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1930s Hygiene

S

Stitcher

Guest
By the thirties, more houses had bathrooms and more attention was paid to body hygene. Bath cubes and bath salts were a cheap luxury. Most households could afford a box of Lifeboy @ 3d, introduced in 1933 while Lux came on the scene in 1928, and Palmolive in 1913. Slicked down hair became all the rage for men with the advent of Brylcreem 1928.
 
Gosh, Stitcher, I had forgotten the name Erasmic - Cuticura is still around, and so are most of the others (names at least, products differ).
 
Hello Shortie, as I read your post a word suddenly came to my mind, 'DERBAC' that was for nits as I recall.
 
Hi Stitcher,

I remember Derbac, but do you know when the 'Nit Nurse' first appeared in schools?
 
Hello Evergreen you little minx, No I don't. I started infants in 1945 and I do remember being examined by Nitty Nora but I can't recall if that was in the first year at school or later.
 
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Hi Stitcher, I had to laugh - what about my post made you think of nits then???? Never having had the little blighters, never used Derbac but somehow I think I have heard the name. I seem to remember a black soap also that could be used, I have vague recollections of it being spoken about as Black Lux - maybe some mother's way of persuading her child to have their hair washed?
 
Shortie, as I read your post I had soap names going through my mind and I stopped on derbac.
 
Stitcher,

You have got me 'scratching' my head thinkng about when the nit nurse first went into schools
 
Was derbac a soap or a liquid? If it was a soap, was it the black stuff I had heard was called Black Lux? I used to remember th enit comb, regularly applied 'just in case'. It hurt like hell, probably because my mum was not interested in how it felt, just making sure I had not got nits. She was always a bit vigorous I seem to remember.
 
Evergreen, you are so like your sister Maggie!!! I never mentioned the nit nurse, it was you who asked me about her. I do like the scratching your head bit though. Ha Ha.
 
I seem to remember Derbac as being a small hard block, and it might have beem black, the smell was rather distinctive.
 
Almost everyone these days has access to a shower or a bath, if not both. There are countless products on the market to make us smell nice and make us clean. There is no reason at all for anyone to be other than spotless and clear from bugs and nits, ut did you know that parents in vast areas of this country are trying to get 'NITTY NORA' re-instated in schools because the 'NITS ARE COMING' their numbers are on the increase. Mothers are said to be too busy to attend to nit cleansing, and it is something that fathers don't do.
 
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My mother always used to rinse my hair , after washing, with a brew of camomile flowers and hot water. - she did remove the flowers first!!! Miriam.
 
Hello Miriam, I bet you smelt lovely, but that is what mothers did years ago. Do you know Miriam, Social Services would not allow families to live in the conditions we were bought up in and Health & Safety will not let people work as hard as we did. We still have scruffy smelly people of all ages and workers are continually complaining about working conditions. A man stood by my wife and me in the shops the other day and he smelt awful.
 
Takes me back to the 50s when men who used deodorants were considered as somewhat effeminate, a man was a man and smelt like one - BO, beer, fag smoke and all!
In my pre-teen years I was made to have a bath every Saturday night - whether I needed one or not! and of course wasn't allowed to get dirty on Sunday.
Days of Brylcreem-slicked hair and antimacassars on chairs to keep the stuff off the moquette!
 
l remember the derbac comb it really hurt when our mom used it .....every friday or saturday night we had our bath ( tin tub)shampoo then be scalped with the derbac comb,nails cut and last but not least a good dose of syrup of figs.....l thought every kid in Aston did the same.....Brenda
 
Most of the products that Stitcher has mentioned are familiar to me,however,I don't remember using any of them:(.It seems personel hygene,didn't have a very high priority when I was a lad,(normal dirty little boy I expect:rolleyes:),always cleaned my teeth though,using soot and salt.The tin bath my mom used for me must have ended when I was about 9,then it was the occasional trip to the Victoria Rd.baths.It seemed old men were always very smelly,(stale beer and pipe smoke). So now having reached the prime of my maturity,I am very fussy, I don't want to frighten off my grandchildren.:)
Thanks for your input Stitch,it's nice to talk about all these products from a bygone age.
 
Lloyd and Ray, hello both, your memories are very similar to mine although I imagine we lived in different districts. I can't imagine how happy my mom would have been with todays products for the bathroom and kitchen. I am happy to make these postings if they stir members memories.
 
Morning Stitcher. Can't remember the smell of the brew - but I think the idea was to keep my hair light. I have stood behind people in shops that emitted a strong smell - it makes me feel sick. AT one time I helped deliver 'meals on wheels' to the oldies and the smells there were awful. That was different, people were old and ill. We were poor and my poor mom worked hard to keep us clean - she was golden - my dad, well that's another story.
Miriam.
 
Hello again Miriam, I suppose me and my brothers were lucky in that way, both mom and dad were very good to us. The family was not rich in any sense of the word but we had hot food every day, although that meant eating the pet rabbit at one point. Our clothes were always clean and the patches were always well stitched on and the socks were always darned. My mom had the added burden of my younger sister who was diagnosed with R. Arthritis at the age of two. She was taken into the Childrens Hospital and spent her life in there and several other establishments until age fourteen when she came home and spent her fifteenth year at Heartfield Crescent School. Mom always took one of us three lads with her when visiting my sister. This meant monthly trips on visiting days. Midland Red to Malvern for a few years, then the train to Bournmouth for a few years and finally a place in Oakham, Rutland for a few years.
 
Hi brenda happy new year to you
yes you are quite correct the kids of aston always had a tin bath unless you was one of the posh kid of aston but on the whole we alll had a tin bath in front of the fire and the ketle and saucepans boiling the hot water constantly on the black coal fire grate with swinging hooks and whilst waiting doing toast on a wire fork and banking up the fire
with coal slack to keeping it nice and warm whilst one by one we all had a bath in front of the fire watching the twelve inch black and white tv whilst the posh familys had there colour tvs and the old lady giving us our cod liver oil
we all moaned about swollowing it they would hold your nose to swollow it and amidst that watching muffin the mule
and when all done march you up the apple and pairs all clean and dusted by having derbac in your hair so you would be cleaned for nitty nora from albert rd clinic came to the school of upper thomas street
after her visits on monday morning a couple of days later she would come back with a bag full of brown envelopes for half of thomas street school the teacher fairly never left any one out of the class unless he was one of the posh kids
which was very few the teacher must have had aqbout fifty letters to hand out
she always picked on large familys cor blimey those were the days brenda especialy just after the war years
have a nice day best wishes astonion
 
Stitcher. I pleased you had a 'good' life with your parents. It seems there were 3 boys and one girl in your family - same here. Sorry to hear of your sisters illness - alwas someone with more problems than oneself. It must have been so hard for you all . No one had much but most ALL people were helpful and friendly. Remember the Rabbit Stew - I loved it - my piece of it was the 'ribs' ""!!!!!!! Miriam.
 
I think that most us had a dose of nits. I always caught them after returning to school after the holidays. What about RingWorm ? I believe the way to get rid of it was by applying Gentian Violet. I am sure I must have had it at least once. If any thing was going free I was up for it.
 
Yes the rabbit stew was nice although I don't know if I would enjoy it as much today.
Both my mom and dad had previous marriages as a result of which I had several older step brothers and sisters, three of whom are still alive and kicking, The three of them two male and a female are almost ninety years old.
 
Hello Arkrite, although I remember 'ringworm from my school days I don't recall ever having it. I definately remember the words 'gentian violet'.
 
Stitcher, the last time I had a dose of ring worm was in 1986 when working as a machinist. The chap who worked the machine before me was a part-time dairy milker.I used a pair of his gloves by mistake.It was easy to get rid of using modern creams.
 
Rather you than me Arkrite, I found out the other day that Impetigo is still about.
 
i had impetigo Stitcher, it started on my lip, rather like a cold sore, i was told NOT TO TOUCH IT, but i was only three at the time(what did they expect) unforunately it spread up my face and onto my scalp causing me to have all of my beautiful curls cut off, i never saw the blue face and head i ended up with but my bigger sister used to tease me endlessly, she used to tell me i would be blue forever. When my hair grew back it was straight, not a curl in sight.
 
Stitch
You say that nits are coming back despite the improvements in sanitary conditions in recent years. I personally dont remember any problems when I was at school (1942 to 1954) but you are lucky in the UK to have reasonably cool average temperatures.
Here in South Australia in the summer (now) the nits are rampant & the kids get letters from school on a weekly basis informing which classes are infected (several heads round a moniter). This has nothing to do with personel hygene as I see it.
The 'apparatus' that amuses me is the electronic nit combs - my grandchildren get their hair combed every night with these & you can hear the zap as the eggs/nits are expurged - so much for modern technology but you still go home feeling itchy
 
Hello John, most of our parents treated us on a weekly basis to a hair wash with Derbac soap which would eliminate nits. My dad also treated us to a scraping with a nit comb while we leaned over a sheet of paper, he did this to check for nits and we got the Derbac treatment if it was needed or not. Nits were almost eliminated and Nitty Nora was made redundant. The report in the press said that parents today do not have the time to do as our parents did because they are too busy, and that is the reason for the new 'nit invasion'.
 
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