Ancient bath - time - why the sheets?

Mosaic | 09:35 Sat 19th Mar 2011 | History

23 Answers

Many images of people having baths in old times show them with a sheet of some kind inside the bath - like this one:

http://en.wikipedia.o...ki/The_Death_of_Marat

So why have a sheet inside the bath? Wouldn't it sort of drip bathwater all over the floor?

why has boudicca/boadicea, got 2 names?

Meeanee Barracks, Colchester.

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Count-A-Strong

I don't think that's a bath

McMouse

I imagine for the sake of modesty when getting in and out of the bath.

Count-A-Strong

It's not a bath!!!

sandyRoe

Marat was stabbed to death...in a bath

boxtops

Yes, it is a bath - Marat was murdered in his bath by Charlotte Corday, it's one of the few bits of history I can drag up at will.
Do you think it was for sanitary reasons, being as they didn't have Cillit Bang in those days?

McMouse

It is a bath and Marat died in it.

Count-A-Strong

Bleedin French!

tiggerblue10

OK its a Bain then!

ladyalex

Maybe it was to make it more comfortable than sitting straight on to the metal/wooden bath ?

pastafreak

It is described as a bath in this analysis of the painting.

http://onlineessays.c...ys/history/his078.php

ChuckFickens

"they didn't have Cillit Bang in those days?"

On the plus side they wouldn't have had "MY NAMES BARRY SCOTT" either

boxtops

Perhaps it was so your servants could ease you up, by holding the corners of the sheet, rather than the ungainly scrabble some of us have to get out of the bath.... we should ask Prince Charles, I am sure he must have a bath-lifter manservant (LO, that sounds rude).

ChuckFickens

Or ask sqad.

jno

he didn't just have baths to get clean, he had a skin disease that was improved if he stayed in water; so he probably spent a while in his bath and wanted to make it as comfortable as possible. (You can see in the painting he's writing, not just scrubbing.)

pastafreak

He was not writing....it is supposed to be the letter that Corday planned to present him to gain access....it is all symbolic and manipulated.

jno

he's got a pen in his hand, but he may just have been doing a sudoku.

-- answer removed --

Mosaic

Question Author

Interesting comments folks.....
You can find pictures of people having their dinner on a kind of plank across the tub but there's still the sheet inside the bath!
I think redhelen might be the nearest to the reason - it seems the most straightforward - but I'd love to find a definitve answer!

boxtops

I did a reply to this last night, I found a link saying that the painter was cleverly mirroring Marat's body and the sheet with the sheet in one of the paintings of the death of Christ - but I posted in the wrong thread and I can't find it now!! ;-0