Vintage Hygiene Practices That Are the Very Opposite of Clean

 
Flowers Were Carried Around to Cover up Bad Smells

Is it any surprise that people reeked during the Victorian era? Surely in every period ever, humans smelled, but with the lack of proper hygiene practices, cities smelled absolutely foul. A way to combat this was by carrying around bouquets of fragrant flowers. That way, you could walk around and sniff the flowers all day whenever you caught a whiff of something smelling rancid. Which happened quite frequently, you can imagine.

Especially on a hot day, the city would be full of putrid smells that could be super overwhelming, so if you had something to smell like flowers or a scented handkerchief, you were lucky.