Childhood Bath Times


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All this work on my bathroom has made me think back decades to our bathroom when I was a child. The house on Bobbers Mill Road had a separate bathroom and adjoining toilet. The bathroom was sited at the front of the house, facing a side street, so it was always cold. It had neither electric light nor any form of heating. Behind the door was the only remaining gas bracket in the house, so it did have gaslight originally but when electricity was installed, my grandparents chose not to have a light in the bathroom in favour of lights in the hall and on the stairs.

 

The bath was a large, cast iron, enamelled, roll top model with claw feet. Right in vogue today! There was also a washbasin, without a pedestal, on ornate cast iron brackets. Also fashionable again now. I don't recall there being any tiles in there at all!

At one end of the room was a huge cupboard which, floor to ceiling, occupied the whole width of the bathroom. It was totally empty except for the cold water tank. The copper cylinder was housed in a similar cupboard in the sitting room, next to the open fire. No fire, no hot water. There was no immersion heater.

 

In winter, my father kept a little oil lamp burning under the cold water tank in the bathroom cupboard to stop it freezing.

Baths at night were candle lit and, so I was told, my auntie Edna had once gone to bed and left the candle burning on the bathroom window sill. Fortunately, her brother, Louis came home late that night to find the curtains smouldering and doused the potential conflagration.

 

We didn't bathe every day. It was too cold in there, although dad would sometimes put the Paul Warmer paraffin heater in the bathroom to take the chill off. Elf & Safety be damned!

 

In 1975 the house was modernised and the bathroom increased in size with the removal of the cupboard. The new bath occupied the floor space where it had been. The toilet was put in the bathroom and the old toilet became an airing cupboard with the hot water cylinder and central heating controls. The bathroom had a radiator!  Seemed like pure luxury. There was even electric light for the first time!

 

Anyone else have any early bath time memories?

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Used to get put in the copper after the washing was done at me grannies as I wrote in another thread

 

Rog

 

ps,just had a monkey bath,nice and warm now

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Council houses on old Bestwood estate all had downstairs bathroom off the kitchen............ritual every Sunday night........Mam always came in and sprinkled Dettol in,..........nearly killed mesen once in the bath........bulb had gone and had been took out. and Mam had put a candle in..........anyway my fishing Rod which i kept in there was adjacent,and as i idly fiddled with it (the fishing rod).....i pushed it into the bulb socket.......got a right shock........blue flashes and loud noises,ran into living room to tell me Mam..........still clutching said fishing rod and stark naked,............;)

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18 minutes ago, benjamin1945 said:

Council houses on old Bestwood estate all had downstairs bathroom off the kitchen............ritual every Sunday night........Mam always came in and sprinkled Dettol in,..........nearly killed mesen once in the bath........bulb had gone and had been took out. and Mam had put a candle in..........anyway my fishing Rod which i kept in there was adjacent,and as i idly fiddled with it (the fishing rod).....i pushed it into the bulb socket.......got a right shock........blue flashes and loud noises,ran into living room to tell me Mam..........still clutching said fishing rod and stark naked,............;)

If you were a cat ben you would be down to 8 lives left after that ! Lucky lad.

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8 minutes ago, catfan said:

If you were a cat ben you would be down to 8 lives left after that ! Lucky lad.

 

Bit less than 8 Mick........nearly drowned twice.......heart attack in the wilds,.......threatened with a shot-gun......think i'm down to 4..............lol.

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I particularly remember mixing shampoo powder in warm water to wash my hair.  The brand was Vaseline and it was a green and yellow/beige packet.  Before this powder shampoo arrived, I presume we just used soap.  

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Mum used to say there were only two shampoos during the war. One was Vosine and the other was called Drene which, I think, was American. I remember Drene being sold in Merriman's corner shop on Oakland Street. It was sold in small transparent plastic sachets which were stuck to a card.

 

Mum always commented when walking round shops in her later years at the profusion of shampoos and recalled those two from her youth.

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Cast iron baths were hellish heavy, if I go back to the 60s when we were still fixing them the way to get them upstairs was to stand the bath against the wall at the bottom of the stairs, plug hole down. Get the 2lb ball pein wrap the head in thick cloth, this went through the plug hole with the head inside the bath. Then the first chap climbed inside the bath to take its weight on his shoulders whilst the second grabbed the hammer shaft for extra lift then gradually walk it upstairs.

 

As to what happened when we removed them it was called a 3lb lump hammer....the bath was broken up in situ and carried down in pieces. Then some idiot decided that restored they were the new in thing and people started to try and take them out whole, lot of damage done and a lot of people hurt when it got away from them going down stairs. I always used pulley blocks and a 15mm climbing rope for control when I had to do one, when I started on my own it was a case of NO! It gets broke up or get someone else.

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It was a palaver having a bath in our house. The bathroom off the kitchen, was the docking station for the big old Hotpoint Empress washing machine that had nowhere else to be stored. So that had to be dragged out before bathtime. I don't ever remember using the sink in the bathroom, all daily ablutions were done in the kitchen sink. I too was sat on the wooden draining board at the kitchen sink and washed with a flannel till I got too big for the task. An old memory has just come to the fore, me sitting on the bath, dipping the flannel in the bath water, and sucking it!

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Bathtime in our house required a Sunday afternoon visit to Gran`s house on Curzon St as she had a conservatory on the back of the house in the yard which boasted a plumbed-in cast iron bath, shampoo was Drene or, I think, Vosene with the scent of coal tar.

Never thought too much about it at the time, but it was pretty strange to have a bath in a glazed conservatory, just accepted that it was there!

Afterwards always thought about it when reciting Spike Milligan`s rhyme about people who live in glasshouses should draw the blinds before removing their trousers.

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A couple of years ago I fitted a very deep roll top bath. I noticed that since then my wife keeps calling me Spiderman. Not sure if it was derogatory or a sign of admiration so I asked.

 

"It's because once you get in the bath you need so many attempts to get out" 

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I am sure I have put this somewhere before, in the 70s I went in a house in Aspley with the bathroom off the kitchen, basin full of water, bath full of hay and a bloody Skegness donkey hanging over the door with had been cut horizontally to make a stable door.

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Nicked from Melbourne Park sidings no doubt !

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