Soap History, Cont.

Soapmaking in England in the Middle Ages

     The first English soapmakers appeared at the end of the 12th century in Bristol. In the 13th and 14th centuries, a small community of them grew up in the neighborhood of Cheapside in London. In those days soapmakers had to pay a tax on all the soap they produced. After the Napoleonic Wars this tax rose as high as three pence per pound; soap-boiling pans were fitted with lids that could be locked every night by the tax collector in order to prevent production under cover of darkness. Not until 1853 was this high tax finally abolished, at a sacrifice to the state of over £1,000,000. Before this because of the high cost of soap, ordinary households made do without soap until about 1880, when cheap factory-made soap began to flood the market.  Soap came into such common use in the 19th century that Justus von Liebig, a German chemist, declared that the quantity of soap consumed by a nation was an accurate measure of its wealth and civilization.

    Soap was certainly known in England in the sixteenth century but as it was made of fat, and fat was needed for making candles and rushlights, it was always a prerogative of the rich.  When soap was used it was primarily used for cleaning linens and clothes rather than the human body.  Since little emphasis was placed on using soap for bodily cleanliness, people (shall we say) had an "air" about them that they tried to overcome by wearing sachets of herbs around their necks or carrying these sachets in their pockets.  When baths were taken, whether soap was used or not, the bath water was traditionally shared among the family members with the small children being bathed last.  The end result was water so dirty and murky, that a small child could literally be lost in the water - hence the saying "Don't throw the baby out with the bath water". 

Early Soap Production

     Early soapmakers probably used ashes and animal fats. Simple wood or plant ashes containing potassium carbonate were dispersed in water, and fat was added to the solution. This mixture was then boiled; ashes were added again and again as the water evaporated. During this process a slow chemical splitting of the neutral fat took place; the fatty acids could then react with the alkali carbonates of the plant ash to form soap (this reaction is called saponification).

     Animal fats containing a percentage of free fatty acids were used by the Celts. The presence of free fatty acids certainly helped to get the process started. This method probably prevailed until the end of the Middle Ages, when slaked lime came to be used to causticize the alkali carbonate. Through this process, chemically neutral fats could be saponified easily with the caustic lye. The production of soap from a handicraft to an industry was helped by the introduction of the Leblanc process for the production of soda ash from brine (about 1790) and by the work of a French chemist, Michel Eugène Chevreul, who in 1823 showed that the process of saponification is the chemical process of splitting fat into the alkali salt of fatty acids (that is, soap) and glycerin.

     The method of producing soap by boiling with open steam, introduced at the end of the 19th century, was another step toward industrialization.   The industrialization of soap making though tended to use more chemically produced ingredients and less natural ingredients, and produced in essence a detergent rather than a soap such as our ancestors used. 

     With World War I and the shortages of fats and oils that occurred, people felt compelled to look for a replacement for soap, leading to the invention of synthetic detergents.  These detergents, while being able to clean our clothes effectively, are comprised of harsh chemicals that clean, scent, and coat our clothes.  Unfortunately, many of these synthetic detergents have found their way into our skin care products.  This has caused in some people super sensitivity to these "soaps", rashes, skin irritations, and allergies plus a general drying out of the skin. Increasingly, we are required to use hand creams and lotions to prevent or reduce the dryness and roughness arising from exposure to household detergents, wind, sun, and dry atmospheres. Like facial creams, they act largely by replacing lost water and laying down an oil film to reduce subsequent moisture loss while the body's natural processes repair the damage.

     In modern times, the use of soap has become universal in industrialized nations due to a better understanding of the role of hygiene in reducing the population size of pathogenic microorganisms. Manufactured bar soaps first became available in the late nineteenth century, and advertising campaigns in Europe and the United States helped to increase popular awareness of the relationship between cleanliness and health. By the 1950s, soap had gained public acceptance as an instrument of personal hygiene.

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