18th Century Soap
Additional Resources
To Bathe or Not to Bathe: Coming Clean in Colonial America
Colonial Soap Making: Its History and Techniques
See also the laundry linkspage.
- “At London, and in all other Parts of the Country where they do not burn Wood, they do not make Lye. All their Linnen, coarse and fine, is wash’d with Soap. When you are in a Place where the Linnen can be rinc’d in any large Water, the Stink of the black Soap is almost all clear’d away.” M. Misson’s Memoirs and Observations in his Travels over England (1719)
- Soap in Dictionarium Rusticum, Urbanum, & Botanicum, or, a Dictionary of Husbandry, Gardening, Trade, Commerce, and all Sorts of Country-Affairs (1726)
- Receipts for Perfumery, &c. in The Art of Cookery, Made Plain and Easy by Hannah Glasse (1784)
- Savonnerie in Encyclopédie ou Dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers (1771)
- Of Soap in Elements of the Art of Dyeing by M. Berthollet (1791)
- Specification of the Patent granted to Mr. John Crooks of Edinburgh, Chemist; for a new Method of making Soap, and Bleaching, by Means and Use of Mineral and Vegetable Alkalies in The Repertory of Arts and Manufactures (1798)
- A Collection of Receipts of Various Kinds in The Laboratory; or, School of Arts by G. Smith (1799):
- Of the Manufacture of Soap, from the Journal des Arts et Manufactures in The Repertory of Arts and Manufactures (1801)
- “Soap is made for family use at a very cheap rate, as, from the great quantity of wood burned, the ashes are in great plenty. For this purpose, they boil bones of any kind in a ley of wood-ashes; strain it off; boil it a second time; and thus make a very good sort of soft soap.” The Experienced Farmer’s Tour in America (1805)
