A brief history of Britain’s obsession with the hot water bottle

Final winter, UK retailers reported document gross sales of water bottles as customers look to chop their heating prices as the typical family vitality payments soared.

Boiling a kettle to fill a sizzling water bottle makes use of much less vitality than an electrical blanket or turning on the heating and so is the most affordable choice to maintain you heat, based on shopper insights publication Which?.

This 12 months, bottles have been noticed on the London runway as even luxurious manufacturers are cashing in on their reputation.

Feeling the nippiness ourselves, we have now dug into the historical past of the new water bottle as half of a giant analysis venture on the worldwide historical past of Boots The Chemists.

The primary sizzling water bottles

Sizzling water bottles have been round in numerous types for hundreds of years. Early variations had been produced from supplies corresponding to steel, ceramic, and glass. These bottles might lose warmth rapidly and had been disagreeable, icy mattress companions as soon as cooled.

Refinement of the vulcanisation course of within the mid-Nineteenth century was a revolution for the standard “hottie”. Commercials for rubber bottles began showing in UK newspapers by the late 1860s. In November 1867, for instance, Thornton and Co. promoted their “India Rubber” sizzling water bottle within the Glasgow Herald, with claims that its product was a “nice consolation to invalids”.

Rubber bottles had been comfortable, versatile, and retained warmth for longer. Whereas the fundamental design has modified little or no, the acquainted flask form is extensively attributed to Croatian inventor Eduard Penkala. Newspapers trumpeted the significance of checking a bottle correctly earlier than use to keep away from debilitating burns and scalds. Seasonal articles, very similar to in the present day, inspired folks to spend money on a brand new bottle each few years.

Sizzling water bottles at Boots

Though we can’t be sure when Boots stocked its first rubber sizzling water bottle, it was pushing them onerous by the Twenties. On this decade, new manufacturing methods widened rubber’s utility and ease of manufacturing for a number of family items, clothes, and footwear. The fabric’s waterproof, wipe-down qualities and its excessive malleability remodeled approaches to dwelling hygiene.

Rubber gloves, child teats, dwelling enema tubes, rubberised plasters and elasticated girdles are all examples of merchandise invented or improved between the primary and second world wars and had a huge effect on on a regular basis well being, consolation, and comfort. Latex condoms additionally date from this era, though given their Methodist origins, Boots refused to promote them. However they did inventory a bewilderingly giant vary of rubber sizzling water bottles, rigorously tiered by high quality and worth.

On the top-of-the-range was the “Regaid Tremendous Crimson”, however clients might additionally purchase the mid-priced mannequin “Cumfy” (additionally in purple), the lower-priced “Perfection” in gray, and a price range stage “Primus”, marketed as a useful, if “drab” choice for the price range acutely aware.

Whereas various in worth, all Boots’ sizzling water bottles had been touted to alleviate ache in addition to present warmth. A miniature model of the “Cumfy”, for example, was bought as a handwarmer, a transportable warmth supply for child’s pram and as a reduction for neuralgia (a taking pictures, stabbing nerve ache) or earache.

Housewives got strict directions on the way to maintain their bottle clear and to cease the rubber from deteriorating. As a result of very popular water would possibly crack the rubber, Boots suggested its clients to pour a cup of chilly water into the bottle first. Then, after it was emptied, it needs to be hung the other way up, with the stopper eliminated, in a “cool, darkish place”.

An uncomfortable historical past?

Rubber remodeled on a regular basis consolation in Britain, however the business has a posh historical past marked by financial exploitation, racial discrimination, and environmental abuses pushed by European colonialism. Rubber plantation employees in Southeast Asia, for instance, usually endured harsh situations to domesticate, faucet, and course of uncooked rubber sheets. On arrival to the producer abroad, the rubber was poured over cotton – one other product of the British empire – to make the new water bottle pliable, comfortable and powerful.

Within the Twenties, Boots employees journal, The Bee, featured a number of articles explaining the place rubber got here from and the way sizzling water bottles had been made. Like many company communications of the time, these advised a sanitised story of producing success. When Boots celebrated the “excellent situations” that helped British manufacturing facility ladies take “justifiable pleasure” within the bottles they made, it marginalised the exploitative situations wanted to supply low cost cotton and rubber. Sarcastically, sizzling water bottles had been usually shipped again to rubber-producing nations to assist colonial ex-pats take care of the local weather.

Immediately, the number of sizzling water bottle fashions and worth factors appear countless. This beloved traditional exhibits no indicators of dropping its enchantment for British customers. As a cheap and acquainted staple, we are going to probably proceed to tuck ourselves up in mattress with one for a lot of extra winters to return.

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