4. TOILET
Bathing and laundry arrangements are occasionally mentioned. The regulations for the Sherburn lepers direct a strict attention to cleanliness. Two bath-tubs (cunæ ad balneandum) were supplied; heads were washed weekly; and two laundresses washed the personal clothing twice a week. In the fifteenth-century statutes of Higham Ferrers matters of health and toilet are detailed. None might be received “but such as were clean men of their bodies”; and if taken ill, a bedeman was removed until his recovery. Every morning the woman must “make the poor men a fire against they rise and a pan of fair water and a dish by it to wash their hands.” The barber came weekly “to shave them and to dress their heads and to make them clean.” When the Savoy was officially visited in 1535, the authorities were asked p174 “whether the bathes limitted by the founder be well obserued and applyed.”
As to hair-dressing, “tonsure by the ears” was commonly used by the staff. After profession at Chichester it was directed:—“then let the males be cropped below the ear; or the hair of the women be cut off back to the middle of the neck.” Among the instructions in the register of St. Bartholomew’s near Dover is one about the round tonsure, and there is a marginal note as to the mode of shaving the head. The visitation of St. Nicholas’, York (temp. Edward I), showed that formerly brethren and sisters were tonsured, but that Simon, recently master, had allowed them to change both habit and tonsure.[106]