HOMEPAGE
CONTRIBUTE to Humor,
Words
and expressions about menstruation and Would you stop
menstruating if you could?
Some MUM site links:
HOMEPAGE
|
MUM
address & What does MUM
mean? |
Email the museum |
Privacy
on this site |
Who
runs this museum?? |
Amazing
women! |
Art
of menstruation (and awesome
ancient
art of menstruation) |
Artists
(non-menstrual) |
Asbestos
|
Belts
|
Bidets
|
Birth
control and religion |
Birth
control drugs, old |
Birth control douche
& sponges
|
Founder bio
|
Bly,
Nellie |
MUM board
|
Books:
menstruation & menopause (& reviews)
|
Cats
|
Company
booklets for girls (mostly) directory |
Contraception
and religion |
Contraceptive
drugs, old |
Contraceptive douche
& sponges
|
Costumes
|
Menstrual cups
|
Cup
usage |
Dispensers
|
Douches,
pain, sprays |
Essay
directory |
Examination,
gynecological (pelvic) (short history) |
Extraction
|
Facts-of-life
booklets for girls |
Famous
women in menstrual hygiene ads |
FAQ
|
Feminine
napkin, towel,
pad directory |
Founder/director
biography |
Gynecological
topics by Dcovers the stretch material
Masturbation
|
Media
coverage of MUM |
Menarche
booklets for girls and parents |
Miscellaneous
|
Museum
future |
Norwegian
menstruation exhibit |
Odor
|
Olor
|
Pad,
towel, napkin directory |
Patent
medicine |
Poetry
directory |
Products,
some current |
Puberty
booklets for girls and parents|
Religion
|
Religión
y menstruación |
Your remedies
for menstrual discomfort |
Menstrual products safety
|
Sanitary
napkin, towel,
pad directory |
Seguridad
de productos para la menstruación |
Science
|
Shame
|
Slapping,
menstrual |
Sponges
|
Synchrony
|
Tampon
directory |
Early tampons
|
Teen
ads directory |
Tour
of the former museum (video)
|
Towel,
pad, sanitary napkin directory |
Underpants
& panties directory |
Videos,
films directory |
Words
and expressions about
menstruation |
Would you stop
menstruating if you could? |
What did women do about menstruation
in the past? |
Washable
pads |
Read 10 years (1996-2006) of articles and Letters to Your MUM on this site.
The Museum of Menstruation and Women's Health
Menstrual
pad (Kotex?) and holder, 1920s-1930s?
Canada
| A Canadian offered
MUM this holder and pad. He found it with items
labeled from the early 1930s in the possessions of a
woman in Canada who died in 2001. He said she was in
her forties in the 1940s. Through Sherlock-Holmes-like reasoning I believe the absorbent part of the pad is made of Cellucotton and therefore a Kotex product. (See this reasoning in the lowest picture.) In the 1930s women could buy Kotex in Canada as well as in many countries world wide. Look at Kotex booklets from Canada, Australia and America from the 1930s. And see how-to-dispose-of-Kotex instructions from 1928. The holder is another question. The words "DO NOT PIN GAUZE" stamped on one end make it seem commercial as do the three types of fabric and careful stitching - at least it seems to me. But there's nothing on the holder to indicate who made it. Women had big problems with twisting and slipping pads, and discomfort - and still do -, and companies have often tried to improve their comfort. See many other holders from the 19th through the end of the 20th century. |
| Below: The
holder from the far ends of the pink sections
measures 19 7/8" (50.4 cm). The pad at the center of the picture measures 3 3/8" wide (here, high) - 8.6 cm and is about 3/8" (0.9 cm) thick. I took a section of the covering off to look at the filling - see the last picture, below. |
 |
| Below:
Back of the holder. A stretch material
connects the pink end at right to the canvas-like
fabric holding the body of the menstrual pad. |
 |
| Below: Pinning gauze wouldn't hold
the pad well. The end of the
menstrual pad covers the stretch material. |
 |
| Below: The brown material is a
tough canvas-like material, the pink much softer
and more flexible. The pad mesh covering (top) is coarse like that of early Kotex. Read how college students complained about similar pads! |
 |
| Below: My conscience, although troubled,
allowed me to cut through the gauze covering (the
"strings" you see) to find out what the furshlugginer pad was made of, thereby giving a clue to who made it. AHA! Many discrete layers of material sitting on top of each other, each looking like the magnificent enlargement below, reveal themselves to be (I think) Cellucotton, the cellulose Kimberly-Clark made into bandages for the allies in the First World War and afterwards turned into Kotex! If it were cotton, as in Modess pads, we would see long tangles of cotton. |
 |
MORE pads, tampons