Lizzie Borden Society Forum

A friend sent me this list. He doesn't cite a source but it looks about right.

The Year 1904

The year is 1904...one hundred years ago...what a difference a century makes! Here are some of the U.S. statistics for 1904. The average life expectancy in the U.S. was 47 years.

Only 14 Percent of the homes in the U.S. had a bathtub.

Only 8 percent of the homes had a telephone.

A three-minute call from Denver to New York City cost eleven dollars.

There were only 8,000 cars in the U.S., and only 144 miles of paved roads.

The maximum speed limit in most cities was 10 mph.

Alabama, Mississippi, Iowa, and Tennessee were each more heavily populated than California. With a mere 1.4 million residents, California was only the 21st- most populated state in the Union.

The tallest structure in the world was the Eiffel Tower.

The average wage in the U.S. was 22 cents an hour.

The average U.S. worker made between $200 and $400 per year.

A competent accountant could expect to earn $2,000 per year, a dentist $2,500 per year, a veterinarian between $1,500 and $4,000 per year, and a mechanical engineer about $5,000 per year.

More than 95 percent of all births in the U.S. took place at home.

Ninety percent of all U.S. physicians had no college education. Instead, they attended medical schools, many of which were condemned in the press and by the government as "substandard."

Sugar cost four cents a pound. Eggs were fourteen cents a dozen.

Coffee cost fifteen cents a pound.

Most women only washed their hair once a month, and used borax or egg yolks.

Canada passed a law prohibiting poor people from entering the country for any reason.

The five leading causes of death in the U.S. were:

1. Pneumonia and influenza
2. Tuberculosis
3. Diarrhea
4. Heart disease
5. Stroke

The American flag had 45 stars. Arizona, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Hawaii, and Alaska hadn't been admitted to the Union yet.

The population of Las Vegas, Nevada, was 30.

Crossword puzzles, canned beer, and iced tea hadn't been invented.

There was no Mother's Day or Father's Day.

One in ten U.S. adults couldn't read or write. Only 6 percent of all Americans had graduated high school.

Marijuana, heroin, and morphine were all available over the counter at corner drugstores. According to one pharmacist, "Heroin clears the complexion, gives buoyancy to the mind, regulates the stomach and the bowels, and is, in fact, a perfect guardian of health."

18 percent of households in the U.S. had at least one full-time servant or domestic.

There were only about 230 reported murders in the entire U.S.

How fascinating!! I wonder how many times a week Lizzie washed her hair, and what she used to do so. I remember learning once that some products (eggs in particular) are actually cheaper today when adjusted for inflation. Thanks for this interesting tidbit. I'll bet Lizzie had one of those cars!!! It is reported she owned one of the first cars in Fall River.

Instead of prussic accid she should have gotten some marijuana at the drug store.

She and Bridget could have smoked it and then proceeded to eat all that leftover mutton and laugh at Abby's hair switch before heading over to Alice's to tip over her outhouse.

# 3 Diarrhea? Dehydrated probably today?
Interesting Harry!

Thanks, Harry, interesting stuff. For what its worth, I found this, it doesn't say how often though.

Victorian America

*In the Victorian Age, women made a shampoo from white Castile soap and water.
*Victorian women often rubbed eggs into their scalps to remove dandruff and to condition the hair and scalp.
*To create shine, women rubbed Vaseline into their scalps and brushed it through their hair.
*Table salt was rubbed into hair and brushed out to clean the scalp and revitalize the hair.
*To treat oily hair, Victorians mixed Bay Rum with tincture of Catharides (A toxic preparation of the crushed, dried bodies of the beetle Lytta vesicatoria once used as a counter-irritant for skin blisters and as an aphrodisiac). This mixture was rubbed into the hair and scalp each day.
*Hair loss was treated by applying a mixture of cologne, spirit of camphor and tincture of cantharides to hair roots each night. Another preventative measure called for mixing tincture of cantharides with Jamaica Rum, Glycerine, Sesqui-Carbonate of Ammonia, Rosemary Oil and Distilled Water.
*Straight hair was artificially curled by applying a mixture of borax, gum Arabic, hot water and spirit of camphor to hair before rolling it.
*Hair was lightened by washing with bi-carbonate of soda.
*Vigorous brushing was the most prescribed hair care treatment. Using a stiff brush was supposed to keep the hair soft and shiny, while a soft brush was believed to stimulate hair growth.
*Hairpieces and extensions were popular to enhance a lady's assets and could be purchased via mail order for $3-$5.

From this site:http://www.longhairlovers.com/remedies.html

Just in case you were wondering:

In 1872 Chesebrough patented (U.S. No. 127,568) the process of making petroleum jelly. The patent said that distillation by heat under vacuum involves less heat than without the vacuum, and yields a better quality of jelly. The product is then filtered through bone-black. The patent says its uses include currying, stuffing, and oiling all kinds of leather. The finest grade of petroleum is also adapted for use as a pomade for the hair. It is also an excellent treatment for chapped hands.

Robert Harry @ Mon May 17, 2004 6:49 pm wrote:I'll bet Lizzie had one of those cars!!!

That's an interesting question when Lizzie got her first car. 1904 may have been a little early as cars then could not have been all that reliable.

Looking through Rebello, I found that the garage at Maplecroft wasn't erected until 1911 (page 287) but that doesn't mean she didn't have car earlier than that. I can't see parking the car other than in a garage though.

She employed a Joseph H. Tatro (also spelled Tetrault) who is described as a "coachman" from 1899-1902 and from 1904-1908.

Anybody have better information at hand before I go digging?

Susan, you are amazing!! I KNEW you could answer my question about hair care in Lizzie's day. Knowing how fanatical my sweetie is about washing her hair and bathing daily, I can't imagine a time when women went days without a bath or shampoo and rubbed all that junk in their hair. I still wonder how often Lizzie bathed and what kind of soap, etc. she would have used and WHERE the Bordens bathed. My mother grew up in a house without plumbing (she was born in 1913) and she took a bath religiously once a week in a bathtub in the kitchen with boiled water pour in the tub "whether she needed it or not!!" I guess people were less persnickety back then.

Lizzie's first car appears to have been a Packard at least according to Kent's Forty Whacks, page 207:

"Before she bought her sleek Packard and acquired a chauffeur, Lizzie went shopping and to her social engagements in her pony cart."

That's interesting, Harry! I wonder why ponies instead of horses? I have seen old photos of New York City with a lady driving herself in a pony cart. Maybe ponies were easier to handle. You're right, though, she must not have had a car without a place to put it, so the 1911 garage was probably built for it.

Just my opinion:
I think a lady arriving smelling of pony or horse would not be something to Lizbeth's liking. She would and could get an auto first thing even without a grage. I'd think the garage came after an auto, in the invention department?
Stables were probably converted?
We have that photo of Maplecroft (date in dispute) where an auto is parked on the street. 1910? I can't recall the decision on the date.

You're welcome, Robert Harry. I found more info from an 1893 publication by Lady Colin Campbell:

" No slop-buckets or water-cans should be seen, nor should any dresses or other paraphernalia be visible; everything of that kind should be hidden from sight in special closets or cupboards near at hand. If the dressing. room does not adjoin the bath-room, the tub, of which we shall speak farther on, should be brought each day into the dressing-room for the daily sponge bath, which replaces the larger bath one may have to go and take elsewhere, or which may be forbidden on account of health."

" Regular bathing should enter into the habits of all classes of society. If it is absolutely impossible to immerse oneself completely every day in a large bath, or if it is forbidden by the doctor, a sponge-bath may be considered sufficient for the needs of cleanliness and health.
The human skin is a complicated network, whose meshes it is necessary to keep free and open, so that the body may be enabled through them to eliminate the internal impurities, from which it is bound to free itself, under pain of sickness, suffering, and possible death. The healthy action of the pores of the skin is stimulated by the bath, especially if it is followed by friction with a flesh-glove or a rough towel. One can dispense with massage if one objects to be manipulated by a strange hand. Both fevers and contagious maladies of many kinds are often avoided by such simple precautions as these."

I would think that Lizzie would take daily sponge-baths and probably took a full bath one day a week. Having to heat up alot of water and drag one of those hipbaths up to her room sounds like it would have been alot of work.

At first I thought you were quoting the Lady Colin Campbell of the Diana Years.
I found the other one as well:
"Gertrude Elizabeth, Lady Colin Campbell (1858-1911), Journalist and socialite
Sitter in 1 portrait
Journalist and socialite; separated from Lord Campbell after a notorious court case, 1886. After Campbell’s death in 1895, she re-established her standing in society as art critic of The World and the Art Journal and editor of the Ladies Field, which reflected her interests as a sportswoman and dilettante."
http://www.npg.org.uk/live/search/perso ... ID=mp00721

Thanks, Kat. Sorry, that I didn't put more info, I closed the page before I put in the URL, I'll have to see if I can find it again. Lady Colin Campbell has a whole dissertation on regular bathing and how dressing rooms and bathrooms should be layed out, interesting reading.

I liked the info provided. It was fine.
Some may demur, because the info is for England.
I've had that happen to me.
Thanks for what you did provide.

Yes, that is true, there can be differences as to what was accepted behaviour in Europe vs. the U.S. From what I've read, Europe started the full body bathing trend and the U.S. followed. I did a search to see what I could find on nineteenth century bathing practices.

I found this:

In the 1840s, the bathtub was widely denounced as an "epicurean English innovation which would surely corrupt the democratic simplicity of the Republic." By the 1890s, the Saturday night bath was an American tradition.

From this site: http://www.pmmag.com/CDA/ArticleInforma ... 51,00.html

And this:

Modern society regards as uncouth the person who doesn't wash and deodorize every day. Yet this is a custom of relatively recent vintage. As recently as the 1950s many working-class Americans still lived in cold water flats without a bathtub. For persons who grew up in humble circumstances, bathing once a week was the norm - traditionally on Saturday night in order to be clean for church services the next day. Daily bathing was simply too inconvenient, more a luxury than a necessity.

Cultural acceptance of daily bathing was sparked in great measure by an annual "Bath a Day" campaign mounted by the plumbing industry to promote sales of bathtubs and related products. The campaign was originated in 1914 by the old Domestic Engineering magazine. A few years later it was adopted and expanded by the Trade Extension Bureau, forerunner of today's Plumbing-Heating-Cooling Information Bureau, which came into existence in 1919. The soap industry soon joined in with an allied effort of extensive consumer promotion.

From this site:

http://www.pmmag.com/CDA/ArticleInforma ... 43,00.html

And this:

Soon upper-class Americans were adopting these notions and practices as well. By the 1790s, wealthy families in Philadelphia, New York, and Boston were bathing completely with their own chamber sets. Over the next 40 years, the customs of cleanliness "trickled down" from the elite to the prosperous, then to the moderately comfortable. They spread from city to village and, slowly, from village to farm. By the 1830s bathing was probably universal among wealthy, cultivated urban families, increasingly common among the aspiring upper-middling in cities, accepted by a steadily growing number of families in rural center villages, and still fairly rare in the countryside.

Adding cleanliness to the agenda of agricultural reform, The New England Farmer and other journals expounded the gospel of bathing to farm families, fearing that farmers were falling far behind their village neighbors. By 1850 this new standard of bodily cleanliness had become solidly identified with respectability throughout New England.

From this site:
http://www.osv.org/education/OSVisitor/ ... tails.html

And this:

It was generally believed that the best practice was to wash with cold water every day and take one warm bath each week. "Warm bathing is highly useful to the health," said Mrs. Farrar in The Young Lady's Friend in 1838, "and if properly indulged in has no debilitating effect."6

But what a great nuisance it was to heat the water on the hearth and then carry it to wherever the tub was placed. There was a very definite problem in cold weather of having a warm room with privacy—practically an impossibility when the only warm room was near the fireplace where the family gathered. Mrs. Farrar described in detail the proper method of bathing, suggesting that it should be done early in the morning or late in the evening when privacy was most likely. Then, she advised, the whole body could be gone over with a cloth or sponge from one large washbowl full of water. Because so many people were unused to water, except on their hands and faces, one practitioner of hydropathy, Dr. Joel Shaw, prepared an instruction pamphlet entitled How to Bathe.

From this site: http://deseretbook.com/mormon-life/news ... ory_id=626

Thank you! The facts for America are very useful!
I have been swimming in a pool every day lately and then showering after. It seems redundant. I never felt so clean and smell a bit like chlorine. It seems like a waste of time and towels!

One of my Uncles never took a bath and he often came over to visit us when I was growing up.

Guess who's bed he slept in? Bloody hell man, that bed stunk to high heaven when he left! I almost had to burn the blankets and sheets! I never smelt something so rank in my life! My dog liked to roll around in an old rotten animal carcass but he had nothing on my Uncle! Gawl!!

When I was in high school one of the guys never took a bath. Out of all 1600 kids in the school, guess who he had to make friends with? He smelt so bad I could smell him before he even got into the class room. The stink was so strong I had to turn my head away just so I could breathe. It made my eyes water and burn. I couldn't believe someone could stink so bad and still be alive. Stink, stank and stunk!

My Dad was in the Navy with a guy who never bathed. One day, after repeated warnings, all the guys stripped that guy, got him into the shower and scrubbed him down with soap (the kind with grit in it) and a scrub brush! He came out beet-red. He got the point. From that point on he showered every day!

Shouldn't there be a law against stinky people? I wish.

-1bigsteve (o: