The old days

[TERRI]

I am not sure whether this is relevant but recent health problems that have led to the need to wear protection day and night brought back memories of my childhood (I am late 50s now) when I was sitting having tea with my best friend at home and we were laughing at his younger brother who was still wearing nappies. To this day I remember my mother telling us off and saying lots of people have to wear nappies and that very many older people have to as well so we should not be so nasty to my best friends younger brother.

That brings me back to the purpose of this post. Now I am "in the club" so to speak. I am wondering how on earth in the early 1960s people managed incontinence. There was none of the disposable products around. So if I was time travelled back what would I do. Where would I go for supplies. What would I wear? The last 10 years has seen a revelation regarding discussing, acknowledging, managing Incontinence to the point I seldom queue in a supermarket without seeing someone with some form of protection in a trolley. As a kid I cannot remember seeing anything in Boots or other chemists. Has anyone done a history of the management of involuntary weeing?

[JDinVirginia]

Terri,

You would wear cloth diapers and stay home a lot. Incontinence in the '50's was an even greater burden than it is now.

--John

[Inconinmiss]

I became incontinent as the result of a surgical misadventure when I was 14 years old in 1956. As a young adult, I bought myself a sewing machine and learned to sew well enough to make my own flannel and terricloth diapers and plastic pants. I also from time to time bought cloth diapers from various hospital supply stores, but mainly I used my own homemade diapers. I was very glad when disposables appeared on the scene and improved to the point that I could use them. Making and laundering cloth diapers is a set of jobs that I was happy to leave behind.

[Paul Martin]

Hi Terri,

Looks like this is your first post. Welcome! I have read a lot of post and stories from the old days as disposables were not available for use. There were a few mail order places where you could order some cloth diapers and mainly "rubber" pants back then. I believe the old Sears & Roebuck had a catalog for those type supplies, but as Iconinmiss mentioned, a lot of people just made there own diapers and plastic pants. It wasn't really that hard. If I'm not mistaken, Pampers were the first disposable mass produced, and they were quite expensive when they first came out.
Keep the post coming, Terri...................Paul Martin

[happyindprs]

I remember wearing Curity brand flat cloth diapers well into my late teens and beyond. There was no hiding the fact I was wearing them due their bulk, especially when wet. Lots of teasing and ridicule from "friends" and relatives as if I did this on purpose. I still have bad memories of spending summers with relatives that were too stupid and ignorant to know that I had no control. Instead I was beaten, teased and humiliated for more years than I care to remember.

[TERRI]

Folks thanks for the insight I had not really thought this through I am from Uk so Sears etc was not available here. However I am still wondering how hospitals and such places coped it must have been terry nappies and plastic pants but someone must have been making them. I guess it was the manufacturers who sold to the child market but it was all under the counter stuff. I bet Sandra pants were around then, they have saved my trousers a couple of times in the last few years before I realised I had a permanent problem

[optimist]

As a kid, a neighbour of a playmate had overactive bladder.
She never left the house, they had never any guests, and they had even built the housewith the living room away from the road and sunlight.
Kids looking in the windows through the small openings between all the curtains, reported they had a portable toilet in every room.
As far as I know, she lived that way the rest of her life.
Even if diapers were getting available during the seventies, I believe the stigma of diapers was too much for her, and she had become dependent of her isolation.
I bet she would have had a totally different life if this had been today..

[MSUSpartan]

That's a terrible story. I can't
imagine packing it in like that for anything.

My brother in law went by his bosses house a couple months ago. He retorted that his boss had a toilet (a plumbed one) in the bedroom, right next to the bed. He attributed it to laziness, but who knows really.