Ultra-obscure vintage Curity cloth "diapers" - What in the world are these?

[Cottontail]

I saw these on eBay a couple of days ago and had to pounce. I've never seen their like before. The seller called them Curity baby diapers, however they have a few odd traits that I've never seen in a Curity diaper before. These include:

• They're big!  32x24" - one might say "adult-sized" (I actually pinned one on with diaper pins and it's a decent fit!)
• They're double-woven / muslin gauze
• They have two layers of fabric and are serged all the way around
• They have ties at the four corners

(pictures below)

So, uh... What the heck are these things? It's tempting to say that they're adult diapers meant to tie at the hips (like Snibbs), but I'm 99% sure that's wrong. Maybe they're mats for cribs or incubators or something? Meant to tie to the bars in the corners? (shrug)

All guesses welcome.

 

[tibsy]

I would say they are bed mats for a child to lie on with the strings to tie to the corners of the bed / cot.  Also I wouldn't say these are big or adult sized, a normal UK terry 'baby' nappy is 24" by 24" although they do fit older babies / small chidren, I'm sure I've worn at about 4 yrs old!

[Little BabyDoll Christine]

Never heard of them The only Curity"'s I know of were the prefolds and 21x40, a couple of which I still have for my dollies

I have also never heard of Curity rubber panties, despite the fact that they made quite a few baby items

[rusty pins]

7 hours ago, Little Christine said:

Never heard of them The only Curity"'s I know of were the prefolds and 21x40, a couple of which I still have for my dollies

I have also never heard of Curity rubber panties, despite the fact that they made quite a few baby items

If Little Christine doesn't know, then I don't know who would.

[Little BabyDoll Christine]

Maybe Angella Baur. She has done the research on material going back to the 1890's. I am only the rubber panty expert, and that mostly from direct obaservation. I bet shoe would know more about Gerber panties than anyone. Because they were made of grainy material, they were of no interest to me

If you read my opus  magnus about rubber panties, you will learn that I am a Real Worlder and use the terms my parents' generation used and taught us and we taught  Gen-X As to what my grnadparnets used' I do not know. My parents were from the 1905-25 generation. I did see in Google books a 1915 refereence that called them "rubber diaper" and look up "rubber diaper" in the Urban Dectionary and you find the same, but for a different cause

My parents' generation called disposables "pampers", "throw-away diapers" or just "throw-aways" or "Paper diapers" as I do. And the adult versions are tehcnically called "briefs". "Disposables" is a $5 word for throw away and the "fluff" is just made of some kind of paper, so that applies still. "Diaper" was reserved for the reusuable clothe item

[Cottontail]

Thanks all.  As somebody whose been collecting Curity diapers (but mostly prefolds) off of eBay for years, I was really surprised to see something labeled "Curity" that I hadn't seen already.  Pretty wild.

On 8/14/2021 at 12:03 AM, tibsy said:

I would say they are bed mats for a child to lie on with the strings to tie to the corners of the bed / cot.  Also I wouldn't say these are big or adult sized, a normal UK terry 'baby' nappy is 24" by 24" although they do fit older babies / small chidren, I'm sure I've worn at about 4 yrs old!

Yeah, I ought to have clarified my "adult sized" comment.  These are sized and shaped like adult prefolds.  They certainly could be folded down for babies, but they're not shaped like any Curity baby diaper I've seen, nor like any modern "flat."

But I'm leaning toward the "not a diaper" diagnosis anyway.

[skizics]

Curity was big in the Medical fields back in the day. I think they still are for that matter.

I've never seen one of those Tie On things before and the size makes me think Crib Cover. (All Hospitals had Diaper Laundry Services in house)

I always wore the 21 X 40 cotton gauze curity diapers.

[Little BabyDoll Christine]

I thought Curity was bought by Gerber

Was  not Curity part of Kendall-Futuro?

[ValentinesStuff]

The Kendall company owns the Trademark.