Coping with washday blues

Washday has always been at best a trial, and at worst a curse, as the great Restoration diarist Samuel Pepys makes clear in his terse entry for April 4, 1666: 'Home, and being washing day, dined on cold meat.' But Pepys' disgruntlement at the dinner table was a minor cross to bear compared to the hardships which faced those confronted with the actual burden of having to do the washday chores.

For hundred of years, the process barely changed, and until the first commercial washing machines began to appear in around 1860, nearly all washing was done laboriously by hand. An hour at the washtub was roughly equivalent to an hour of swimming breast stroke at an energetic pace, and the work was so physically exhausting that it is now thought to have been a leading cause of ill health.

The easiest way of dealing with washday was to put it off as long as possible. Until the 18th century, even the wealthiest households did their washing only once a month. People disguised the smell of unwashed clothes with perfume and deodorants.

One rule for the rich

Those who could afford it employed laudrymaids or sent their washing out. A formidable breed of professional washerwoman renowned for her muscular physique and lewd language dominated the communal washing grounds, which held a central place in the life of every town and village. These public washing grounds were situated near running water, which was collected in large tubs and heated on open fires. The women scrubbed the laundry with their bare hands, using soap made from animal fat boiled with lye- an organic detergent derived from wood ash- and rubbing it against washboards. After the excess water was wrung out, washing was hung up to dry on the communal clothes lines.

Habits changed by the end of the 8th century. People could afford to change clothes more often as the price of cloth fell during the Industrial Revolution, so the quantity of laundry increased accordingly. Women wore at least three layers of underclothing alone and it was standard practice for these to be washed weekly. It became more economical for big households to do their washing at home in a laundry room, though commercial laundries continued to flourish in large cities.

All in one
Washing in cleaned on the ground floor and dried on the upper floors in public laundry in Paris.

The family wash
All the womenfolk of a 19th century German household help on washing day. Large houses had one room for washing and another for ironing. Because of the need for hot water these were usually near the kitchen.

Rituals of the laundry room

By the 19th century, the best private laundries had stone floors laid on brick piers which sloped gently towards a drainage gutter. Washing was done in a series of wooden tubs, the more sophisticated of which were fed by hot and cold taps. In winter and in cities without outside clothes lines, clothes were hung on wooden frames and left to air in drying rooms, heated by a furnace. Monday was for sorting the washing into piles of whites, colored and woolens. Maids removed ribbons, lace adornments and buttons that were too delicate to survive the wash, and stains and grease spots were rubbed with lye. Washing was left to soak in lukewarm water mixed with soda. On Tuesday the fires were lit. Whites were given at least three separate washes with soap in water as hot as the hand could bear and colored clothes and woolens were washed in cooler water to stop them shrinking.

Mangling and ironing

The remainder of the week was devoted to mangling and ironing. The upright mangle was designed by George Jee in 1779. Turning its handle turned two rollers between which the cloth was passed. The action of the rollers squeezed out excess water and gave the sheets an initial pressing. BY 1850 mangles were widely available. Once the clothes were nearly dry, they were ironed. A cloth was laid over a table so it could double as an ironing board, and heavy irons were heated by the fire.
Before metal alternatives were introduced in the mid 19th century, washboards, washtubs and other contraptions used to do the laundry were primarily made of wood. In order to make them water resistant, the wood had to be seasoned for up to 18 months before use. The newfangled washboards made of durable corrugated zinc, iron or glass were welcomed as valuable additions to the laundrymaid's armory. Inventions to lighten the load had appeared as early as 1691, when the first washing machine was patented in England. These early machines mostly consisted of a tub with paddles inside. The tub was filled with clothes and the handle turned to make the paddles spin around. Few machines lived up to the extravagant claims of their inventors, however, and they frequently ruined the clothes they had been designed to wash.

Fancy Tools
Many mass-produced Victorian household machines, including mangles, were fancifully ornamented, like this one, the 'Tudor', with its cast iron castellated top.

Streamlined Style
An early 20th century mangle with an iron frame and wooden rollers has a screw to tighten the rollers' pressure.

The tedious task of washing changed very little until the introduction of electric-powered washing machines in 1906. Even then the proximity of water and electricity at first made these dangerous

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