Let's Talk about Showers! 

(and Bathtubs!)

Showers. A ubiquitous ritual of everyday life. Turn the water on. Let it get to the desired temperature. Get in. Lather up with some soap. Rinse. Repeat the next day. People would be surprised to find out that the modern shower, which was less that, and more a hand pump running the same dirty water over you again and again, first appeared in the 1700s. Early showers were more rudimentary, requiring water to be pailed in, and poured in a steady stream, and found in Egypt, Mesopotamia, Greece, and Rome. Or honestly waterfalls. People were also using tubs to get themselves clean. Clay tubs, wooden tubs, porcelain tubs. Royalty would soak in tubs. Commoners would soak in tubs, showing that the tub was not class exclusive. Amazingly, the concept of “bathtub, sink, toilet, shower” all in one room inside private domicile, is a very modern concept. Latrines had usually been in separate rooms. Bathtubs and showers were communal. The sink was elsewhere. We take these rooms for granted. The tub-shower combo, for granted. Let’s get into the sudsy backstory. 

Streams of Water, Flowing and Pumping

So, before there were vessels, before aqueducts and pipes carried water through bathhouses, and streams of water fell from stone walls, there were waterfalls. The original shower. The pool of water below. The original tub. Unfortunately, waterfalls were not found everywhere, and people needed to get clean. So the pitcher would be the next best thing. One of the earliest known tubs dates back to around 1700 BC, to the Minoans on Crete — terracotta, or clay. Centuries later, the Greek bathhouse ran on the same simple principle. Many a tub for many a bather. The bather would sit in a "hip-tub" while they anointed themselves with oils. They would use a strigil, a curved metal tool designed to remove the gunk. Then an attendant would pour water over them from a pitcher to wash everything off. This was the heart of the ancient Greek bathhouse.

Roman bathhouses systematized this. Hot rooms. Colder rooms. Heated floors. Aqueducts carrying water throughout the bathhouse. Bather would anoint themselves with oil. Scrape with the strigil. Exfoliate with pumice if need be. Then into the “shower” they went to wash off. Now, the Islamic world took the architecture of the Roman thermae, bathhouses, as inspiration for the hammams. This is when the space and the heat remain Roman, while the cleansing is transformed with certain adaptations. Bathers would now lather with scratchy mitts called kese. They would use clays like rhassoul (Shout Out, Atlas Bars), and wash themselves with soaps, both hard bars and softer pastes. 

This was the protocol for antiquity. Then with the industrial revolution, the mechanical shower via water pump was patented. Albeit, it was hand-cranked. Water would be recycled from basin to overhead basin, back to basin, then again, reusing the same dirty water. But, it was a start. Next came the Regency Shower. Now, the dirty recycled basin water could be warmed. It was freestanding. 10 feet tall! It was upgradable. Then came ideas like  the “needle shower”. This was a caged set of pipes that shot water at you from all directions. 

The first public showers arrived at the end of the 19th century, introduced by Dr. François Delabost in a prison in Rouen, and soon after in military barracks. These were a different animal from the Regency shower of two generations prior. Water flowed one way and continuously, driven by pressure, draining away through grates instead of recycling back over you. Delabost's reasoning was brutally practical: a steam engine heated the water in minutes, and eight men could wash at once on a fraction of the water a bath would take. Showers were cheaper and faster than baths — which is exactly why institutions embraced them first.

From there the idea drifted home. But a private shower was a luxury, and the tub was already there — so people showered in the tub. The grand version, the ornate "canopy shower," was expensive and rare; for everyone else, companies simply sold shower attachments that fitted over the existing bath. The result was the tub-shower combo, the compromise that bridged the gap. In American homes it had become common by mid-century; in Britain the shower lagged, not a true household staple until the 1960s and beyond. 

And so as you turn off the lukewarm water, and dry off, bathroom full of steam, one can’t help think. What about bathhouses? When did steam become communal? Whats the difference between hammams and banyas? Were they always spiritual? Thoughts for another day.