This week's prompt made me think of the ways things used to be.
The house where I was born was made of stone but lacked certain facilities.
 |
| My boyhood home - High Street, Ketton, Rutland |
Beyond the back of the house to the
back of the drive were the outhouses with big double doors used as garages for
the cars of the next door landlord’s spinster daughters. –
Between the garages and the house were
two smaller outhouses - one for Dad’s tools and where the dog had its kennel,
and one for coal, the fuel that provided heating and hot water in the house.
Behind the coal house was the only toilet. No plumbing or drainage; it was
equipped with a big wooden seat, and beneath the hole, an open bucket emptied
once a week.
Behind that unmentionable place,
down one step to a stone flag floor was the wash house, in which Dad kept his
bike and with a bench against one wall at which to work. However in pride of
place was the large coal-fired copper in which the weekly washing was boiled up
and which provided, at the end of a week, a large tin bath full of water for a
proper wash.
 |
| Tin bath like ours |
Not round and small like that on the outside wall of the prompt.
If it was exceptionally cold, as a luxury, I was sometimes allowed
to fill the bath in front of the hot black-leaded range in the kitchen. I've no photos to show you other that these of baths in use.
 |
| Little boy taking a bath in a tub (By Simple insomnia - CC BY 2.0) |
 |
| Miner getting washed at home. |
In "The Road from Wigan Pier," George Orwell wrote about miners and the use of pithead baths: -
"It is almost impossible for them to wash all over in their home homes. Every drop of water has got to be heated up, and in a tiny living room which contains, apart from a kitchen range, a quantity of furniture, a wife, some children and probably a dog, there is simply not room to have a proper bath.Even with a basin one is bound to splash the furniture."
At the time some people believed that miners would not use the pithead baths and some even said that there was no point in given baths to miners as they would only keep coal in them!
However round wash tubs like these have been put to many uses.
 |
| Wash Tub (Malalla Museum) (CC BY-NC 2.0) |
It's not only children that get a bath in them.
 |
| Molly gets a bath (By Guny - CC BY 2.0) |
I'm not sure who Molly is but apparently the dog is called Cosmo - he/she had run around in the woods and got muddy.
But a much more relaxed dog appeared on a Facebook page this week. My daughter's Golden Retriever would never have submitted to this indignity.
Now I'm off to relax - not in a bath, but under under a shower.
Suggest you take a look at what our prompt has inspired other Sepians to post at Sepia-Saturday-245.
