Hot Women of History: How Women Dealt With Heat and Hygiene.

As I sit in my air-conditioned house and drive my air-conditioned car, wearing shorts, sandals, and a breezy cotton top, I wonder how women of the past dealt with hot weather. Thinking of all their layers upon layers makes me melt.  Where’s my fan? 

So how did women tolerate the heat?

Perhaps part of the answer is simple:  the change in seasons comes gradually, allowing the body time to adjust.  Plus, it’s relative.  Sixty degrees in April feels warm while sixty degrees in September feels cool. The body adjusts and fabrics change weight and color. 

In “Gone With the Wind” the ladies at the barbecue retire to the shade-darkened bedrooms, strip down to their underwear and nap during the heat of the day.  Daily schedules changed to fit the temperature. People often got up dawn, took a breather in the heat of the day, and went back to work in the cooler evenings.

During the late 1800’s, the wealthy families of the stifling east-coast cities moved their entire households to mansions that took advantage of the ocean breezes of Newport, Rhode Island. People with porches or basements slept wherever they could catch a breeze.  Women carried parasols—which I found handy in Rome.  Note my light-colored cotton clothing.

In the middle ages, the church thought nakedness was evil and baths could make you sick.  Eventually logic prevailed. Later, washing the body, washing the face, and eliminating waste were achieved in three distinct areas: a portable bath tub in the kitchen near the heat source, a wash basin in the bedroom, and an outhouse.  Or a chamber pot—which was emptied in a cess pit in the basement or outdoors.  Putting all the functions in one place didn’t come about until the 1900’s.

If women were traveling, where did they relieve themselves?  They could use outhouses at inns, or if in the country walk away from the wagon or stagecoach, lift their skirts and squat in the grass. Sometimes a fellow woman would spread a shawl or skirt to afford some privacy.  There’s a scene in the movie, “Mrs. Brown” that shows Queen Victoria relieving herself in the woods. Pantaloons were often split in the middle which allowed for this amid all the other skirt layers.

Now comes a question we rarely ask.  How did women handle their periods?  Pads and tampons have been around since ancient times. Moss, leather, and other fabrics were tied around waists or even inserted when wrapped around a stick. In some tribal cultures, women were ostracized during their periods.  But for the most part rags were used, washed, and reused.  And women of status often withdrew during that time, keeping to their rooms—which I suspect played into the image of females being weaker and more fragile than men.

People didn’t wash their clothes often either. To cover the stench they used perfume and pomanders. If everyone smelled, did they get used to it? 

I am so glad I live when I do.  Take a look at my Pinterest board:  What a Lady Wore Beneath it All then check out over 2000 links to wonderful historical fashion!

 

What could you give up:  Air conditioning, a bathroom, or modern clothing?//Nancy

The Roots of a Dream: The Transcontinental Railroad

Just released is my novel, The Journey of Josephine Cain, which places a spoiled rich girl from Washington D.C. smack dab in the middle of the building of the Transcontinental Railroad after the Civil War.  

 It’s 1866. The Civil War has ended. Tens of thousands of war-weary soldiers need work—and beyond that, a purpose. They long for inspiration and a way to feel united again, a way to feel proud of their country.

Enter the Transcontinental Railroad project. Up until this time, if you wanted to travel from coast to coast, you could take a train as far as Council Bluffs, Iowa or Sacramento, California. Then you’d have to get off the train and go overland by stagecoach or wagon train. It would take six arduous months over mountains, deserts, and rivers.

Before the war, in August 1859, Abraham Lincoln was in Council Bluffs to check on some land that was collateral for a debt, and met with Grenville Dodge where they discussed the possibility of a transcontinental railroad stretching to the Pacific. They stood together on a bluff and looked west, and Dodge (who would become a brigadier general in the war) made a case for going directly across the prairie of the Nebraska territory. Since there was no bridge over the Missouri River between Council Bluffs and Omaha, it was logical to start the project in Omaha.

In 1862, after Lincoln became president, he signed the Pacific Railway Act and created the Union Pacific Railroad. Then he instructed the Union Pacific and Central Pacific to construct America’s first transcontinental railroad connecting Omaha and Sacramento, the Central Pacific heading east, and the Union Pacific heading west. Bonuses were given for miles of track laid, and promises of land for towns was enticing. A lot was at stake for many, many people.

Work started in 1865 and was completed in May 1869 at Promontory Summit, Utah. During those four grueling years ex-Confederate soldiers worked side by side with ex-Union soldiers—and ex-slaves. Imagine that. A year earlier they were killing each other. It’s astonishing. And it wasn’t just Americans who worked on the project. Tens of thousands of immigrants left their homelands to work on the railroad. On the Central Pacific line Chinese workers were the prominent work force, and on the Union Pacific, the Irish led the way.

 

Men were paid varying wages according to their job: $2.50-4.00, or an average of $90/month. Yet the railroad deducted $20/month for food and board. The workers endured long days of backbreaking work, rough living conditions, harsh weather, and the threat of accidents and Indian attacks. Plus, as the railroads entered the Wild West, they came into contact with many people who’d come west to escape iffy pasts and held the law in disdain. Outlaws, shysters, murderers, and con men. Along the way, Hell on Wheel towns followed the crews—just like they’d followed the soldiers in the war—offering booze, gambling, and prostitution.

Why did the men do the work? It gave them food in their bellies, money in their pockets, and even more than that, pride in working toward something big, a project many called impossible. Because of their dedication and courage that six month trip from Omaha to Sacramento was cut down to a few days!

With all this drama and passion in the air it’s not surprising that a pampered general’s daughter from Washington D.C. would find herself a fish out of water. My character Josephine Cain has some choices to make when she is assailed with these rough experiences along the rails. She can choose to run home to what she knows, marry a family friend, and continue life according to the status quo. Or she can cower and be intimidated by the strange new world of the West. Or . . . she can be challenged by the possibilities, and tap into the strong woman she never knew she was. Guess which choice Josephine makes . . .

Come along on this amazing journey of discovery, courage, and faith and be a part of the American dream!

 

 

 

Read an excerpt from The Journey of Josephine Cain here.  Buy it at your favorite bookstores: Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or Christian Book .  It's available in paperback or eBook.

Check out Josephine's storyboard on Pinterest. and loads of 1860's fashion here!

I bought three elephants this week.

Really. This little guy on the right was at a local rummage store and my grand-kids have already gotten far more than seven dollars worth of joy out of it. Isn't he adorable?

I imagine some grandpa working in his shop, cutting the pieces, painting the gray ... and then outlining the "saddle" and the cap with those little silver brads. Just too cute not to bring home.

The other two elephants are one-dimensional, embroidered by an unknown hand onto a crazy quilt I won on an online auction. What inspired the maker? Did she love the circus? Had the circus just come through town?

Imagine seeing a live elephant for the first time ... perhaps the only time in a lifetime of days spent on the prairie in the 1800s. The biggest of the two elephants has blue eyes. I love that touch of whimsy ... and even though this quilt is far from "fine" and even though no one else seemed to want it, I'm glad to give it a home. It makes me smile. I think there may be a bit of circus research in my future. I keep remembering sepia-toned photographs I've seen somewhere, of pachyderms making their way down a dusty street in small Nebraska town.