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This book examines the role of linen undergarments in concepts of propriety and health in early-modern England. Acknowledging the difficulties in researching the habits of cleanliness in the past, particularly the unreliability of personal testimony for reasons of bias and modesty, the study sets out a methodology for researching aspects of bodily hygiene, first delineating in full what the advice was in both conduct and medical literature. By incorporating not only dress, social and medical histories, but also evidence from surviving clothing, the book serves as an example of an interdisciplinary methodology and a potential model for other histories of other "unspoken" subjects.
List of contents
Introduction1. Digging the Dirt in the Pursuit of Cleanliness
Part I: What Was Linen?2. Wearing Linen
3. Owning Linen
Part II: Why Was "Clean Linen" Necessary?4. Manners, Health and Linen
5. Insensible Perspiration and Flannel
6. Contagion and Clean Linen
7. Acquiring the Habit of Cleanliness and Staying Clean
Part III: The Life Cycle of Linen8. Manufacturing Linens
9. Sewing Linens
10. Washing Linen
11. The Washerwoman
12. Mechanising Washing and Recycling Linen
Conclusion13. ...Necessary for the Preservation of their Healths...
About the author
Susan North is Curator of Fashion, 1550-1800 at the Victoria & Albert Museum.
Summary
This book examines the role of linen undergarments in concepts of propriety and health in early-modern England. While medical history has written about hygiene, dress historians about linen undergarments, and women’s history about laundry, this is the first book to bring these separate narratives together. Acknowledging the difficulties in researching the habits of cleanliness in the past, particularly the unreliability of personal testimony for reasons of bias and modesty, the study sets out a methodology for researching aspects of bodily hygiene, first delineating in full what the advice was in both conduct and medical literature. In the latter, clean "wearing" linen was believed to play an important role in good health, and dirty linen implicated in the spread of disease - particularly plague and "fevers." However, the relationship between medical theory and the practice of "clean linen" proved to be a complicated one. Research has uncovered specific hypotheses during the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries that proposed that flannel was a better material for undergarments, and that providing clean linens for a fever patient might prove fatal. Dress and Hygiene in Early Modern England analyses these conflicting concepts during the long-seventeenth century, and their resolution in favour of "clean linen" in the late eighteenth century. By incorporating not only dress, social and medical histories, but also evidence from surviving clothing, the book serves as an example of an interdisciplinary methodology and a potential model for other histories of other "unspoken" subjects.
