Mencken’s Bathtub Hoax

The story as it is told

The first bathtub in America, the story goes, was installed in Cincinnati in 1842 by a man named Adam Thompson. It did not go down well. Doctors warned that the tub was dangerous. Boston, alarmed, banned bathing altogether except on a doctor's orders, and Virginia taxed anyone who owned a tub.

In the end it was President Millard Fillmore who made the bathtub respectable, by putting one in the White House.

What we can confirm

On December 28, 1917, the New York Evening Mail ran a column by H. L. Mencken called "A Neglected Anniversary." It lamented that the nation had let the 75th anniversary of the American bathtub slip by unmarked. Mencken claimed the first tub was installed on December 20, 1842, in Cincinnati by a grain dealer named Adam Thompson, who had seen one in England. He described it in loving detail: mahogany, lined with lead, weighing about 1,750 pounds. Thompson supposedly showed it off to guests at a Christmas party. Then came the backlash Mencken invented: doctors denouncing the tub, a Philadelphia ordinance banning winter bathing that failed by two votes in 1843, a Virginia tax of $30 a year on tubs, and an 1845 Boston rule making bathing unlawful except on medical advice. Mencken credited President Millard Fillmore with installing a White House tub around 1850-51 and so ending the controversy. He even supplied footnote-style references to an 1843 medical journal and an 1857 church paper.

None of it was true. Mencken later said the piece was "planned as a piece of spoofing to relieve the strain of war days." Papers picked it up as fact almost at once. Ten weeks later, on March 7, 1918, the New York Evening World ran "First Bathtub Cause of Controversy," repeating Thompson, Cincinnati, the Philadelphia vote, the Virginia tax and the Boston law as plain history. Reprints spread from small-town weeklies to big-city Sunday papers through the early 1920s.

On May 23, 1926, Mencken confessed on the front page of the Chicago Sunday Tribune in a column titled "Melancholy Reflections." He wrote that readers had sent him corroboration, that quacks and doctors alike were citing his "facts," and that the tale had reached "standard works of reference." He called the original "a tissue of absurdities, all of them deliberate and most of them obvious" and "pure buncombe." It made no difference. On December 13, 1926, seven months after the confession, the Washington Times ran a Chicago wire story in which J. M. Price of the Boncilla cosmetics company of Indianapolis told an audience that the bathtub arrived in America in 1842, that Adam Thompson of Cincinnati built it after seeing Lord John Russell's tub, and that Fillmore installed the White House tub in 1852. According to the Museum of Hoaxes, the Boston Herald, which had carried the confession, reprinted the fake history as news three weeks later. The journalism scholar Curtis MacDougall counted 55 appearances as fact after 1926, including a 1942 "Bathtub's United States Centennial" feature in Mencken's own Baltimore Sun.

The highest-profile victim was Harry Truman, who, according to a 1951 New Yorker profile by John Hersey cited by the Museum of Hoaxes, told the Fillmore story to visitors touring the renovated White House. Speaking to the American Hospital Association in Philadelphia on September 16, 1952, he said: "There is a story around the White House that Mrs. Millard Fillmore brought the first bathtub into the White House," and that she was called "an indecent person" for it. The real record is duller. The White House Historical Association says the mansion got running water in 1833, with a bathing room in the east wing soon after, and that in 1853, under Franklin Pierce, a permanent bathtub with hot and cold water replaced the portable painted tin tubs. Mencken's 1842 date, his Cincinnati tub and his anti-bathing laws remain inventions.

The facts

• "A Neglected Anniversary" by H. L. Mencken, New York Evening Mail, Dec 28, 1917: first tub Dec 20, 1842, Cincinnati, Adam Thompson; mahogany, lead-lined, about 1,750 lb; Philadelphia 1843 ordinance; Virginia $30 tax; Boston 1845; Fillmore. Text at hoaxes.org, hoaxes.org
• Mencken's confession, "Melancholy Reflections," Chicago Tribune, May 23, 1926: "a tissue of absurdities, all of them deliberate and most of them obvious." hoaxes.org, hoaxes.org
• Evening World, Mar 7, 1918, p. 16, "First Bathtub Cause of Controversy," repeats the Thompson, Philadelphia, Virginia and Boston claims as fact. loc.gov
• Washington Times, Dec 13, 1926, p. 5: Chicago wire story quoting J. M. Price of the Boncilla company repeating the hoax, including Fillmore 1852 and Lord John Russell's tub. loc.gov
• Truman, Address in Philadelphia before the American Hospital Association, Sept 16, 1952, repeats the Mrs. Fillmore bathtub story. Truman Library, trumanlibrary.gov
• White House running water 1833; permanent bathtub with hot and cold water 1853 replaced portable tin tubs. White House Historical Association, whitehousehistory.org
• Confession ran on page 1 of the Chicago Sunday Tribune; Mencken: the piece was "planned as a piece of spoofing to relieve the strain of war days." hoaxes.org excerpt
• The Washington Post repeated the Fillmore claim in a Feb 15, 2004 travel column and ran a correction days later. hoaxes.org

Related: What enters the public domain in 2027

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