The Dreamstress

As promised, I have done laundry in 1916 style – or at least an approximation thereof.

Our early 1920s house was built complete with a laundry  room – an extension  off the back of the house, of much simpler construction than  the rest.  The extension also includes the loo.

The house even has the old laundry sinks, but they are sitting in the backyard, half full of soil, and were clearly once used as plant boxes.

As I discussed in my last post, I don’t have a copper or a period washing machine, but particularly in an urban setting like Wellington, coppers would have been less common by 1916.  Without these things, I did my best to achieve the same amount of work, and the same result, that a 1910s housewife would have.

I was lucky that Wednesday, my nominated laundry day this week, was clear and bright and warm.  Much better for drying, and much more pleasant for hanging out.

First, I scrubbed out our laundry sink.  It was used for cleaning paint brushes all summer, and was in terrible condition.

Once it was clean, I plugged it and filled it with hot water.  It must have been an amazing labour saver for women once plumbed hot water became available.  You could get your laundry clean without boiling a copper, AND could drain the water without having to carry it away in buckets.  Life in 1916 was hard, but it must have been so much easier for those in urban settings and new houses, that were the first to get such mod cons.

While my sink filled I grated Sunlight Soap into it.  I was afraid this would be very hard, and that my big grater would create big chunks of soap that would take forever to dissolve, but it was actually dead easy.  It grated into a powder, and went very quickly.

In grating and dissolving the soap, I realised I recognised the smell – it’s ‘clean old lady fabric’ smell, which completely makes sense.

I’m only washing items that are the type of fabric that would have been around, and laundered, in 1916: sheets, my blouses and under-things, tea towels, etc.

First  I added my nicest items: combination, corset covers, petticoats and pillow-slips:

Those were left to soak for half an hour, as per the Sunlight testimonial.  You can see the lovely milky colour the water has turned around them from the soap.

When the half hour was up, I pulled them out one by one, scrubbing them against themselves to get them clean, and wringing them out and putting them in a bucket.

This bucket got carried to the kitchen sink (I couldn’t think of anywhere else big enough to rinse them), and I put in the next load of items to soak.  While they soak, I rinsed and rung out the first lot, and then carried them out, and hung them on the line.  It took the full half hour and more, just for the few items I had (the thing about doing laundry three days into my challenge is there isn’t much to do!).

The second load was slightly grubbier items: Mr D’s work shirts (which got given a pre-scrub with Sunlight in the collar area), and my stockings.

The final load was a modern towel, and a duvet cover.  I had doubts about both, but wanted to do a full load.

Have you ever picked up a fully soaking, quite fluffy towel?  It holds a good couple of gallons of water!  Talk about a workout!  The duvet cover wasn’t much better.

And trying to wring out either by yourself?  Exhausting.

By the time I had finished it was well over two hours later, my apron was soaked, as were my sleeve cuffs (thank goodness for warm weather is all I can say), but my laundry was all hung out, and wrung out, and so was I.

I pulled something funny and painful in my upper chest hanging out the laundry.  It’s just hard to reach your arms that high while wearing a corset.  So now, every once in a while, when I breath in, I get a sharp stab of pain across my collarbone.

Because of the warm weather the laundry dried overnight, and I’m delighted to say that my laundry is extremely clean – even more so than I think I would have gotten it with a washing machine.  It was the tiniest bit damp when I brought it in, so pressed very easily.

I pressed everything.  Even the pillowcases.  Let me tell you, that has never happened before!

I must confess I’m just using a modern iron for pressing.  I ran into the problem that by 1916, in Wellington, an electric iron is plausible/likely, and while you can find 1910s irons for sale, the electrics don’t work (obviously). Ultimately, I couldn’t figure out how to replicate a period electric iron safely, and a cast iron iron on a gas stove fell into Mr D’s realm of ‘you aren’t allowed to endanger yourself or the house for this project’ veto power.

Conclusion: In a weird way, it’s harder to replicate an era of transitional modernity than the distant past.  There were lots of ‘conveniences’: they just weren’t as convenient.

Some people have asked about laundry.  How am I going to do it as a housewife in 1916?

Advertisement for a Methven Copper, Wanganui Chronicle, 1 January 1916

While the ‘Wash on Monday’ nursery rhyme made famous by the Little House books doesn’t appear to have been nearly as prevalent in New Zealand, there are still suggestions that there were definite routines to daily chores, and washing, done at home, was  most frequently done on Monday.

It makes sense: most visiting and social events would happen on the weekend, so washing on Monday would ensure there wasn’t laundry on view when visitors came around, or that the lady of the house was occupied for the full day doing laundry while she also had guests.  It also meant that any good clothes worn for social events or church could get laundered right away, before stains set in.  Another old rhyme explains that it was about drying time – and in the middle of winter, that may indeed take a while!

Poorer households would have done their own, but washing was considered one of the most onerous of chores, so in wealthier households the  maid did it, it was sent out, or someone was hired in. NZ newspapers are full of advertisements for a woman to ‘wash on Monday’.

Laundry was done in a number of ways in the 1910s.

The most basic, but most labour intensive,  method was to soak it in warm or hot soapy water, and then rub it vigorously on a washboard, rinse it thoroughly, and then wring it or (if you had enough money to afford one) put it through a mangler  to remove the excess water.  Advertisements and advice columns in NZ newspapers indicate that the simple washtub  was still a common method in NZ in the 1910s.  It was probably used most in poorer households, and wealthy ones where the lady of the house didn’t have to worry about how much work the washing was for her maid or laundress.

French women doing soldier’s laundry (note the sign that says ‘washing done here’) in a washtub during WWI  Sun, Volume II, Issue 414, 8 June 1915, Page 7 via paperspast.natlib.govt.nz

Another option was a washing machine.  Early washing machines either heated the water, or had hot water poured in or delivered through a pipe, and then had a mechanical system which rotated and agitated the wash to clean it.

Middle class households without enough money to hire a laundry lady in, or to send out the washing, or who found themselves frequently without a maid due to the chronic shortage of ‘help’ in NZ, probably had the most incentive to purchase washing machines.

They were still a novelty in many areas in 1910,  being worthy of demonstration days and trade  fairs, but the seller of the most common brand in NZ bragged of 5,000 in use in the country in 1911.  They became  increasingly common as the decade wore on, as evinced by how often they appear secondhand in auction sales by 1916.

The first electric washing machines went on sale in the US in  1904, but I can’t find any evidence that they existed in New Zealand until after the war.

An advertisement for Western Electric  home goods sold in the US, including a washing machine with mangle, 1910s

An advertisement for a Beatty Bros electric washing machine and mangle, 1919

Obviously I do not have a 1910s washing machine, nor a washboard (I’ve been looking for one since January, but haven’t managed to source a suitable one in my price range), nor a mangle.  So how am I going to do laundry?

I’m pretending that as a middle class woman, I previously hired someone in, or sent out my laundry, but, due to the combination of labour shortages due to the war and a reduced income due to my husband enlisting, plus the rising cost of basic goods, I can no longer afford to do so.  I also cannot afford a washing machine, due to the aforementioned reduced income, and  limited imports and a shortage in metals and other basics materials are making them quite scarce. (advertisements for new washing machines almost disappear from NZ newspapers by Nov 1915, though they appear frequently secondhand in auctions after that, particularly in more rural locations).  Or maybe mine has just broke, and I can’t find a handyman to fix it due to the labour shortages.

In any case, it’s plausible that I don’t have a machine, and don’t have a washing board or mangler.  So I’m going to do laundry more or less as described in this ad for Sunlight Soap – soak, rub (on itself) and scrub (with a brush), rinse and hang.  I even have vintage (probably 1960s-70s) Sunlight Soap I’ve been hoarding for years.

Sunlight Soap, Advertisement, Ashburton Guardian, 19 October 1912, Page 3

I’ll only be washing the clothes I’m wearing, and any other items that match 1910s ones (sheets, towels, etc), as I won’t actually get an accurate image  of what doing laundry was like if I washed my skinny jeans and modern unders!

I shall let you know how it goes…