{"id":25403,"date":"2014-09-09T16:09:38","date_gmt":"2014-09-09T20:09:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/libapps.libraries.uc.edu\/liblog\/?p=25403"},"modified":"2014-09-10T08:06:29","modified_gmt":"2014-09-10T12:06:29","slug":"cincinnatis-bathtub-hoax-and-a-missing-giant-tub","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/libapps.libraries.uc.edu\/liblog\/2014\/09\/cincinnatis-bathtub-hoax-and-a-missing-giant-tub\/","title":{"rendered":"Cincinnati\u2019s Bathtub Hoax and a Missing Giant Tub"},"content":{"rendered":"

By: \u00a0Kevin Grace<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Mencken\"<\/a>

H.L. Mencken<\/p><\/div>\n

In 1917, the noted journalist and philologist H.L. Mencken published an article in the New York Evening Mail<\/em> concerning the history of the bathtub in the United States.\u00a0 According to the Baltimore writer, known as much for his satire and acerbic wit as he was for his political reporting, Cincinnati was home to this tub.\u00a0 Mencken asserted that America\u2019s first bathtub was introduced on December 20, 1842 by Adam Thompson who lived, in all places, Cincinnati, Ohio.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Made of mahogany and lined with lead, the vessel was introduced by Thompson to his guests at a Christmas party, described how it worked, and invited the partygoers to take a dip.\u00a0 Four of them took him up on his offer, and the next day the invention was widely reported in the press.<\/p>\n

\"William<\/a>

William Howard Taft<\/p><\/div>\n

From that point, there were considerable debates about both the possible medical dangers of tub-bathing and whether taxes should be levied on the household installation of bathtubs.\u00a0 Not many commonfolk took notice until 1850 when President Millard Fillmore, who had seen the tub when he visited Cincinnati, decided to have one placed in the White House where it faithfully served executive privilege until Grover Cleveland\u2019s presidency.<\/p>\n

Well, it was a wonderful story and certainly one of pride to Cincinnatians in the years following 1917, their gullibility notwithstanding.\u00a0 As the non-gullible suspected, the entire story was a hoax, revealed as such by Mencken himself in 1926.\u00a0 He was, he admitted, trying to have a bit of fun during the war years and didn\u2019t anticipate that the story would be believed and spread to all points emanating from the Queen City.<\/p>\n

\"President<\/a>So where do we stand on bathtubs today?\u00a0 With 2014 beginning the national jockeying for a presidential nomination in 2015, it\u2019s always good to raise the ghost of our own William Howard Taft, Cincinnati born and bred, an early dean of the UC law school, the 27th<\/sup> president of these United States, a chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, and a judicially robed statue between Blegen Library and the College of Law.\u00a0 This year has marked the publication of another Cincinnati connection to the bathtub, a children\u2019s book entitled President Taft is Stuck in the Tub.\u00a0 <\/em>Written by Mac Barnett and illustrated by Chris Van Dusen, the book chronicles the difficulty tubby Mr. Taft had in \"Taft<\/a>accommodating his quite-large frame in the bath.\u00a0 As the book title says, he gets stuck.\u00a0 While presidential duties are delayed, Taft struggles to get out and
\nresorts to calling upon his wife, Nellie, as well as his entire Cabinet to devise a way of exit (the secretary of war suggests blasting him out).\u00a0 Finally, everyone grabs what they can of the president and with a \u201csqueak, and a slap, and a snap,\u201d he flies out of the bathtub and out the window. \u00a0Everyone celebrates, a band plays on the White House lawn, and someone has the presence of mind to cover Taft with a robe.<\/p>\n

And now the large truth about Taft and his bathtub from Barnett: serving as president from 1908-1912, Taft had a tub, seven feet long and three-and-a-half feet wide, installed in the White House when he took office, built by a New Jersey ironworks firm.\u00a0 In 1909, he had a similar tub installed on the battleship, USs North Carolina, another one on his private yacht, and an even larger tub in his suite at the Hotel Taft, where he lived for a while after his presidency.<\/p>\n

\"Taft's<\/a><\/p>\n

But now for the Cincinnati mystery, and it is not a hoax.\u00a0 At one time, the historic Taft home on Auburn Avenue near campus held such a huge tub in the lower level.\u00a0 It was said to be either a copy or the White House original, but either way it could accommodate several normal-sized people.\u00a0 And, I remember seeing it there on more than one occasion.\u00a0 This house where Taft was raised is now part of the National Park Service but a few decades ago when it was being restored as an historic site, it was administered by a friends-of-the-house group.\u00a0 When the park service took over, the tub was no longer there and its whereabouts are unknown today.\u00a0 So somewhere in this fair Cincinnati land, there is a huge bathtub, the true remnant of our heritage of bathing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By: \u00a0Kevin Grace In 1917, the noted journalist and philologist H.L. Mencken published an article in the New York Evening Mail concerning the history of the bathtub in the United States.\u00a0 According to the Baltimore writer, known as much for … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,83,13],"tags":[53,52,66],"class_list":["post-25403","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-arb","category-langsam-library","category-uclibraries","tag-cincinnati-history","tag-uc-history","tag-university-archives"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/libapps.libraries.uc.edu\/liblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25403","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/libapps.libraries.uc.edu\/liblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/libapps.libraries.uc.edu\/liblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/libapps.libraries.uc.edu\/liblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/libapps.libraries.uc.edu\/liblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25403"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/libapps.libraries.uc.edu\/liblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25403\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/libapps.libraries.uc.edu\/liblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25403"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/libapps.libraries.uc.edu\/liblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25403"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/libapps.libraries.uc.edu\/liblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25403"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}