Women have been menstruating as long as we've been walking the earth. What the cave-women did during their menstrual cycle is obviously not documented, but basically back in the "olden days", as now, women have had 3 main options.
There seems to be evidence that even up until disposable pads became popular, that some women did nothing to collect menstrual blood, and instead let it flow. Either by simply not wearing anything and going about their day to day lives like that - or by being separated in a "Menstrual Hut" or other private place, where they simply sit there and bleed onto the ground. Some women today choose to "Free bleed" too. Others argue that women would have at least used something to collect it, because we're inteligent and resourceful enough to be able to find something and it would have been messy and inconvenient to have just let it flow (and not all women would have been able to go away and sit in a menstrual hut for the duration of their bleeding time). Surely at some point early on, someone discovered that the blood was coming from a crevice that could be plugged up with something to slow the flow, or that putting something against that area could catch that blood..... Even if they had no idea what it was, where exactly it was coming from or why.
While on the one hand I find it amazing that women would just let it trickle down their legs....I would imagine that it is only when society conventions required the collection and invisibility of menstrual blood that it became something embarrasing and taboo....and before then it was simply a matter of life. Remembering that in a pre-industrial society sitting around was not as common as it is now, so a woman standing in a field without menstrual protection is going to have fewer soiled clothes than one sitting at a computer all day.... and I suppose in those days wiping your legs is easier than getting blood stains off clothing. Plus it's also worth noting that with more physical labour, less nutrition, longer breast feeding and more children - many women would have experienced less menstrual cycles than women today do.
It is impossible to give an accurate historical run down of what women have used over the ages, because not only is it unknown what women used in most cases, unlike clothing, menstrual protection was not something that was often documented. Also, due to the nature of it being somewhat "whatever you can find to soak up blood", and not a huge commercial industry as it is now, it can't be pinpointed to being representative of a particular time, region or country, unlike fashion or other historical things.
The topic of menstruation has almost always been taboo in an age where the majority of people can write, and such a mundane aspect of a woman's life was probably not important enough for people (particularly men) to document... it's not surprising there is little documentation of what women used. Think about it - in modern biographies and autobiographies do they mention the woman's menstrual gear of choice? no... it would be like documenting how you went to the toilet or blew your nose. Really only those of us who show an interest in the topic want to actually talk about it and know what was used.... How can women have known than hundreds of years later, we'd be curious :)
What We do know
Since underwear as we know
it is only a fairly recent invention, most externally absorbing/collecting
menstrual apparatus would have most likely been "belted" - held in place
by use of some sort of arrangement that secured around the waist/hips/legs
etc. of the wearer. Commercial disposable pads didn't come onto the
scene until about 1888
or 1895.
Early disposable pads were not stick on, as they are today - they were
instead longer and were usually held in place at the front and back by
a reusable menstrual "belt". Even after they were commercially available,
they were too expensive for many women to afford. It also took women
several years to be able to comfortably buy these products. One advertising
company thought of a solution to the problem with tampons, and allowed
women to place money into a box (so that the woman would not have to speak
to the clerk to ask for them) and take a box from the counter themselves.
Which doesn't sound all that revolutionary, but it was in those days.
So it took several years for disposable products to become commonplace,
even after they were available.
Timeline
and info on known pads/devices
Several of these are references
to reproductions of patents for menstrual gear. Which may never have
been actually produced or available for women to use/buy. While many
are not actually pads as such, and have no proof of them having actually
existed, they are included here for the fact they show historic blood catchment
devices that may be of interest. The history
of menstrual cups/internal devices has its own page. Interesting
Points (like the first reference to a disposable pad) highlighted in green.
19th Century
20th
Century
Products like the Lister's
Towel failed because of a lack of publicity, as this was back in a time
where advertising menstrual products was not as open as it is today.
Kotex would appear to be the first of these early disposable menstrual
pads to really take off, since it is still in production today.
Feminine Hygiene products advertisements from the 1920s to 1950s. Early Tampon brands and packaging. Early menstrual cups/internal devices
Apparently cloth menstrual pads made a comeback around the 1970s, with their popularity increasing in the late nineties and early noughties (don't you love that term!). It seems nowdays that with the return to cloth nappies/diapers thanks to modern cloth nappies, that mothers are returning to cloth themselves, which in turn creates more awareness to cloth pads that draws in other women. When I started using them in 1999 there was not much information on the Internet about them, and very few shops selling them - compared to now.
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