Copyright @ Jane Austen’s World
Before that you suffer it to be washed, lay it all night in urine, the next day rub all the spots in the urine as if you were washing in water; then lay it in more urine another night and then rub it again, and so do till you find they be quite out.
Hannah Woolley, The Compleat Servant-Maid, 1677
The Last Shift, Carrington Bowles
Urine for spot cleaning? Yes, you read the first word correctly. Since the middle ages, professionals belonging to guilds manufactured soap and candles, for both products required tallow. They traditionally manufactured soaps from sodium or potassium salt or alkalis present in plant materials, and boiled the ingredients with animal fat. In the 19th century, it was discovered how to make caustic soda from brine. Soap makers no longer relied on cut wood to make soap and the cleaning industry was never the same again.
Before innovations during the Industrial Revolution changed laundry day forever, it was generally known that that alkaline substances, such as bleach or ash, dissolved or disintegrated stains and soils, enhancing the water’s ability to clean clothes.
Urine is alkaline, and since the days of ancient Rome, this by-product of the human body was used as a bleaching agent. “Pecunia non olet — money does not stink”, Emperor Vespasian reportedly said when he started taxing this trade.*
Yes, urine stinks. But so do bleach and vinegar, a weak acid. The stinking ingredient that turns us off and that makes urine such a good cleaning agent – ammonia – is a substance that our modern cleaning products include in abundance.** Eighteenth century English wool manufacturers used both urine and sheep or pig manure for washing. In addition, urine also sets dye. (The seller of my beautiful little handmade rug from Turkey cautioned that its vegetable dyes were set with goat urine. Twenty years after its purchase, the rug no longer smells, but its fragile colors must be vigilantly protected from direct sunlight.)
As recently as the early 20th century, urine was collected in barrels in Japan and fermented for use in laundering. The Japanese threw the contents of their slop jar into the barrel, then separated the feces from the liquid urine. The feces were used as fertilizer to enrich the soil, and the urine was collected by laundry shops, who fermented the liquid and used it as a bleaching agent by pounding it into the cloth. – Edible Soap, A Harmless Natural Soap for the Family. It is the fermentation process that probably made urine safe to handle, much like fermented beer or distilled alcohol were safe to drink in the days before sterilization.
Urine from the animal of choice was also used to improve the complexion. Samuel Pepys’ wife decided to try the urine of puppies (‘puppy-dog water’), for instance, in March 1664 (Diary of Samuel Pepys). This may have been less foolish than spending a hundred bucks on a small pot of modern-day moisturiser, since the ‘active’ ingredient in urine is urea, and urea creams are inexpensive, effective and regularly recommended by dermatologists. – The Thirteenth Depository: A Wheel of Time Blog
This YouTube video uses urine to demonstrate that it is as powerful a cleanser as commercial products.
More on the Topic
- The Gentle Woman’s Companion, 1678, Electronic Book
- The British Housewife, Gilly Lehmann
- The Whole Duty of a Woman, A Guide to the Female Sex, 1695
- The Country Housewife’s Family Companion
- Colonial Soap Making: Its History and Techniques
- Pioneer Soap Making
Jane Austen's World 
Wow. I’m speechless. ….
Thank you, Vic, for such an enriching, informative article… which blessedly doesn’t stink. :)
i must say yippee for clorox!
also…i watched a couple of other human guinea pigs after this….the one on leeches could fit with this period too!
Old wives tale that has been in my family for as long as I can remember – and, I worked for a dermatologist, heard it there as well, for getting rid of warts, apply urine for a couple of weeks and it will dissolve the wart.
A most interesting post today!!!
I heard that urea works well for curing athlete’s foot too!
Ok I’m sure it’s based on science…it still just sounds horrible. After all cloth diapers and training panties get urinated on regularly and they don’t seem so clean…..
Mind expanding…your research is truly…mind expanding.
Just love it when you talk dirty, Vic.
At the beginning of the trench warfare in WWI when the Germans exploded cannisters of deadly gas over British trenches this is one of the first deterrents explained,
“Even at Second Ypres, Germany, still unsure of the weapon’s effectiveness, only issued breathing masks to the engineers handling the gas. At Ypres a Canadian medical officer, who was also a chemist, quickly identified the gas as chlorine and recommended that the troops urinate on a cloth and hold it over their mouth and nose.”
Yes, I watched the whole video. Very funny Vic!
My mother-in-law, a firm believer in ‘old wives tales’ while holding our first born on her lap volunteered to change her wet nappie. She whipped it off and wiped our daughter’s face with it chattering away that it would give her a good complexion because she was breastfed.
Need I tell you how we felt – I thought I would drop over!! This was in 1975 (the olden days, right). When people compliment her on how lovely she is, I always whisper in her ear, ‘thanks to Nana’.
Oh wow, there is just so much I learn from this blog. More than History classes anyway.;) urine as a cleansing product? Just, well, I wonder why we emit it, if its so useful?
Thanks for another amazing post Vic.
Holy crap or should I say urine, I had no idea! I’m pretty sure, now that I know this I will never use it but still it’s a funny trivia fact. Too interesting!
Yuck! I guess one of the advantages of living in the here and now is the invention of bleach :)
[…] Babyies wore linen clouts, the 18th century form of a thick cloth diaper, which was pinned with straigtht pins (ouch) or tied with with lacings. The clout was covered by a pilcher, a garment that offered another layer of protection. Today’s pilcher has a plastic lining to prevent urine from leaking through. (Do recall from a previous post, that the 18th century attitude towards urine was different than ours in that urea was regarded as a disinfectant.) […]
[…] For those who are equally as fascinated with topics of an earthy nature as I am, here’s another post: Urea, a 17th & 18th Spot Remover, or Pee as a Cleansing Agent […]