Rub-a-dub-dub

As the risk of sounding risqué, there's nothing nicer than having your dub-dub rubbed in a tub. 

I hope you enjoy these men in their a ceramic-encapulated aquarian surroundings. Later let's plunge into some facts about how bathtubs became a fixture in American life.

Nico Tortorella, star of Fox TV's 'The Following,' 2013

Eddie Cibrian, by Steven Lippman

Martino, by Jakov B

The bathtub wasn't invented by Americans but it did produce a couple of noteworthy mentions in our history.


THE PRESIDENTIAL SQUEEZE

If you could pick any president of any era to bathe with, please don't invite William Howard Taft, who served in the White House in the early 1900s.

You see, Taft was a man worth two presidents. At 340 pounds (154 kilograms) he was the largest of our 44 presidents. One time, he got in a White House bathtub but couldn't get out. According to one legend, it took multiple men to pull him out. Another says butter was used to slide him out.

There is only one primary source attesting to the episode. Ike Hoover, a White House usher, recounted his experiences in a 1932 book titled 42 Years in the White House. The book mentions, without detail, that Taft once got stuck in a tub.

But there is circumstantial evidence that lends weight to the book. 

Taft's new bathtub

According to CNN's political unit, the National Archives contains a requisition letter by the captain of the USS North Carolina. He asked for a special bathtub for the president's trip to inspect the Panama Canal in 1909. The letter asks for a tub "5 feet 5 inches in length, over rolled rim, and of extra width."

Newspaper reports stated at the time that the tub was built on a grand scale, having "pondlike dimensions" capable of holding "four ordinary men." 


THE HOAX

On the other hand, there is nothing to the notion that Millard Fillmore was the first president to install a bathtub in the White House. It was merely a hoax concocted by famed newspaperman and iconoclast H.L. Mencken. In an article printed in the now defunct New York Evening Mail on December 28, 1917, Mencken wrote:

"On December 20 there flitted past us, absolutely without public notice, one of the most important profane anniversaries in American history, to wit, the seventy-fifth anniversary of the introduction of the bathtub into These States. Not a plumber fired a salute or hung out a flag. Not a governor proclaimed a day of prayer. Not a newspaper called attention to the day."

H.L. Mencken

Mencken painted a painstaking account of the history of the bathtub. He wrote that it was an English invention, introduced by Lord John Russell in 1828. From there, the novelty made its way to the United States through an enterprising Cincinnati merchant who made frequent trips to England.

On December 20, 1842, the Cincinnati merchant had a bathtub installed in his home, invited some friends for dinner and then gave an exhibition of its use. The bathtub became an immediate sensation and led to "violent discussions" on the merits of its use. It was denounced as a frivolous toy from England and a danger to public health. Legislators weighed in.

Finally in 1849, Mencken wrote, the American Medical Association decided it was harmless. "But it was the example of President Millard Fillmore that, even more than the grudging medical approval, gave the bathtub recognition and respectability in the United States."

President Millard Fillmore (1850-1853)

As Mencken tells it, Fillmore, while vice president, visited Cincinnati and happened to bathe in the famous bathtub. Experiencing no ill effects, he "became an ardent advocate of the new invention."

Upon the death of President Zachary Taylor, Fillmore solicited bids for a bathtub for the White House. As Mencken tells it, critics objected, saying that all previous presidents "had got along without any such monarchial luxuries." Fillmore nevertheless prevailed.

Having expounded fully on the story, Mencken urged his readers to begin working toward "an adequate celebration" of the Fillmore bathtub for the centennial in 1942. 

Nothing in Mencken's hoax was true. It was all a joke, he later said, "a tissue of absurdities" meant to take readers' minds away from the seriousness of the World War. But soon it was given immense credibility, not only among his fellow journalists but also among medical authorities, historians, members of Congress and scholarly reference works.

Those in the know, however, have adopted the hoax as theirs. Starting in 1975, the town of Moravia, New York, holds bathtub races annually down its main street. The races are part of a celebration it calls Fillmore Days. 

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