Nappies on Call the Midwife

[CatWithKittens]

Can anyone with a historical turn of mind satisfy my idle curiosity? Call the Midwife is now in the 1960s it seems but all the shots which show a baby's nappy show it without any form of cover or wrap. According to my mother my older brother - born 1966 - had plastic pants over his nappies as I did in my turn. My MIL who saw a lot of children in the late 60s when training at Great Ormond Street says that it was the rare baby who did not wear them by that time. Does anybody know when these became usual and, if they were around by the time in which these programmes are set, why CtM does not reflect actual childcare practices of the time?

Because they're a pain in the arse that's why!

My sister had to wear two terry nappies to make her legs stick out sideways because she was born with clicking hips. It did the trick anyway even if she does look a very odd shape in her baby photos! I don't suppose you'd get the same effect with disposables so it would be frog plasters and the like. Maybe what we think is progress isn't always the case?

Mind you, my ds is disabled and was in nappies until he was 7.5 yo, and also had a bowel condition, so I do say thank goodness for nice modern pull-ups!

Ah yes, I saw someone (The historian, Ruth -I-can't-remember-her-surname) using that to make her own sanitary towels on one of those programmes where they live 'back in time' for a year on a farm. Think it might have been the Victorian one?

Youngest sibling was born 1981, ish. And she had plastic pants with frilly ones for high days and holidays.

I used terries when I nannied in the 80s, so when I had my own DC in the 90s I bought a couple of packs from Mothercare, and some plastic pants (the ones with poppers at the front were the best) and liners and just got on with it. Saved us a fortune, and were not a major hassle.

I used them in the US too, where everyone had long since gone over to disposables, or was using the (then) new shaped nappies in wraps. Our neighbour's mother came to visit, took one look at my linen line and squawked, 'Oh, look! Cloth diapers! Oh my!'

Our retired terries are now floor cloths and dog-drying cloths. No idea what I will do when they finally give up the ghost.

I rememember the old rubber and plastic britches, brand new they could be leaky, especially if you had a skinny baby so the leg openings were loose! When they did work, they could work so well as to encourage nappy rash/discourage it healing, (my ex would leave our dd unchanged until I got in! Bastard). And then urine and soaps made them brittle, so the very poorest might not have seen them as worthwhil given the drawbacks. Or if they did, kept using them even once they began having little holes or the elastic at the openings started failing. (Well, i was that broke after he left). And maybe not bothered replacing them.

I remember my mom and aunt using disposble nappies in 1970 for my brother and cousin. Only for out of the house, like a family trip to the zoo, so they didnt have to carry wet nappies home. No plastic cover, just a big pad, that you had to use pins and your own nappy cover. The pins ripped the corners of the nappy of course, so they used to use masking tape to make a better spot to pin through. I am sure there must have been mothers who just used the tape!

Bonus: my grandparents moved states when my mom was a baby. I asked what they did on a multi-day train trip about nappies. They had asked everyone they knew for old towels, undershirts, bedsheets and such, and cut them up. Threw them away as they used them. On the train, that meant down the toilet, which used to just dump onto the tracks, so there's your history lesson for the day: disposable nappies 1944 style.

My DH was born in a Glasgow tenement 1960. His mum used to scrape the poo off his nappies with a knife and flush it fine the toilet, then put them to soak in a bucket with some Napisan. She then washed the nappies in a twin tub and hung them to dry on an airer over an open fire.

Her mother came to visit and she dare not tell her she was using the nappy knife to spread butter on toast....yerch!

I'm not sure about the nappies but this series of CtM is set in 1959 (or started I'm '59 Anyway) they said in one of the episodes. They may have missed the plastic nappies or couldn't find ones that fit the period so better to just gave the towel ones than the wrong plastic pants over? Or maybe it's as they look nicer?

That was real hard core nappying then, you'd wonder how they managed. All that washing by hand and no baby changing rooms, how the hell did they do all the terry changes when out and about ?

This series must have started in 1960 because in the first episode Elvis' It's now or Never was playing on the radio, and it was released in 1960.

Christmas special was Christmas 1959 so yes, 1960 for the majority of it.

DD1 was born in early 70s and I used terry squares (folded in a triangle without nappy pin, then kite style) with plastic pants. But in hospital (for 6 days after the birth), they didn't use plastic pants at all. This meant that each nappy change meant a change of gown and sheets as well. Not really practical, but all provided and laundered by the hospital.

I assume not using plastic pants was to help prevent nappy rash.

I can now answer my own question. Yesterday I met a woman now in her mid 90's who worked as a Nanny and started as a nursery maid in a big house in 1935. Her job description included washing all the baby clothes, muslin and terry nappies included. (She complained wryly that by the time she became a nanny herself there were no longer any nursery maids so she still had to wash the baby's things.) She said that there were what she described as macintosh rubber pants when she started working but the nanny under whom she worked would only allow their use at night when the babies were over 6 months, for what she called children's hour, when the children were taken to see their mother in the drawing room or mother came to the nursery to play with them, or when they had started walking and were going outside or going on a train or car journey. Any other use encouraged napkin rash she said. She also said that plastic, as opposed to rubber, pants first came after the war when rationing got better and such things started arriving from the USA. She said when she got her own nursery, although none of her children ever had a rash, she used the new plastic pants nearly all the time but made sure the children were changed often. She also said that her colleagues of her generation did the same - to the disapproval of the older generation of nannies. She said she thought most mothers did the same and used plastic pants all the time once they became available. I asked her about potty training and she said that in her first nursery they "held out" babies on a pot at every change from about 3 months and the children would normally be clean very quickly and dry in the day by about 18 months. She was taught to wake children to use the pot in he night and would expect not to be putting them in nappies after 30 months. The Nanny she trained under would smack a child over those ages for being wet either in the day or at night though she said that even when she was in training she did not approve of that and never did it herself. she said she started potty training rather later herself but still "her children" were all dry and clean day and night long before they were three. She did say that although she disapproved of smacking for an accident she certainly smacked for naughtiness and thought rather more discipline would be a good idea today. It was a fascinating, if too brief, insight into a very different era of childcare. She is still in touch with nearly all the children she brought up and had worked for two generations of one family - although she said that the first boy she ever cared for as a baby was killed as a young subaltern in Korea. She said that she thought it hurt her more than his mother because they were so much closer. Going back to the question I raised though, it does seem that plastic pants had been about for a long time by the era in which CTM is set and the producers have simply got it wrong.

What an interesting insight. Thanks for sharing

cat that was really interesting especially to hear directly from a nanny (I was a nanny up until this pregnancy) of yester year account of her time in the nursery.
I have known a lot if the older generation talk often how much earlier children were toilet 'trained' it's why I hope to use cloth nappies and do EC with my own baby.