We can assume, however, that women [of the 19th centruy] did not find menstruating to be the most comfortable thing in the world. They used cloth pads tied or buttoned to belts to soak up the menstrual blood. As Mary Hanson,* who got her first period before the introduction of Kotex in 1921, explained to me, “We had diapers… they weren’t very comfortable… you’d have to shape it, fold it over, just as you put on a baby.” The cloth often chafed the inside of a woman’s thighs, especially if it was wet, making painful abrasions. Diapers were inconvenient, as well. They got in the way of urination (nineteenth-century women, who used outhouses, chamber pots, or a discreet outdoor spot, did not normally wear panties or other clothes that would need to be pulled down). And, Mary sighed, “you had to soak them and wash them and cleanse them and blah, blah, blah, and hang them up so no one would see them.”[4]