Curtis D. MacDougall gave a chronology of the bathtub hoax in his book Hoaxes . The article was first published in 1917. By 1926 Mencken had already confessed the hoax. The Boston Herald published the confession and then reported the article as fact a month later. Mencken continued to say it was a prank.
Serious publications begin to quote the article as fact.
It was reported that Boston had a law against taking a bath without medical advice. Mencken's style was caustic and humorous. Some didn't appreciate his wit during the Great Depression, and what he called sham was another's religion or politics. Even though he made serious contributions to American language and literature, he might be best remembered for his made-up history of the American bathtub. H.L. Mencken died in 1956.