The President and the Tub: America’s First Culture War

Guns, flags, hot dogs, “Merry Christmas,” national anthems. What won’t we fight over? Some say it started in the 1960s. Or was it in the 1970s? Or in our own wacked-out century? The fact is that one of the earliest appearances of a recognizable culture war overtook the U.S. in the 1840s. The source of the controversy? Bathtubs.

In 1917, H.L. Mencken, the journalist, editor and so-called “Sage of Baltimore,” wrote an article for the New York Evening Mail bemoaning the fact that no one was observing the seventy-fifth anniversary of the first bathtub in America. He noted that the original tub was put into use on December 20, 1842, in Cincinnati, Ohio. Could it be that Americans wanted to forget the venom that had flowed over this apparently harmless invention?

H.L. Mencken

The man responsible for the innovation was Adam Thompson, a wealthy Cincinnati cotton and grain merchant. He installed in his mansion a tub fashioned from Nicaraguan mahogany and lined with lead. The seven-foot behemoth weighed nearly a ton — reinforcement had to be installed in the floor. The water was pumped by hand and heated as it passed up a coil in his chimney. At a Christmas day party that year, four of his friends tried out the novel appliance and found it delightful.

Then the controversy began. Obviously only available to the rich, the contraption was an attack, some said, on the “democratic simplicity” of the nation. Medical men were among its most vociferous critics. According to the Western Medical Repository, bathing in this manner could cause “phthisic, rheumatic fevers, inflammation of the lungs and the whole category of zymotic diseases.”

The class distinction combined with the scientific opposition led to heated disputes. Ultimately, legislative fixes — not unfamiliar to modern-day culture warriors — were proposed. The Philadelphia city council considered banning the tubs, but the law was narrowly voted down. A prohibition did go onto the books in Boston, but it was probably not enforced. In Virginia, tub owners were subject to a $30 tax.

The most prominent champion in this early “war” was President Millard Fillmore. While politicking in Cincinnati in 1850, the then vice president visited Thompson and inspected his original tub. Later that same year, on the death of President Zachary Taylor, Fillmore moved into the White House. He decided to install a bathtub in the president’s mansion.

Fillmore became a zealous advocate for indoor bathing. He ran into a buzzsaw of controversy, much of fueled by partisanship. Fillmore was accused of favoring “monarchical luxuries.” Yet he persisted. His cast iron tub was used by presidents until at least the 1880s

Millard Fillmore

Fillmore, the only president to hail from Western New York (my own former stomping ground), served for less than three years and was not reelected. The installation of the bathtub was a milestone of his short presidency. To this day, the event is commemorated yearly in his hometown of Moravia, New York. Local fans mount a good-spirited bathtub race during their August Fillmore Days celebration, with wheeled tubs careening down the main drag.

The quarrel about bathtubs may today seem frivolous compared to our own broiling disputes over things like electric cars, Bud Light, and gas stoves, but in one way, it is very modern — the whole story is a fabrication.

Yes, Mencken did publish the 1917 article detailing the historical facts. But he made them up — all of them. Adam Thompson, the Nicaraguan mahogany, the zymotic diseases, all were products of his imagination. Millard Fillmore was indeed our thirteenth president, but none of his meager accomplishments had to do with bathtubs.

Eight years after the publication of the original article, Mencken admitted that none of it was true. He had written the essay as a “jocosity” to distract readers from the grim news of the Great War. It was all “pure buncombe,” a “tissue of somewhat heavy absurdities.”

Nevertheless, the “blowsy nonsense” was reprinted by countless other newspapers and cited in encyclopedias. Scholarly articles on public hygiene referred to it. The controversy was talked about in the halls of Congress.

The story went on and on. In 1952, President Truman told the tale of the tub to illustrate progress in public health. In 2001, the Washington Post stated: “President Millard Fillmore was criticized for indulging in ‘monarchical luxury' when he had a bathtub installed in the White House.” The paper later printed a shamefaced retraction.

Lord Balfour once supposedly said: “History does not repeat itself. Historians repeat each other.” It doesn’t take too much reading in the history books to see his point.

Mencken’s “lie” was harmless. Other falsehoods can be toxic. What’s the lesson? Check your sources? Don’t believe every Internet meme you read? Stop and think before you form a conclusion? Maybe it’s just — for God’s sake, lighten up already.