[QUOTE=StarvingButStrong]
Apparently pre-indoor plumbing, guest rooms and maybe all bedrooms of well-to-do households were provided with a ewer and basin for grooming purposes. At least, I’ve read dozens of scenes of some maid hauling ewers of water up to said bedrooms.
What I’ve never read is how exactly the ablutions were performed.
As in, presumably you pour some of the water into the basin and wash out of that, as you would a sink nowadays. But, do you use soap? If so, how do you rinse, with your basin full of soapy water? Is there a third part of the set, some sort of waste water catcher, that you dump the soapy water into, so you can refill with more water from the ewer and rinse? Or…I dunno, do you heave the soapy water out a window? Surely not?
Of course, never once have I heard mention of soap in one of those scenes (like: “There’s a bar on soap on the stand if you forgot to pack your own,” said the maid) so maybe you weren’t supposed to use soap at all?
Similarly, no mention of sponge or washcloth or rag or whatever. Did you just use your hands? Maybe you washed your hands, splashed water in your face, and called it quits?
But…physiology hasn’t changed that much. This was back before Secret and Sure and all their ilk. If you weren’t taking daily baths, I’d assume you’d at least want to cut down the odor from pits and crotch. So you’d absolutely need some sort of washing implement.
If so, what did you do with them after use? Absolutely you couldn’t hang a wet wash cloth over wood furniture. And no plastic…was there maybe a metal rack or some hooks or something?
Finally, what happened afterwards. I mean, there’s a basin full of ‘used’ water, soapy or not, and the ewer, maybe partially full. Did the maids have to dump the water from the open basin back into the relatively narrow ewer to haul it away? Or somehow juggle both the basin and ewer with sloshable water in them?
Why don’t historical books include the really useful information like this? I might accidentally fall through a time warp and end up the heroine of a Regency Romance. I can handle all the extra silverware at a formal dinner, but I fear humilating myself when faced with the task of cleaning up. 
[/QUOTE]
There are Victorian catalogs offering washstands with a holder on the bottom for the “slops jar”, where the dirty water goes. Otherwise you could pour it back into the cans the maid used to bring the water up in the first place, or if you didn’t use much, into the “guzunder” (chamber pot), as people here have mentioned.
Yes, there would usually be a bar of soap somewhere nearby. You could get china sets with a soapdish and other accessories to match the ewer and basin. Towels typically hung on a bar on the side of the washstand, or on a freestanding towelrack. Wet sponges went into a dish, or a waterproof bag (my period magazines are full of instructions for making these), or just sat in the basin when not in use (washcloths don’t seem to have been all that common, although you could dip the corner of a towel into the water if you needed to). Any leftover clean water stays in the ewer for later use.
Here’s a picture of a pretty basic setup with a ewer and basin, a matching soapdish and tumbler (I think…) on the bottom shelf, and towels (but no slops jar in evidence):
http://www.uiowa.edu/~oldcap/tour/artifacts/gov_washstand.html
Several pages of washstands from 1855 (page 301 on; figure 445 has a slops jar inside the cabinet section under the basin):
Basic procedure:
[ol]
[li]Pour clean water into basin[/li][li]Splash face with water, wet sponge (if using one)[/li][li]Dip soap into water, lather[/li][li]Rub soap and/or lather and/or soapy sponge onto required parts[/li][li]Rinse with water in basin (which will get progressively murkier as you go along)[/li][li]Dry off[/li][li]Pour dirty water into slops jar[/li][/ol]
For an actual bath, there’s pretty much the same setup on a larger scale; the tub (not necessarily large enough to lie in) would be hauled from the attic or storeroom into your bedroom and filled one can at a time, and after you’ve splashed around to your satisfaction it would be emptied the same way, dried off, and hauled away again. Several sources recommend having a large piece of oilcloth to put under the tub to protect the carpet from stray water.
I once read a fun book which covered all of this kind of stuff, which was either An irreverent and almost complete social history of the bathroom by Frank Muir, or Clean and decent by Lawrence Wright, can’t remember which.
JRB
