Seventeenth-century bath customs in Basel, Switzerland

[bunnyjadwiga]

In the morning the bath-keeper gives a horn blow, that everything is ready. Then the members of the lower classes [and] polite citizens undressed in the house and walked naked across the public road to the bath-house... Yes, how often the father runs naked from the house with a single shirt together with his equally naked wife and naked children to the bath. How often can I see (that is why I do not go through the town) little girls of 10, 12, 14, 16, 18 years, completely undressed, except for a short linen bath-coat (badehr) often torn. . . They run along the roads at lunchtime, to the baths. And beside them the totally naked 10, 12, 14, 16, 18 year old boys, accompanying these respectable young women.

--Guarinonius, 1610 quoted in Virginia Smith, Clean, p. 172