it serves the great purpose now of giving us an idea, however exaggerated, of how ladies did their business in order to avoid lifting various layers of their robe a l'anglaise skirts while hiding behind a bush.
I believe I entered that room in a local bar recently. Hah! My clothes were less constricting.
ReplyDeleteOne of my fav new places must have spent all their bathroom budget on the dyson hand dryer and didn't have the stalls installed for a while. Luckily you could lock the main door if you weren't up for making friends in that way!
ReplyDeleteWas the use of the word @bush@ deliberate?
ReplyDeleteYes, bushes (or shrubbery) are nature's bathroom dividers in desperate situations!
ReplyDeleteI recall reading in some social history of ladies relieving themselves behind screens in the grand dining rooms while at dinner parties.
ReplyDeleteEven worse, even in Georgian times the men would relieve themselves in the corners.
I suppose candlelight could hide a multitude of sins.
They also used narrow chamber pots that a maid could hold up for use under the dress.
Funny when you think of it, we still use the term powder room. I expect that probably goes back to a time when ladies would have been powdering their hair. Anyone know for sure?
Oh my goodness - the woman on the far left... priceless!
ReplyDeleteThe strangest place I found for relieving yourself was in a former Quaker church in Newport, RI in the late 1600's to early 1700's. Since the preachers preached all day on Sunday, it was very rude to leave your purchased family pew box. Lunch was brought in and so was the family chamberpot. You just took a squat in front of God and everyone else! What was even stranger was that underneath your feet and the floorboards were layers of your dead relatives. The family pew also became the family burial plot!!!!
ReplyDelete@Lexi, I forgot whose account I read that was talking about how Versailles Hall of Mirrors lost its splendor due to all the human and animal filth left there (weren't there custodians??!)
ReplyDeleteI always assumed the powder room was either due to powdering of hair or oneself. Perhaps its something totally different entirely.
@Heather, These prints never fail to amaze me in the fact that they haven't lost their humor over the years
@MmeHistoire, The puritans never cease to amaze me in their extremely odd ways. Bundling... *shudder*
Yech. They really had no shame in those days.
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