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1930s Hygiene

  • Thread starter Thread starter Stitcher
  • Start date Start date
What a great laugh this was. I remember Aston in the thirties with all the nits, scabs, powks and snotty noses. What beautiful people they really were though with a helping hand to the less fortunate even though they didn't have much themselves. The gossip around the washhouse sinks up the 'Back entry' and the Friday bath in front of the fire. Lovely memories to tell my kids and grandkids who look at me as if I came down in the last ice age. Lovely stuff keep it up for the sake of our history for soon we'll all be gone. Regards, David.
brenda barr said:
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
Click to expand...
 
Carbolic Soap .. around 1960 ish
At the bottom of the road in Willis street somewhere near St Mathews .. I cant remember much because I was little . There was a Bomb peck . We went playing on the bombeck and loved to look through he rubble to see what we could find to play with . We came home with a parcel , me and my sisters crouched down in the yard and started to open it up .Thinking it was something valuable some one had left . to our surprise it was a half eaten tortoise with maggots running through it . Lovely .. we were fascinated and poked it with a stick and stuff. mum grabbed us give us a belting , one by one she took our clothes off and stood us up in this brown sink . she got the scrubbing brush and a bar of carbolic soap and scrubbed us till we were red raw .
I always thought she did this as a punishment to be cruel but she didn't , She did it because she was scared stiff we would catch something nasty . She'd been in Germany after the war when dad was stationed there and has seen a lot of disease .
When I was a young woman I always thought she was guilty of great cruelty and now as an older person I understand she was just worried .
Life is odd isn't it ?
Jean
 
Nice memory Catsclaws, it's surprising what stirs old memories. I think most of were stood in the sink and scrubbed at some time.
 
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