Shower

Lore & Background

Waterfalls have historically been used as primitive forms of showers. Ancient people reproduced these by pouring jugs of water over themselves. Evidence exists of early upper-class Egyptian and Mesopotamians having indoor shower rooms with rudimentary drainage, where servants bathed them. Ancient Greeks had showers using aqueducts and lead pipes to pump water into and out of communal shower rooms, as discovered at Pergamum and depicted in pottery. The ancient Romans followed this convention, with bathhouses found across the Mediterranean and as far as modern-day England; they believed in bathing several times a week or daily. These systems fell out of use after the fall of the Roman Empire.

The first known mechanical shower, operated by a hand pump, was patented in England in 1767 by William Feetham. It used a pump to force water into a vessel above the user's head, released by pulling a chain. It dispensed with servant labor but recycled dirty water and lacked hot water piping, so it failed to catch on with the rich. The design was improved in the anonymously invented English Regency shower design of c. 1810, over 10 ft tall with metal pipes painted to look like bamboo. Hand-pumped models and adjustable sprayers became fashionable. The reinvention of reliable indoor plumbing around 1850 allowed free-standing showers to connect to a running water source. The shower cabin was invented in 1839 by Aleksander Edward Kierzkowski.

Modern showers were installed in French army barracks in the 1870s as an economic hygiene measure under François Merry Delabost, who had previously replaced individual baths with mandatory communal showers for prisoners. A steam engine heated water, allowing up to eight prisoners to wash simultaneously with twenty litres of water. This system was adopted by other armies, starting with Prussia in 1879, and by prisons, boarding schools, and public bathhouses. The first shower in a public bathhouse was in 1887 in Vienna. In France, public bathhouses and showers were established by Charles Cazalet, first in Bordeaux in 1893 and then in Paris in 1899. Historically, showering was rare; most people bathed by immersion. Showers in private homes did not become popular until the 1970s.

Reader's Guide

The shower represents a significant evolution in personal hygiene, moving from natural waterfalls and manual pouring to sophisticated mechanical systems. Its development reflects broader technological and social changes: the ancient Greeks and Romans pioneered communal shower rooms with advanced water and sewage systems, which were lost after the Roman Empire's fall. The modern shower emerged in the 18th and 19th centuries, with William Feetham's hand-pumped design and the anonymous Regency shower, but it was the reinvention of indoor plumbing around 1850 that enabled practical, continuous-flow showers. The shower's adoption by the French military in the 1870s, under François Merry Delabost, demonstrated its efficiency and hygiene benefits, leading to its spread to other armies, prisons, and public bathhouses. Despite these advances, private home showers only became commonplace in the 1970s. Today, showers come in various types—domestic stall or tub combinations, public communal or individual stalls, wet rooms, and specialized forms like air showers, digital showers, eco showers, electric showers, emergency showers, mixer showers, navy showers, and power showers. The shower's legacy is its role as a standard, efficient method for daily hygiene worldwide.

Did You Know?

• Ancient Greeks had communal shower rooms with lead pipes and aqueducts, discovered at the site of Pergamum.
• The shower cabin was invented in 1839 by Polish-Canadian engineer Aleksander Edward Kierzkowski.