Top 10 Bizarre Smells From 18th Century England

The majority of people are aware of humanity’s less-than-hygienic history. Between fabricating eyebrows from the skin of a mouse, a British monarch’s belief that a bath would be detrimental to his health, the Romans’ use of lye (An ash and urine mixture) to wash clothes and taking more than 300,000 years to invent toilet paper, we’ve had far from a sterile track record.

What most people are not aware of, are the smells involved with such methods of ‘Hygiene’. The following list is a collection of delightful aromas from a period that coincided with the Romantic Era, but they are not nearly as charming. Brace yourself—It’s Georgian England.

The majority of people are aware of humanity’s less-than-hygienic history. Between fabricating eyebrows from the skin of a mouse, a British monarch’s belief that a bath would be detrimental to his health, the Romans’ use of lye (An ash and urine mixture) to wash clothes and taking more than 300,000 years to invent toilet paper, we’ve had far from a sterile track record.

What most people are not aware of, are the smells involved with such methods of ‘Hygiene’. The following list is a collection of delightful aromas from a period that coincided with the Romantic Era, but they are not nearly as charming. Brace yourself—It’s Georgian England.

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