KNICKERS!
One of the failings of many social historians is that they tend to shy away from any subject that their upbringing might regard as 'rude'. Bathing, any reference to bodily functions and what the Victorians called 'unmentionables' get very little mileage. I remember when I was advising on interpretation at Pendle Heritage I put up a case for talking to schoolchildren about these matters and getting their attention. It never came to anything and I have an idea that I was thought to be either eccentric or coarse to even raise the subject. Nobody shared my view that what made kids snigger was engaging their attention on a very basic level and if you want to teach, the first thing you do is get the pupil's attention.
Talking about soap last week triggered off feedback from friends who had been reminded of their childhood by references to granny making her own soap and grating it to make 'soap powder'. They also remembered the rubbing of soiled clothes with soap and scrubbing them before putting them in the wash. This is where you raise your eyebrows and start to wonder just how my mind works but this immediately triggered off the subject of cotton gussets in my mind and from there it was a short step to unmentionables. Sorry if this puts you off but we shouldn't ignore the really important aspects of social history. Part of this is from memory but much comes from the interviews I did for the Lancashire Textile Project. I asked specific questions about personal hygiene, knickers and underpants. Nobody refused to respond, they recognised the importance of evidence of development and change.
Leaving aside the modern macho concept of 'going commando' which I can never understand because like me, the commandos were issued with loose underpants as part of their army kit and wore them, I think it's fair to say that today everyone realises the value of wearing light absorbent clothes next to the skin which are easily washable. Even today, the most favoured material is cotton. I should make it clear that I am talking about the ordinary people, not the wealthy who could afford silk. The fact that surprised me was that underpants for men, as we know them, were unknown to many of the working class until about 1930. All but the cheapest trousers had a sewn in cotton lining which could occasionally be taken out and washed separately. This was necessary because most trousers were made from wool and were never washed beyond sponging down to clean them and avoid shrinkage. By the 1920s these cotton linings were attached with buttons inside the waistband which made extraction easier and it wasn't long before tapes were attached to the waistband of the underpants through which you threaded the tongues of your braces. Remember that though elastic existed, it was not robust enough to use in the waistband,washing weakened it. This gave rise to what to me is an interesting fact. If you used this method of holding your pants up you had to tuck your shirt in your underpants. To this day I still aver that you can always trust a bloke who tucks his shirt in his underpants! This applied to both cotton pants and winter woollies.
The Second World War was a spur to invention and affected cheap clothing. One of the most important was the availability for the first time of cheap waterproof outer garments but that's outside the scope of this piece. I can remember getting underpants with elasticated waists for the first time and being able to wear them under my shirt laps! In those days all shirts had a substantial lap front and back which you tucked into your trousers. At that time all underpants were the same, like cotton shorts with no tailoring, it wasn't until much later that the different styles we know today came into being.
Ladies nether garments followed a different track mainly because they had no trousers that could act as a base for a sewn-in lining. I don't know when they first appeared but the solution was 'drawers'. These were two separate legs joined at the waist and fastened with a draw string at the waist and the knee. There was no gusset and in case of need the legs could be drawn apart hence the name drawers. I have no direct knowledge but I suspect that it wasn't until the advent of the 20th century that the drawers became joined and acquired a gusset, they retained the knee fastening.
Looking at the long skirts used by all classes of women I have to confess that my mind has occasionally strayed to the problems they must have faced when attending to bodily functions. Even more amazing is how those wearing crinolines or bustles managed. One thing is certain, it wasn't easy and I can understand why the aristocracy had ladies in waiting and maids, they must have been essential! Consideration of this raises another matter, it would seem that people in those days were far less self-conscious about bodily functions. It looks as though the development of clothing led to the possibility of more privacy and that leads a devious mind like mine to speculate on what came first and what drove the developments, but that would be another article...
If I've taken you beyond your comfort boundaries I apologise but if we want to understand our past we have to be able to see our subject through the frame of reference of the time. Our modern thinking is much more oriented towards different standards of cleanliness and privacy. We mustn't judge our ancestors by our standards, they had to cope with the world they lived in. There is a paradox, given reasonable attention to personal cleanliness it may well be that the looser fitting undergarments encouraged better ventilation and eliminated some of the problems we see today. Don't worry, I'm not going to go there but as you slip into your modern knickers and underpants spare a thought for what earlier generations had to cope with and how it modified their attitudes. If you can do that, this article will have worked, you're adopting their frame of reference.
The washing line at Hey Farm. Cleanliness is next to Godliness!
another interesting article.
