The Psychology of Sex (Vol. 1-6). Havelock Ellis
century, women in England, as well as France, suffered much in childbirth from the ignorance and superstition of incompetent midwives, owing to the prevailing conceptions of modesty, which rendered it impossible (as it is still, to some extent, in some semi-civilized lands) for male physicians to attend them. Dr. Willoughby, of Derby, tells how, in 1658, he had to creep into the chamber of a lying-in woman on his hands and knees, in order to examine her unperceived. In France, Clement was employed secretly to attend the mistresses of Louis XIV in their confinements; to the first he was conducted blindfold, while the King was concealed among the bed-curtains, and the face of the lady was enveloped in a network of lace. (E. Malins, "Midwifery and Midwives," British Medical Journal, June 22, 1901; Witkowski, Histoire des Accouchements, 1887, pp. 689 et seq.) Even until the Revolution, the examination of women in France in cases of rape or attempted outrage was left to a jury of matrons. In old English manuals of midwifery, even in the early nineteenth century, we still find much insistence on the demands of modesty. Thus, Dr. John Burns, of Glasgow, in his Principles of Midwifery, states that "some women, from motives of false delicacy, are averse from examination until the pains become severe." He adds that "it is usual for the room to be darkened, and the bed-curtains drawn close, during an examination." Many old pictures show the accoucheur groping in the dark, beneath the bed-clothes, to perform operations on women in childbirth. (A. Kind, "Das Weib als Gebärerin in der Kunst," Geschlecht und Gesellschaft, Bd. II, Heft 5, p. 203.)
In Iceland, Winkler stated in 1861 that he sometimes slept in the same room as a whole family; "it is often the custom for ten or more persons to use the same room for living in and sleeping, young and old, master and servant, male and female, and from motives of economy, all the clothes, without exception, are removed." (G. Winkler, Island; seine Bewohner, etc., pp. 107, 110.)
"At Cork," saye Fynes Moryson, in 1617, "I have seen with these eyes young maids stark naked grinding corn with certain stones to make cakes thereof." (Moryson, Itinerary, Part 3, Book III, Chapter V.)
"In the more remote parts of Ireland," Moryson elsewhere says, where the English laws and manners are unknown, "the very chief of the Irish, men as well as women, go naked in very winter-time, only having their privy parts covered with a rag of linen, and their bodies with a loose mantle. This I speak of my own experience." He goes on to tell of a Bohemian baron, just come from the North of Ireland, who "told me in great earnestness that he, coming to the house of Ocane, a great lord among them, was met at the door with sixteen women, all naked, excepting their loose mantles; whereof eight or ten were very fair, and two seemed very nymphs, with which strange sight, his eyes being dazzled, they led him into the house, and then sitting down by the fire with crossed legs, like tailors, and so low as could not but offend chaste eyes, desired him to sit down with them. Soon after, Ocane, the lord of the country, came in, all naked excepting a loose mantle, and shoes, which he put off as soon as he came in, and entertaining the baron after his best manner in the Latin tongue, desired him to put off his apparel, which he thought to be a burthen to him, and to sit naked by the fire with this naked company. But the baron … for shame, durst not put off his apparel." (Ib. Part 3, Book IV, Chapter II.)
Coryat, when traveling in Italy in the early part of the seventeenth century, found that in Lombardy many of the women and children wore only smocks, or shirts, in the hot weather. At Venice and Padua, he found that wives, widows, and maids, walk with naked breasts, many with backs also naked, almost to the middle. (Coryat, Crudities, 1611. The fashion of décolleté garments, it may be remarked, only began in the fourteenth century; previously, the women of Europe generally covered themselves up to the neck.)
In Northern Italy, some years ago, a fire occurred at night in a house in which two girls were sleeping, naked, according to the custom. One threw herself out and was saved, the other returned for a garment, and was burnt to death. The narrator of the incident [a man] expressed strong approval of the more modest girl's action. (Private communication.) It may be added that the custom of sleeping naked is still preserved, also (according to Lippert and Stratz), in Jutland, in Iceland, in some parts of Norway, and sometimes even in Berlin.
Lady Mary Wortley Montague writes in 1717, of the Turkish ladies at the baths at Sophia: "The first sofas were covered with cushions and rich carpets, on which sat the ladies, and on the second, their slaves behind them, but without any distinction of rank in their dress, all being in a state of Nature; that is, in plain English, stark naked, without any beauty or defect concealed. Yet there was not the least wanton smile or immodest gesture among them. They walked and moved with the same majestic grace which Milton describes of our general mother. I am here convinced of the truth of a reflection I had often made, that if it was the fashion to go naked, the face would be hardly observed." (Letters and Works, 1866, vol. i, p. 285.)
At St. Petersburg, in 1774, Sir Nicholas Wraxall observed "the promiscuous bathing of not less than two hundred persons, of both sexes. There are several of these public bagnios," he adds, "in Petersburg, and every one pays a few copecks for admittance. There are, indeed, separate spaces for the men and women, but they seem quite regardless of this distinction, and sit or bathe in a state of absolute nudity among each other." (Sir N. Wraxall, A Tour Through Some of the Northern Parts of Europe, 3d ed., 1776, p. 248.) It is still usual for women in the country parts of Russia to bathe naked in the streams.
In 1790, Wedgwood wrote to Flaxman: "The nude is so general in the work of the ancients, that it will be very difficult to avoid the introduction of naked figures. On the other hand, it is absolutely necessary to do so, or to keep the pieces for our own use; for none, either male or female, of the present generation will take or apply them as furniture if the figures are naked." (Meteyard, Life of Wedgwood, vol. ii, p. 589.)
Mary Wollstonecraft quotes (for reprobation and not for approval) the following remarks: "The lady who asked the question whether women may be instructed in the modern system of botany, was accused of ridiculous prudery; nevertheless, if she had proposed the question to me, I should certainly have answered: 'They cannot!'" She further quotes from an educational book: "It would be needless to caution you against putting your hand, by chance, under your neck-handkerchief; for a modest woman never did so." (Mary Wollstonecraft, The Rights of Woman, 1792, pp. 277, 289.)
At the present time a knowledge of the physiology of plants is not usually considered inconsistent with modesty, but a knowledge of animal physiology is still so considered by many. Dr. H. R. Hopkins, of New York, wrote in 1895, regarding the teaching of physiology: "How can we teach growing girls the functions of the various parts of the human body, and still leave them their modesty? That is the practical question that has puzzled me for years."
In England, the use of drawers was almost unknown among women half a century ago, and was considered immodest and unfeminine. Tilt, a distinguished gynecologist of that period, advocated such garments, made of fine calico, and not to descend below the knee, on hygienic grounds. "Thus understood," he added, "the adoption of drawers will doubtless become more general in this country, as, being worn without the knowledge of the general observer, they will be robbed of the prejudice usually attached to an appendage deemed masculine." (Tilt, Elements of Health, 1852, p. 193.) Drawers came into general use among women during the third quarter of the nineteenth century.
Drawers are an Oriental garment, and seem to have reached Europe through Venice, the great channel of communication with the East. Like many other refinements of decency and cleanliness, they were at first chiefly cultivated by prostitutes, and, on this account, there was long a prejudice against them. Even at the present day, it is said that in France, a young peasant girl will exclaim, if asked whether she wears drawers: "I wear drawers, Madame? A respectable girl!" Drawers, however, quickly became acclimatized in France, and Dufour (op. cit., vol. vi, p. 28) even regards them as essentially a French garment. They were introduced at the Court towards the end of the fourteenth century, and in the sixteenth century were rendered almost necessary by the new fashion of the vertugale, or farthingale. In 1615, a lady's caleçons are referred to as apparently an ordinary garment. It is noteworthy that in London, in the middle of the same century, young Mrs. Pepys, who was the daughter of French parents, usually wore drawers, which were seemingly of the closed kind. (Diary of S. Pepys, ed. Wheatley, May 15, 1663, vol. iii.) They were probably not worn by Englishwomen,