I suspect it varied by societal class.
But I’d easily believe the laborers only got a hot bath once a week or so.
That is still the ‘norm’ in Germany apparently.
When I went to Germany on a job in 2000, we stayed at a local B&B.
The maid was also a bartender/hostess of a restaurant we ate at downstairs. We talked a lot and she told me that she was amazed that Americans were so clean. She knew we took showers every night because she would collect the towels for the laundry every morning while we were at work on the nearby military base.
She said her husband only took a bath once a week on Saturday night..................
It is probably true that the upper classes may have not been physically dirty, but I bet they smelled to high heaven. For the majority of history, personal cleanliness was not only not a priority, it was considered unhealthy to bathe.
So there were many perfumes and things used to mask the smell of yourself and other people, otherwise, people just got used to the smell of body odor, feces, and urine.
Think of all the bad breath. It must have just been regarded as normal.
I don’t give a crap what anyone says-one of the great underappreciated parts of modern life is not having your nasal senses constantly assaulted. Having been places where that isn’t always the case, I sure appreciate is almost as much as hot running water, which is completely underappreciated by us and taken for granted!