Read an earlier discussion of this: What did European and
American women use for menstruation in the 19th
century and before?
 
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Some facts about European underwear, 1700 - 1900, and its
relationship to what women used for menstruation
(Part 2, Part 3)
In brief - how's that for a pun! - here's what
I think:
In some societies today, women use no special "device" to absorb
or catch menstrual flow - they simply bleed into their clothing, even if
they must stay in a special place during their period (for example, among
a group in India; I have heard stories about
others).
Apparently many women in certain parts of Europe from 1700 to about 1900
also used nothing special - not rags, not pads, not sponges or anything
else - during menstruation, but bled into their clothing. And, because
most early American settlers came from Europe, this suggests that some
(most? all?) Americans, and probably Canadians, also bled into their clothing
at some point in their nations' histories.
Read my grande finale conclusion, with proof.
(All of the pictures and most of the following information come from
the terrific catalog of the exhibit of the history of underclothing at
the Historical Museum of the City of Frankfurt am Main, Germany, in 1988:
authors, Almut Junker und Eva Stille [Almut is a woman's name], Zur
Geschichte der Unterwäsche 1700-1960. 1988. Historisches Museum
Frankfurt )
In 1700 (and long before) women and men in Germany and France, and
probably other European countries and America, wore a long
shirt from shoulders to calves, a chemise or vest (Hemd, in German; see
the two bottom illustrations on this page), next to their skin,
day and night, not underpants and other items common today. The rich and
upper classes wore fancy versions, the rest simple ones.
Only men wore pants as outer clothing,
a symbol of their authority (in English we
still say "so-and-so wears the pants in the family," as do the
Germans in their language) although women would sometimes wear versions
of them next to their body when riding or when the weather was cold. Later,
with the French Revolution and afterwards, women started to wear long-legged
underpants to shield themselves under diaphanous dresses, but it took decades
for such pants-like underwear to gain wide acceptance among the upper classes
and even longer among the common people. They continued to wear only the
chemise under their clothing for most of the 19th century. Women who wore
traditional regional costume in Germany (and I bet elsewhere) sometimes
wore no underpants until the 1950s.
In 1757 a German doctor gave another reason why women shouldn't wear
pants or closed underwear: her genitals needed air
to allow moisture to evaporate, which could otherwise cause them
to decay (German, "vermodern") and "stink." But he conceded
that women could wear them in cold weather and to protect against insects.
(Christian T. E. Reinhard, in his Satyrische Abhandlung von denen Krankheiten
der Frauenspersonen . . . Teil 2, Berlin/Leipzig, 1757, quoted in Zur Geschichte
der Unterwäsche 1700-1960.)
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An 18th-century woman (this one is from the upper classes) wore
no underpants, just a chemise (long
shirt) under her outer clothing (you can see it run horizontally right under
her breasts), like the common people, as this engraving shows. She sits
on a toilet (Abtritt) while a man peeps at her through the window.
(Copper engraving from the second half of the 18th century, from Volume
2 of Bilderlexikon, published by the Institut für Sexualforschung Wien,
1928-31, and reproduced in Junker und Stille's "Zur Geschichte der
Unterwäsche 1700-1960," 1988, Historisches Museum Frankfurt)
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A doll's chemise (Hemd), about 1785, from the underwear exhibit in the
Historical Museum of Frankfurt (am Main, Germany), and shown in its catalog "Zur
Geschichte der Unterwäsche 1700-1960."
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Three patterns for women's chemises - A and C "á l'Angoise,"
B "á la Françoise" - from Françoise-A. de
Garsault, L'Art de lingére, Paris, 1771,
reproduced in "Zur Geschichte der Unterwäsche 1700-1960."
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