Dr White's looped sanitary towels

[florriepeck]

I didn't know these were still a thing!
DM used to buy these for me when I first started my periods in the 70s.
Saw some today on the shelf in my local chemist while I was hanging around waiting for my prescription to be dispensed.
I was tempted to buy some: remember them being so soft and comfortable .Didn't see any of those belts to wear with them, though.
Set me wondering: does anyone use looped towels these days?
Must be a market for them if they're on sale.

Always ultra thin were a revelation and completely transformed periods for me so comfy (maybe why tampons werent used by me or DD either !)

Does anyone remember the myths about not washing your hair or having a bath?

Girls at school used to say they had been told no hair washing and no baths when you had a period. (Can you imagine???) No one had showers in their homes in the late 60s, it was a bath or nothing.

Thankfully, my Mum said it was okay.

I think the pre-knickers generations basically used rags to make nappies for themselves. Menstruation usually started later than it does now as we are in general better health and have much more food available so puberty is earlier. And after marriage women were likely to be either pregnant or lactating far more than we are.

8, poor wee thing. I was a month off fourteen and my older DM gave me a belt and looped towels. I started to cry and begged for sticky pads. Next day she handed me money to purchase some at the local shop, but she insisted they were not as substantial as the looped kind.

I think there were towels in the 40s, they made them at Robinsons in Chesterfield, but they were probably quite expensive and not everyone could afford them.

My sister started her periods at 11, so when I was approaching my 11th birthday, my mother put a packet of Dr White's in my bottom drawer saying, "Just in case....". She didn't divulge what they were there in case of, just left them there

@dayswithaY

Do NOT Google! Google is not your friend in such situations!

They were fucking horrible!

I remember going to somebody's house to see her and her new born baby. She had a little boy who was playing in another room. He appeared and said "look mummy, butterflies" he has unwrapped her sanitary towels and stuck them all onto the front window in the lounge.

Even hundreds of years ago girls would have started periods by the age of 16 I expect and many did not get married until into their 20s. I do genealogy and many weren't married until 24 or later so a good 8 years or menstruation before marriage.
Agree that once child bearing began then most women would be pregnant or breastfeeding pretty constantly. Jane Austen was sad to think that her sister's fate was a new baby every two years.

I remember a man once telling me that he had bought a house previously owned by two elderly sisters. After he moved in the house he went into the loft and found bin bag after bin bag filled with blood stained rags and tissue paper

I remember our school loos had a machine with the looped towels in. They came in a box with safety pins and they were the only option if you were caught short. There was an incinerator too. This was in 1982-86 though, not the 50s or 60s.

I also remember around the same time going to guide camp and one of the girls having these awesome thin pads in individual patterned wrappers. Obviously wrapped pads are perfectly ordinary now, but we’d never seen anything like them, being used to thick towels in a plastic bag. I think she’d bought them on holiday in the US but we couldn’t wait for them to come here.

victorian advert incidentally this article and I've only read the first few lines says that in those days people didn't realise other genders menstruated

God they were medieval. Sticky, uncomfortable, the pads never felt secure and you might as well have had a flashing beacon on your head as they were so obvious. Mum wouldn't allow tampons because they meant you'd lose your virginity (which seemed to be widely believed). Neither would she agree to the doctor's advice for me to go on the pill to tackle my very long and heavy periods because clearly I would turn into a nymphomanic

At work in the late 80s as a staff rep I was asked to petition the Personnel manager to replace the incinerators in the ladies with sanitary bins as the women at work were embarrassed about using them due to the noise. I remember the manager saying that he wasn't bothered by the noise despite his office being adjacent to the toilets so there was no need for the women to be embarrassed. We did eventually get sanitary bins but it was a battle.

Wikipedia is quite interesting on the history of 'sanitary napkins' - I know it's not always a reliable source, though:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanitary_napkin#History

I'd got gotten the instrument of torture was called Nikini. So, so uncomfortable, especially when wearing a suspender belt.

At my school in the early 80s (rather prim girls' school), these were the ones in the machine in the loos. The machine was in one of the cubicles so that no-one would see that you were buying one and they were the absolute last resort.

I remember getting a demonstration of how those worked at school. Possibly fortunately, I was such a late starter, by the time I needed them the new thin sticky ones were available.

I was so embarrassed to put my ST in the incinerator at school that I used to put it behind the toilet instead which is totally gross.

They later worked out that many girls were embarrassed so invested in those bins in each toilet instead.

I still sometimes have bad dreams which feature the school toilets: 30 years later

My stupid mother also believed the whole 'no longer a virgin if you used tampons" bollocks. I was 14 and living in Australia when my periods started...right at the beginning of summer. Stick on pads had just become popular but I found them horrendous...when at school I had to go to the toilet after every lesson to check for leaks...which 99% of the time there was. So uncomfortable and I always worried about smell...first used tampons when I was 18 and never looked back. My mother still wasn't happy!

We had Dr Whites in the towel dispenser at my secondary school in the 90s. They were sticky ones.

Looped onto a belt ...oh dear, no, not a good look 😕 I imagine a menstruating sumo wrestler!

I expect that PE knickers are a thing of the past now at secondary school?
Sadly no my dd’s have them.

I remember them, when my periods started at 17 (late starter), mum presented me with the dreaded off white belt she'd been saving (she'd been through the change and kept her old ones for me 🤮). I declined and bought some 'press ons' instead. Are they still called 'press ons'?

I think the first thin stick on pads i ever used were called Vespre in the early 80s, they were so much easier to use than DR Whites which were way too bulky for 8 year old me