Kotex ad emphasizing shame,
1992
See Kotex items: First ad (1921) -
ad 1928 (Sears and
Roebuck catalog) - Lee
Miller ads (first real person in a
menstrual hygiene ad, 1928) - Marjorie May's Twelfth
Birthday (booklet for girls, 1928,
Australian edition; there are many links here to
Kotex items) - Preparing
for Womanhood (1920s, booklet for girls;
Australian edition) - 1920s booklet in Spanish
showing disposal
method - box
from about 1969 - "Are
you in the know?" ads (Kotex) (1949)(1953)(1964)(booklet, 1956) - See
more ads on the Ads for
Teenagers main page
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Did women send washable menstrual pads to
special laundries?
Newspaper evidence, 1909,
U.S.A.
We know that at least some American
women wore washable menstrual pads
(see three Norwegian
washables from the 19th century)
in the 19th and 20th centuries,
especially before Kotex started (early 1920s).
Someone washed the cloth pads and
dried them, to be worn again.
But who washed them? It
probably wasn't a pleasant business
for most women - see a riveting Kotex
ad from 1921 - and I assumed
most women washed them themselves; the
rich left them to a servant, as in the
Kotex ad.
But the help-wanted ad, below, makes
me wonder if some women sent them to
special companies to wash.
Did "Sanitary Towel Laundry Company"
mean a company that washed towels used
to dry hands and bodies, sanitary
describing the healthful process and
result, or a laundry that washed
reusable menstrual pads?
In a menstrual context "sanitary
towel" means a menstrual pad, a
sanitary napkin. The ads below the
help-wanted ad show this usage in
America and Great Britain. (Read more
words and phrases
for pads and menstruation.)
I believe the Magdalene laundries in
Ireland and England washed menstrual
pads; undoubtedly other laundries did
also.
If this ad means menstrual pads I
wonder how common these laundries
were.
Can anyone help
with this problem?
Yes, someone
can! Ben Truwe e-mailed me
that his newspaper research located
similar ads, including
I just reviewed a bunch of old ads
for the Sanitary Towel Laundry of
Lincoln, Nebraska, and a lot of ads
were like the one you have on your
web site. A few, however, instead of
just looking for "girls," were
looking for "jacket ironers," mangle
(ironing machine) girls, and girls
with sewing experience. So it sounds
like STL wasn't laundering sanitary
napkins.
BUT . . . the MOST compelling
evidence that they weren't
laundering sanitary napkins is the
fact that I just searched the phrase
"sanitary towel" through the
hundreds of thousands of newspaper
pages newspaperarchive.com has
indexed for the years 1908 through
1910, and the ONLY use of that
phrase, in any context, was by the
Sanitary Towel Laundry in Lincoln,
Nebraska. It doesn't appear in ads,
it doesn't appear in the names of
other companies in other cities who
are washing sanitary napkins. Inescapably,
"sanitary towel" meant a clean
towel and nothing else in 1908
through 1910.
I again thank the kind genealogy
researcher and retired teacher who
found this interesting ad!
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Below:
See the second
ad; from the Nebraska State
Journal, Lincoln, Nebraska, Dec. 17,
1909.
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Below:
these ads show American usage of the
term sanitary towel, the left one the
year before the above help-wanted ad.
Below left:
from the Sears, Roebuck catalog of
1908. Right:
from November 21, 1921, Oakland
[California] Tribune. The apostrophe
should stand between the r and s. See
more early
washable pad and belt ads, and
more about America's first disposable
pad, Lister's.
Bottom:
English brand disposable pads ad from
a Newnes sixpenny paperback novel,
about 1905. See more Southall's.
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See ads
for menarche-education booklets: Marjorie
May's Twelfth Birthday (Kotex,
1933), Tampax
tampons (1970, with Susan Dey), Personal Products
(1955, with Carol Lynley), and German
o.b. tampons
(lower ad, 1981)
See also the booklets
How shall I
tell my daughter? (Modess,
various dates), Growing
up and liking it (Modess,
various dates), and Marjorie May's
Twelfth Birthday (Kotex, 1928).
And read Lynn Peril's series
about these and similar booklets!
See another ad
for As One Girl to Another (1942), and
the booklet
itself.
© 2006 Harry Finley. It is illegal
to reproduce or distribute any of the
work on this Web site in any manner or
medium without written permission of
the author. Please report suspected
violations to hfinley@mum.org
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