Categories
Health and Living

The first appearance of the shower or “rain bath” in New York

With major improvements in plumbing and home design, private ‘rain-baths’ or showers began to be installed in the wealthier American homes. This is a New York Times advertisement from November 11, 1914 for a Kenney Needle Shower which inundated the body with water from multiple showerheads.   The modern form of shower was once referred… Read More

Categories
Women's History

Why women do not deserve the right to vote — according to a prominent 1914 anti-suffragist

Suffragists are just women who can’t get a man, according to this postcard. (Courtesy June Purvis/History Extra) Just as support for women’s suffrage was on the rise by the 1910s, there were equally as vehement opponents to those expanded rights. The anti-suffragist movement based its objections on several points that adhered strongly to the stability of civilization… Read More

Categories
Those Were The Days

History in the Making 10/29: Gilded Age Gothic Edition

— Death Becomes Her: A Century of Mourning Attire, the morbidly elegant new show at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, looks at 19th century customs of grief through public fashion.  These garments, from 1815-1915, exhibit an undeniable grace and serenity, but they also signal more concrete associations to the recently passed. Some gowns were specifically… Read More