Two letters in the LRB on the now settled status of student hygiene.
The first from Otto Saumarez Smith:
Keith Thomas reminisces about his introduction to regular baths when at Oxford in the 1950s (LRB, 16 July). The architectural historian Gavin Stamp once told me that when George Frederick Bodley came to build new student accommodation at King’s College, Cambridge in 1888, he asked the fellows whether he should include a bathroom, but was told not to be ridiculous: as terms were only eight weeks long the undergraduates could bathe after they got home.
The second from Richard J Evans, in conversation with a porter at an Oxford college:
‘What’s the main difference between the old days and now?’ I once asked him. ‘Well, sir,’ he replied, after some thought, ‘in the old days the young gentlemen used to change their shirt every day and take a bath once a week. Nowadays they take a bath every day and change their shirt once a week.’ It was clear from the shaking of his head that he did not regard this as an improvement.
I was delighted to get out of university halls, to the luxury of a toilet and bathroom only shared with five fellow students (and their occasional guests). The downsides included rodents, and ice on the inside of the bathroom windows. My memory is that the rent in 1977 was £1.85 per person for a salubrious🤣 central location on the Westgate road (opposite the Harley-Davidson shop, and a house of dubious repute). I was in hospital for a few weeks (as a patient) during this period and, at discharge, my father picked me up at the hospital, and we drove to the house so that I could collect some more clothes before heading back to my parents home; he knew better than to come in.