Wherein the people of Georgian England know a clean baby is a slimy baby.
It’s time for my not-so-celebrated annual article about bathing! In reality, it would be time in about two months, but at the rate at which I’m putting out articles these days there’s no guarantee the next one will come out by the end of August, so without further ado…
Have you parents in the audience ever thought, when bathing your baby, that it would be great if you could combine personal hygiene with meal preparation? With the Georgian Bath-O-Matic™ you can start with a squeaky-clean baby and finish with a delicious, gourmet…um…slime.
I’m Gonna Tell You a Big Fat Story, Baby
Bath-time when I was a child was a relatively uncomplicated affair: a tub (or, as a baby, a sink) with a squirt of Mr. Bubble and my mother was set (as a side note, I’ll point out the girl on the Mr. Bubble website is wearing a swimsuit in the bath, which would help her fit right in with Georgians who wore their clothes—including wigs—when taking a medicinal dip). While modern parents have a wide array of cartoon character-branded bath products from which to choose—I love the apprehensive looks on Elsa and Anna’s faces on this Frozen bubble bath, as if they’re thinking, “For crying out loud, are they squirting us into hot water with some naked kid?”—the basic process remains the same.
Bathing babies in Georgian England, however, could be a far more laborious process. Thomas Dawkes describes one method for bathing a newborn in his 1744 The Nurse’s Guide (with a 42-word subtitle I won’t bother to repeat):
Carry it to the Fire-Side, and cleanse it in the Manner following: Having got about a Pint of Wine (or, if the Circumstances of the Family be but mean, as much Small-Beer) dissolve it in a little fresh Butter, and with a Linen-Rag or Spunge dipt in it luke-warm, wash the Child’s Body all over, beginning at the Head (for there you will meet with most of it,) and when you have finish’d the Head, put upon it a woolen Cap, to prevent its taking Cold, and then proceed to wash the rest of the Body; and all being done, wipe the Child dry with a fine warm Cloth, and wrap it up in Swadling Clothes, remembring always, that before you wrap it up you examine all the Parts of the Child, to see if none are amiss, as whether all the Joints are in their proper Position, and whether all the Passages are open as they should be, &c. As soon as you have wrapp’d it up and dress’d it, lay it to sleep. Lay it not on its Back, but on one Side, that the Slime which flows from its Mouth, may have an easy Discharge. You may if you will give it a little Wine sweetened with fine Sugar now and then, to loosen the Phlegm, and strengthen its little Stomach.
While Dawkes doesn’t explain what should be done with the ingredient infused bathwater—not to mention the easily-discharged Slime—I assume it was simply tossed out (perhaps into the street onto an unlucky passerby). When I look at the list of food products in the instructions, though—warm water, wine or beer, butter and sugar (again, not to mention the easily-discharged Slime)—I immediately think of a hearty peasant breakfast. Mix that with a little flour, fry it up, and you’d have a meal that really deserves the name “Bubble and Squeak” (if for no other reason than the baby was probably doing that as it marinated).
I Love to Wash in Your Old Bathwater
Beyond being a tasty treat for the cutting-edge gourmand, I wonder if this boozy, buttery bathwater could also be used as some type of holistic beauty treatment. If we think of the “like treats like” principle from our article on mumia, I can easily imagine someone thinking butter-smooth baby water—infused with genuine baby slime, no less—would be just the thing to give a New Age-y person of a certain age a youthful glow. Such a treatment could very well have Robert Smith singing, “You make me hungry for you…Everything you do is quite delicious.”
Image: The Nativity by Lorenzo Lotto (1527) (Source).
