These days all we seem to need is a phone loaded with apps and boom, travel accessories sorted. Oh wait, a USB cable would be nice… and a converter plug… and there better be wi-fi wherever it you’re going or your phone bill will be astronomical.
But we digress.
Modern travel is full of comforts – you can even pay for extra legroom. But back in ye olden days, foreign travel was done almost exclusively by the rich, so the comfort was usually extravagant. These trips to foreign climes were often seen as a rite of passage, while poorer folks, if they went across borders, were generally emigrating.
Here are some of the accoutrements of wanderers that would raise an eyebrow or two today.
1. Pomanders
You know that orange your dad put cloves in for a laugh? Well imagine that was your only self-defence against the plague. Pomanders were what ladies carried around to protect themselves from all the ghastly afflictions in the air during the middle ages. They didn’t even know about bacteria and viruses – they just assumed the orange would ward off Black Death. Makes you realise they really don’t make oranges like they used to. Pomanders were, of course, at least vaguely helpful against all the bad odours that befell our ancestors before they bothered inventing showers and sewer systems.
2. Hat boxes
Sometimes it’s really hard to decide what hat to wear. If you’re a Victorian lady, you were completely incapable of making such a decision, so you had to get the help to carry round a different hat for each day of the week. The heavier, the better.
3. Steamer trunks
Huge trunks were all the rage when people had servants to carry everything and there was no baggage limit. If it wasn’t for that 23kg limit and the threat of £20 per extra kilo, you’d be doing the same. For you boutique fans, you might find it interesting to hear that Louis Vuitton began as a trunk designer – he was the first person to actually realise they should be rectangular and therefore stackable. Imagine all the scenes of trunks rolling overboard before he came along.
4. Anything made out of bone
Before we discovered we could make plastic from all that oil we kept finding in the ground, humans had to murder an elephant whenever they needed a new travelling toothbrush. Hair brushes, compacts, you name it – everything could be had in bonafide bone.
5. Smelling salts
Smelling salts help revive people when they fall unconscious. We’re no chemistry boffins, but it’s probably that they smell so awful that you wake up just to push them away from you. People used to pass out on long journeys, probably because they were really wimpy, unlike the Terminator-movie-watching hardmen we are today. If somebody passes out nowadays, society demands we take a selfie with their unconscious body and upload it to Twitter with the hashtag #YOLO.
6. Opium
You know those prissy sleeping pills you take that make you a little bit drowsy? Well, you’re stuck with those because in 1920 some do-gooders in parliament decided opiates were bad for you. Back in the good old days, Britain started two massive wars with China just so that Brits could keep selling opium to the Chinese. As for travelling use, opium was really popular with people who found it tricky to sleep on rough train journeys. Having a bit of opium in your system means you don’t even notice a crash – it’ll all feel like a cosy bubble of fluff is enveloping you.
7. Cocaine
Sometimes you don’t need sleep but some get-up-and-go, a surge of energy to trek across some devil of a place. Your opium’s no good for that, but in your other box you’ve got that lovely cocaine – that’ll keep you going until lunchtime. You’ll probably want to keep taking it every half an hour though, just to be sure it’s working. Aaaaaaaand now you’re broke.
8. Machetes
Before we wisely started bulldozing the silly rainforest just to graze cows that collectively fart so much they’ve ripped a handy hole in our atmosphere, we always had to use machetes to get through those horrible trees. You might see a few machetes around if you visit what’s left.
9. Portable urinals
Yes, we’ve heard your complaints about how small the toilet was on your flight. Just be grateful you didn’t have to carry around your own wee in a vase, because that’s what your great granddaddy had to do on coaches.
10. Portable chamber pots
We had number ones covered with the last item on our list, so you must have known this was coming. There wasn’t much difference between the portable and the regular version of the pot you poop in, except the traveller’s version usually included a lid to stop anything escaping lest your carriage hit a bump in the road.
11. A man
Look at all this junk in this list. You think people carried all that themselves? Travel used to be the preserve of the rich, and unsurprisingly most rich people had hired help. Sometimes it was a butler or other servant, but, depending on the era, it was often a slave.
12. Sedan chairs
Sedan chairs were strictly for lazy types who wanted to seem awful. While they were getting carried around, often in a needlessly ornamental box, these idle people would usually pick their noses and eat what they found.
(Main image by Tom Pratt)
