Ancestors At Work
Laundry was a key part of our female ancestors’ lives, and many made this domestic chore into their profession, says Jayne Shrimpton
Was your forebear employed as a laundress?
Millions of people have earned a living washing others’ garments, and in western societies laundry work has been chiefly a female occupation. Historically the social elite always employed servants or professional washerwomen in household laundries. During the 1800s, as the population rose and Britain grew wealthier, outsourcing washing became a common way of relieving the domestic burden. The middle class and even better-off workingclass families also sent their laundry out, or employed help at home. The frequency of the laundry reflected the quantity of clothes a household possessed: a privileged few ran quarterly laundry operations, although most ordinary families had only sufficient linen for a weekly wash.
Handwashing was a mammoth task. Apart from the delicate silk, lace and fine woollen articles generally cleaned by experienced servants or specialist firms, professional laundresses handled all domestic washing, including linen, cotton and some flannel items: men’s shirts; baby clothes; nightwear; undergarments; aprons; caps; kerchiefs; work smocks and simple day frocks; bedlinen; towels; and washable furniture covers and curtains. Typically a batch took four or five days to complete – the items were gathered on Monday/Tuesday and returned, clean and ironed,
on Friday/Saturday. In country cottages and some urban homes there was a lean-to washhouse, but typically space was limited. Small-scale laundry operations often occurred in a basement, or in the home of the laundress or her customer.
Traditional hand laundry involved two main processes: cleaning and ironing. First the collected items were marked, sorted, then soaked and boiled as required. Ideally a laundress could access a large vessel or ‘copper’ set in brickwork over a fire for boiling water, which was then ladled into tubs. Most articles received at least two washes, using warm water and household soap or detergents like paraffin, the clothes pounded with a washing ‘dolly’: a threeor four-legged pole. Rinsing used warm and cold water, with a blueing solution often added to the final rinse to whiten whites. Caps, aprons and men’s shirts all needed starching. Hand-operated wringers squeezed water out of wet washing, and mangles with large rollers flattened larger items. Clothes were then dried, ideally outdoors where the light bleached whites. Countrywomen lay washing out on the grass or hedges; other laundresses used washing lines, and suburban laundries had special drying grounds. Indoors, wet washing was draped over a clothes horse or ‘maiden’ suspended from the ceiling, or hung up wherever space permitted.
Next, different articles needed specific irons. The basic type was a triangular flat-iron, heated on the stove or over the fire. Made of metal, it became very hot and easily scorched clothes, although an experienced laundress could gauge the temperature. Hollow box-irons, filled with hot coals or metal bricks, were favoured for fragile garments and accessories. Victorian and Edwardian ladies’ caps, petticoats and other delicate items were often ornately frilled and maintaining these correctly required special ‘gauffering’ irons.
Independent laundresses and small ‘workshop’ or ‘hand’ laundry staff needed competence in both washing and ironing. In the 1800s little training existed: occasionally ironers followed a three-month ‘apprenticeship’ and young girls were sometimes taken on as ‘learners’, but most adult women already had laundry
‘A widow might be given a mangle to earn a living’
experience, or learned on the job. Hand laundry apparatus changed little throughout the century, and inventions like early manual washing ‘machines’ were cumbersome and unpopular. Wringers and mangles improved, with new, smaller versions attaching to wash tubs. A mangle was the most substantial item of equipment before mechanisation. Older women often worked as ‘manglers’: neighbours and friends might buy a widow a mangle so she could earn a living.
Washing was a fundamental working-class domestic chore. Daughters learned it at home, and workhouse and orphanage girls were taught laundry techniques
in preparation for working life. Many of our ancestors turned to paid laundry work throughout their lives. Victorian laundresses were often the wives of husbands who were sick, indisposed or worked seasonally.
Hand laundry work was uncomfortable and exhausting. Premises were often makeshift, cramped and poorly ventilated. The heat and steam resulted in consumption, bronchial complaints and rheumatism. The physical demands of shifting wet loads between tubs, handoperating heavy equipment, and kneading, squeezing and wringing water-laden washing were also intense. Although washerwomen could work part-time, shifts might be 18 hours long and some worked an 80-hour week. Those in dire financial need laboured the longest, leading to varicose veins and leg ulcers. Beer was provided as part-payment, keeping some going well into old age.
Throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries much professional laundering was done by independent laundresses, or small workshops employing a few women. Traditional organisation and work methods persisted long after industrial mechanisation elsewhere. However, modernising influences crept in from the mid-19th century, including larger commercial laundries. Department stores, hotels, restaurants, shipping lines, railways, government offices and large businesses placed lucrative contracts with new factory-sized laundries. Once municipal water supplies became reliable, the chief technological shift was towards vast, steam-operated laundries.
Large factory laundries were often run by men, although from the early 1900s training was also offered to middle-class ladies desiring managerial roles. There was increasing division of labour, and a growing hierarchy of roles. Modern laundry work also attracted more young women, although unguarded dangerous machinery now made industrial accidents occupational hazards. Working conditions and wages slowly improved, with strengthening union presence and minimum wage rates set by the trade board. Victorian and Edwardian washers had typically earned between 2s and 2s 6d per