My father's story continued..
There was, of course, no bathroom. When the
house was built, a bathroom was considered a luxury, only indulged in by the
rich. Even larger houses were built without one. The current opinion in those
days was that immersing oneself in water in wintertime was tantamount to
signing one’s death warrant. Our bath was a large galvanized iron tub, the size
of a coffin that hung outside the house on a nail. Bathing was usually a
Saturday occupation when everyone took turns, with much to and froing with
buckets of hot water. The copper was lit, and the bath brought into the
washhouse in warmer weather, where there was more privacy, or into the living
room in front of the stove on cold days. A once a week bath was considered
adequate.
Sanitation
was crude. The lavatory was in a small hut in the garden, about 10 or 20 meters from
the house. It was primitive in the extreme: a wooden seat with two holes, one
large for adults, and one small for children, with buckets underneath (using
the large hole as a child was fraught with danger!). Those buckets had to be
emptied weekly. This meant digging a large hole in the garden every Saturday
into which the contents of the buckets were tipped. This was not a pleasant
task but commonplace in the country where sewerage systems did not exist. When
male members of the family were considered muscular enough, they had to take
their turn in the operation. Toilet paper? A sheer waste of money! Newspaper
did the job and cost tuppence a day. Each bedroom had its chamber pot and it
was another job for mother to empty and clean these each morning.
There
were 3 bedrooms: two of reasonable size and one very small. The floors were
covered with linoleum and were bitterly cold in winter. There was no bedroom
heating at all. We went to bed, undressed to our shirt, and shivered ourselves
into warmth. Pyjamas did not exist. We had a perfunctory wash in the scullery,
with cold water, then got into bed as quickly as possible.
To be continued...
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