Name: What Was Hygiene Like In The Victorian Era?
Uploaded: 2021-05-23T11:09:37.000Z
Duration: 11 min 13 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

Thanks to fiction, when we think of the Victorian era,

we tend to think of lavish homes, beautiful gowns,

Victorians may have had a lot of nice things,

for lack of a better term, [BLEEP] gross.

Beneath the fancy garments of lace and silk

Diseases were common, and the hygienic practices

meant to cure them were often as bad, if not worse,

Today, we're going to take a look at what hygiene

But before we get started, be sure to subscribe to the Weird

History channel, and let us know in the comments below what

other hygiene-related topics you would like to hear about.

Victorians had to do laundry just like everyone else,

would be combated by rubbing chalk into the fabric.

Grass and bloodstains, on the other hand,

would be removed with kerosene while other miscellaneous odors

hacks you might find in a modern YouTube video.

But when it came to bleaching their clothes,

the Victorians used a method modern folks probably

they soaked their clothes in their own urine.

It sounds disgusting, but as it turns out,

urine contains ammonia, which is a very effective cleaning

agent, except windows, not very effective on windows.

Toothbrushes and toothpaste existed at the time

and were available to the Victorians, but typically only

Most working-class folks had to get a little bit more creative.

Toothpaste, for example, could be made at home

using common ingredients that include things

like chalk, soot, or even powdered cuttlefish.

Despite this, they were relatively expensive.

And those who couldn't afford them had to find alternate ways

which was believed to be abrasive enough to clean

It was better than nothing, but as you probably guessed,

to protect your teeth, because the dental care

available at the time was, to be kind, utterly terrifying.

you would probably have to go to your local barber

The earliest indoor toilets, also known as water closets,

But because they predated the invention of indoor plumbing,

it often just dropped into a large cesspool

that was located in the building's basement.

While this arrangement was more accessible than an outhouse

Once that happened, it didn't take too long

for the whole house to start smelling, well,

To combat the stink, a cottage industry of night soil men

They were known as night soil men because the laws of the era

restricted the emptying of cesspools to night time,

as the task was considered too disturbing to be undertaken

You would think something as simple as how

to take a bath would be pretty intuitive to most people.

But in Victorian times that wasn't common knowledge.

In fact, as regular or at least semi-regular bathing

that taught the uninitiated what to expect from a bath.

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What Was Hygiene Like In The Victorian Era?

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