# What were diapers like in medieval times? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [February 10, 2009, 12:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-were-diapers-like-in-medieval-times/485202 "2009-02-10T12:32:18Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 5\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2015, 11:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-were-diapers-like-in-medieval-times/485202/81 "2015-10-28T11:31:33Z")
> [@naita](#): > > Cite? Not that I don’t believe you, I’m just curious. There’s a nice overview [here](http://www.3owls.org/sca/cook/salad.htm), with citations. ---
**Author:** ![naita](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/naita/32/5862_2.png) [@naita](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/naita)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2015, 12:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-were-diapers-like-in-medieval-times/485202/82 "2015-10-28T12:28:24Z")
> [@MrDibble](#): > > There’s a nice overview [here](http://www.3owls.org/sca/cook/salad.htm), with citations. Nifty. ---
**Author:** ![md2000](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/73ab20/32.png) [@md2000](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/md2000)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2015, 5:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-were-diapers-like-in-medieval-times/485202/83 "2015-10-28T17:34:45Z")
> [@mmmiiikkkeee](#): > > I’m a 31 year-old male. I can show you pictures of ME in a dress (but I won’t)… I was born in a big city but my mom was basically born on a trapline in the woods. Yeah, my parents came from England to Canada about 1950, and some of the clothes they put me and my brother in as kids… we looked pretty gender-neutral. Fortunately my brother is older, so 90% of the baby pictures are of him. > [@Aspidistra](#): > > Actually, the premise of the OP made me think of a similar scenario in a novel - Dave Duncan’s [Seventh Sword](http://www.daveduncan.com/ss/index.html) trilogy. One of the hero’s companions on his Great Quest is a baby around 6 months, who pees all over the hero at first meeting. > > Apart from that the baby does pretty much nothing during the entire course of the series, and is entirely irrelevant to the plot. However, given that his mother has been enslaved into prostitution, it’s highly realistic that he exists. Great story, BTW Yes, I met Duncan once at a convention. Very smart and interesting fellow. One SF story I recall just hints at bathroom breaks (you do wonder how people would go while cooped up on spaceships for weeks). In one of the later Foundation and Empire stories, the girl hides away aboard her grandfather’s(?) small spaceship. Asimov says something like “she soon realized that unlike stowaway heroes in adventure stories she’d read, she could no stay in her hiding place for more than a few hours.” She gets caught trying to sneak down the corridor. Which was a fairly humorous way of not saying explicitly, in those days, that a bathroom break was needed. And… also reminding people that he’d thought of this problem, unlike virtually every other stowaway story. One of W C Fields’ movies he is ranting to his daughter in her bedroom and kicks the chamber pot and stubs his toe. That was about as risqué as things could get in early cinema, but the idea of a pot to pee in goes back a long way for indoor cleanliness, and was still common until houses got indoor toilets. I worked with a lady who remembered the day (1960’s) that her dad finally installed an indoor flush toilet in the family farmhouse. One urban legend says that part of the problem with medieval towns was people dumping chamber pots into the street from the upstairs windows. ---
**Author:** ![Guinastasia](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guinastasia/32/5751_2.png) [@Guinastasia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Guinastasia)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2015, 7:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-were-diapers-like-in-medieval-times/485202/84 "2015-10-28T19:38:41Z")
Would [swaddling](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swaddling) have taken care of it? ---
**Author:** ![Urbanredneck](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ea5d25/32.png) [@Urbanredneck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Urbanredneck)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2015, 9:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-were-diapers-like-in-medieval-times/485202/85 "2015-10-28T21:06:39Z")
When the Louvre was first built in France they didnt have any bathrooms so the people just did it over the side of a stair railing. Must have been very nasty below. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-were-diapers-like-in-medieval-times/485202.md?page=4)