HIT THE SHOWERS

If there’s one thing almost all of us can agree on, it’s the pleasure of a good hot shower. But for most of human history, showers were rare, cold – and usually outdoors!
Think about your last shower, and you can probably figure out where the idea started: waterfalls. Sometime before human history began, an early cave person wandered under a waterfall and discovered the wonderful feel of water on their skin. Probably about the same time, in a different place with geothermal springs, a different cave person discovered a hot pool of water, and the delicious thrill of a warm soak.
It would take a few thousand years for the running water and the heat to get together in our modern bathrooms.
Upper-class ancient Egyptians, who were well supplied with both imagination and servants, were the first to bring the waterfall home. They had special shower rooms, much like our current bath stalls, with drains in the floor. The showering part, though, was entirely different: it didn’t come from a pipe or a head, but from servants pouring out of huge clay jars. Even if you were all right with making a couple of poor unfortunate people work themselves silly dragging water for – and over – you, there was the whole issue of the staff seeing you buck naked.
Not exactly relaxing.
The Romans, as was their habit, took a much more inventive approach. It still took plenty of servants to make it all happen, but they figured out drainage, piping, and even hot water.
Unfortunately, like so many other things, it all got lost in the Dark Ages.
For about a thousand years, humans were back to waterfalls and the hot spring. People weren’t really filthy during this time period, but they certainly didn’t define clean the way we do. It’s another post for another day, but while being seriously stinky was frowned on, their bar for stink was in a whole different place than ours.
Fortunately for all of us, the Industrial Revolution and the Victorians were coming.
The Victorians had plenty of hangups and sexist ideas, but they were big fans of getting and staying clean. As in “cleanliness is next to godliness.”
The first modern shower was invented in the late 1700s, and by the 1810s, there was even a hot version. It took a few more decades to get reliable plumbing so people didn’t have to keep recycling the dirty water.
Even so, showers were still very much an upper-class pleasure. While indoor plumbing was standard by the end of the 19th century, many families had only one bathroom, and they didn’t use it the way we use ours. It was often treated as kind of a clearing-house, where chamber pots were emptied and water drawn to fill old-fashioned bath basins in individual bedrooms.
In the US, showers became an affordable home luxury item in the 1920s, part of the wave of newfangled treats like toasters and vacuum cleaners. Our British friends had to wait another 40 years until they became widespread. By the 1980s, though, everyone was enjoying a good spritz, and a beautiful bathroom became an integral part of a well-appointed home.
As it still is – which you can see on any home show, with the drooling coverage of heated floors, rainforest heads and walls of warm jets. Cleanliness may or may not be the key to spiritual or moral health, but a good hot shower sure makes anybody’s day!

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