Women in the 1700s managed their periods with homemade cloth pads, herbal remedies, and a lot of silence. There were no commercial menstrual products, no underwear as we know it, and no public conversation about the topic. What women did was practical, resourceful, and largely undocumented, which is exactly why this question is so common today.
What Women Actually Used
The primary method was simple: folded strips of woven fabric or flannel, held against the body to absorb menstrual blood. These homemade cloth pads could be washed and reused, cycle after cycle. Linen was the most common material, since it was widely available as a household textile. Old shirts, bed linens, and other worn-out fabric got a second life as menstrual cloths, which is where the old term “on the rag” comes from.
Some women likely used nothing at all and simply bled into their clothing or undergarments. This wasn’t as alarming as it sounds today, partly because dark-colored petticoats and multiple layers of skirts were standard dress. Outer clothing provided a buffer that modern wardrobes don’t.
The Underwear Problem
Here’s the detail that surprises most people: women in the 1700s generally did not wear underwear. Drawers, the precursor to modern underpants, were a men’s garment. Women wouldn’t widely adopt them until the nineteenth century, and even then, the early versions were open at the crotch, essentially two separate leg tubes attached to a waistband.
Without a closed undergarment, there was no convenient way to pin or secure a cloth pad the way you might imagine. Women likely held folded cloths in place by tucking them into a waistband, pinning them to a shift (the long linen garment worn closest to the skin), or simply relying on the pressure of layered skirts to keep fabric in position. The sanitary belt, a waist-worn elastic strap with clips to hold a pad at the front and back, wouldn’t appear as a commercial product until later. Some version of a tied-on cloth arrangement probably existed, but detailed records are scarce because the topic was deeply private.
Washing and Reuse
Menstrual cloths were washed by hand and dried for reuse. Laundry in the 1700s was backbreaking work involving soaking, boiling, beating, and wringing fabric by hand, often done on a weekly or biweekly schedule. Bloodstained cloths would have been soaked in cold water first (hot water sets blood into fabric), then scrubbed and boiled.
Privacy around drying was a real concern. Women would have been discreet about hanging menstrual cloths to dry, likely tucking them among other laundry or drying them in less visible areas. The social shame around menstruation meant that even within a household, these items were handled quietly. For women without household help, the entire process of managing, washing, and drying menstrual cloths added a significant burden to an already labor-intensive domestic routine.
How Doctors Understood Menstruation
The medical framework of the 1700s still drew heavily on humoral theory, the ancient idea that health depended on balancing four bodily fluids. Physicians believed women’s bodies were naturally cooler and damper than men’s, which meant they couldn’t burn off excess blood the way male bodies supposedly did. Menstruation was seen as nature’s solution: a monthly purge of “corrupt” or “feculent” blood that would otherwise build up and cause illness.
Doctors viewed regular periods as essential to a woman’s health. If menstruation stopped (outside of pregnancy), it was considered dangerous, a sign that toxins were accumulating in the body. Treatments to restart periods were common in medical texts. Conversely, the menstrual blood itself was sometimes described as toxic or poisonous, which fed into broader cultural fears and taboos. This belief that periods were both necessary and contaminating created a contradictory view that shaped how women were treated and how they experienced their own bodies.
Managing Cramps and Heavy Bleeding
Without over-the-counter painkillers, women turned to herbal remedies passed down through generations. Mugwort was one of the most widely used plants for menstrual pain. A length of stem was cut into pieces, steeped in hot water, and drunk as tea. Mugwort seeds were also chewed directly to relieve cramping. Peony root, boiled into a tea, served a similar purpose. Sage tea was used specifically to reduce heavy menstrual bleeding, and various preparations of wild buckwheat were taken for irregular cycles.
These weren’t fringe practices. Herbal medicine was mainstream healthcare for most people in the 1700s, especially for women’s health concerns that male physicians often dismissed or misunderstood. Women, midwives, and community healers maintained detailed knowledge of which local plants addressed specific symptoms. The remedies varied by region and culture, but the underlying approach was consistent: plant-based teas and infusions were the go-to treatment for cramps, heavy flow, and cycle irregularities.
Periods Started Later Than Today
Girls in the 1700s typically got their first period between ages 15 and 16, significantly later than the modern average of 12 to 13. Nutrition is the biggest factor in this difference. Menarche requires a certain level of body fat and overall nutritional status, and most girls in the eighteenth century, particularly after the industrial revolution began reshaping living conditions, grew more slowly and reached that threshold later.
This meant that women in the 1700s experienced fewer total years of menstruation than women do today. Combined with the fact that women spent a larger portion of their reproductive years either pregnant or breastfeeding (both of which suppress periods), the average eighteenth-century woman likely had far fewer lifetime periods than a modern woman. That doesn’t mean menstruation was a minor concern, but it does change the scale of the challenge compared to today.
Silence as the Norm
Perhaps the most striking difference between the 1700s and now is how completely menstruation was excluded from public life and written records. There are very few firsthand accounts from women describing how they managed their periods, which is precisely why this topic feels so mysterious. Diaries, letters, and household guides from the era rarely mention menstruation directly, relying instead on euphemisms or simply omitting the subject entirely.
Mothers passed practical knowledge to daughters privately. Servants and working women shared tips among themselves. But none of this entered the written record in any systematic way, which means much of what historians know is pieced together from medical texts (written by men), household inventories, surviving fabric artifacts, and occasional oblique references in personal correspondence. The silence itself tells a story: managing a period in the 1700s was not just a physical challenge but a social one, requiring discretion at every step.