Hygiene in Nineteenth Century America

In August 1879 a young Robert Louis Stevenson boarded the immigrant train in New York, bound for Chicago. The middle class Scot was journeying to meet his American true love, Fanny Osborne. His parents, unamused by the union, refused to fund his journey. In love but suddenly impecunious, the young author was forced to travel in economy class. His daily life for the next few weeks is one that most nineteenth century Americans would have recognised.
This is a world, Robert chronicled, that was intimately communal. He soon became accustomed each morning to unfurling his stiff limbs from the bench next to his fellow travellers. His ears became attuned to the dawn chorus of coughing, sneezing and spitting rippling down the carriage. His educated brain tried to suppress thoughts of cholera, tuberculosis and diphtheria. An enclosed environment such as this was the perfect breeding ground for these and other potentially lethal diseases.
The ‘rancid stench,’ as he graphically put it, of his fellow travellers was impossible to ignore. Like everyone else, Robert wore the same clothes for days. The cowboy could blend with the smell of animal and leather, but on a train there was nowhere to hide.
He could at least cleanse the body. But these were the days before hot piping water at the twist of a tap. All water onboard had to be stored and drawn from a water filter in one corner of the carriage. A hot bath was a luxury most Americans experienced once a month and one Robert would enjoy at his journey’s end. Until then a wash meant a perfunctory sluice using soap, flannel and tin wash basin bought from the newsboy onboard. Once refreshed, these utensils would be recycled by his fellow travellers. For those without much, sharing was a common currency.