‘Problems of intimate importance’

We recognise that menstruation is an experience that can be highly variable, and can mean different things to different people. We acknowledge that not all people who menstruate are women and not all women menstruate. However, for the purpose of this story, the term ‘woman/women’ has been used.

At the beginning of the 1900s – when Agnes Toward lived in Glasgow, in what is now known as the Tenement House – menstruation hygiene products were considered taboo and menstruation itself was referred to in literature of the time as a problem.

During the Edwardian era, upper-class women would wear a protective sanitary rubber apron to prevent potential blood staining on their dresses. These were uncomfortable and very cumbersome, and gradually faded away as new technology developed.

Women like Miss Toward and her mother (who was a dressmaker) would have used reusable cloth pads crafted at home from a variety of absorbent fabrics. Many women would have created their own with the sewing machine, if they were lucky enough to have one, and then safely kept them in place with the help of pins and a belted girdle.

During World War One, clever field nurses found that the Cellucotton used in surgical dressing and bandage was particularly absorbent. They began to use them as disposable sanitary pads.

In the UK, the manufacturer Southalls (Southall Bros and Barclay) from Birmingham transformed the original wood pulp-based dressing into disposable sanitary towels. A box of these is part of our collection at Tenement House, a middle-class flat rented by the Toward ladies between 1911 and 1965, who were lucky to have a toilet and a bath in their home at a time when indoor toilets were quite a luxury!