Unlike today’s affordable, disposable high street fashions, historically garments and accessories – whether professionally tailor/dressmaker-made, shop-bought or painstakingly hand-sewn – were considered valuable possessions and were expected to last. Even 60 or 70 years ago our parents and grandparents knew exactly what materials their clothes were made of and how to care for them properly, for optimum wear. Women usually took charge of their family’s laundry and understood the qualities of different fabrics, selecting their cleaning methods accordingly. Until the 1920s when artificial silk (rayon) became widely available, heralding a new era of synthetic drip-dry, non-iron fabrics, all textiles for clothing were woven from ‘natural’ fibres: linen, cotton, silk and wool, or fabrics containing a mixture of these. Many women wore silks and velvets for dressy occasions, linen and cotton for relaxed summer wear or workaday clothes, woollen fabrics for winter and sometimes as underwear. Some items were extremely difficult to look after, from heavy foundation garments to formal gowns with complex draperies and fragile trimmings, and even simple Victorian frocks unpicked before washing, then carefully sewn up again. Fine dresses could not be washed at all using water, so layers of underwear, including a shift/chemise, separate washable white collars and under-sleeves worn underneath protected costly fabrics from direct bodily contact.

Walking outdoors in city streets and country lanes in floor-length Victorian and Edwardian garments inevitably attracted mud and worse, so dirt, dust and soot smuts were thoroughly brushed after wear, using clothes brushes. A jacket, waistcoat and trousers comprised the regular male suit, but apart from some cotton and linen workwear, suits could not be washed in water and, like ladies’ gowns, were brushed regularly at home. In the 1800s there were no commercial dry-cleaners, only specialists who refurbished luxury items like lace and fur. If a silk bodice or velvet smoking jacket became spotted or stained, for example with oil or grease, candle-wax, food, wine, tea or coffee, then women followed traditional home recipes handed down through the family or hints published in popular periodicals, using chemical solvents or natural products from larder or garden to remove diverse stains from various fabrics. Whether a busy working-class wife and mother, or a genteel lady supervising domestic servants, our female forebears went to extraordinary lengths to organise the washing and cleaning of domestic linen and each individual item of the family’s clothing.

The household laundry
Although certain fragile fabrics and garments required dedicated cleaning methods, cotton towels, bed-linen and basic clothes were all washed in the normal manner, using soap and hot water. Typically these included all underclothes and nightwear, baby frocks, children’s dresses and pinafores, men’s shirts, women’s cotton gowns, aprons, caps, collars and cuffs, literally hundreds of items in moderate to large families. The frequency of washdays depended on the composition and financial status of the household: broadly, it was understood that the better off a family, the more changes of clean linen its members possessed. Certainly, due to the effort involved in washing clothes, it was far easier to carry out occasional ‘great washes’ than frequent small washes. Hence, in comfortably-placed households whose residents owned dozens of shirts, shifts, drawers, stockings, handkerchiefs and so on, wash day occurred monthly, even quarterly, whereas in poorer homes, where no-one owned more than ‘three of everything’, laundry day was necessarily a weekly event.

Wash day usually began on a Monday, for good reason: food was either prepared in advance over the weekend or left-over cold meat, pickles and pudding from Sunday dinner sufficed the next day, negating the need to cook while contending with the laundry. Generally all capable females were involved in fetching and boiling water, rubbing, scrubbing, rinsing and wringing clothes. It was unavoidably a wet, steamy and messy business and sometimes large aprons with separate sleeves, capacious overalls and protective overshoes or pattens were worn. Frequently the washing, drying and ironing stretched over several days, larger families often employing a general servant to assist, and/or hiring a visiting local washerwoman. Men were rarely directly involved, yet husbands and sons knew the scenario well. One Lancashire farmer even recorded each washday in his (unpublished) diary for the late-1870s, noting the weather conditions for drying the clothes.

The extent of domestic disruption depended on where washing operations took place. Substantial country houses usually had a dedicated wash-house with sloping brick floors for water drainage, sometimes plumbed to supply hot and cold water directly to the washing tubs: some even had separate ironing and drying rooms or a special furnace-heated drying closet, a team of laundry maids completing the entire process. In town houses, washing might be carried out in the basement, where there was often a direct water supply. Some country cottages had a small lean-to wash house, the water heated by a copper, but in tiny two-up, two-down properties the laundry had to be done in the kitchen/parlour/general family room, amongst children, pets and all the paraphernalia of everyday life. No wonder those who could sent their household washing out to a professional local laundress or washerwoman, everything being itemised, collected on a Monday and returned later in the week.

Doing the ‘whites’ A weekly or fortnightly wash of numerous cotton and linen garments using soap and hot water was a laborious process. According to The Workwoman’s Guide by A Lady (1838), a good washerwoman first examined each item, soaping soiled areas like collars and cuffs. Then she would hand-wash everything in warm soapy water, twice, everything being passed through the wringer or mangle, afterwards checked again for stubborn stains. For much of the 1800s washing was carried out in a large oak or earthenware tub, aided by a washing ‘dolly’, a three- or four-legged pole for ‘possing’ or pounding clothes, or the ‘peggy tub’, whose corrugated interior performed a similar function. Washing ‘machines’ comprising wooden boxes on legs that circulated clothes using a rocking or rotating movement, appeared in the early-1800s but they had to be hand-operated and were so heavy and cumbersome that servants refused to use them. Later, steam-driven versions developed, but many were suspicious of ‘new-fangled’ apparatus. Early electric household washing machines developed in the 1920s, automatic versions in the 1930s, but only from mid-century did many homes acquire the new appliances.

After initial hand-washing of linens, and further wringing or mangling, the washing was then boiled in a copper pot half-filled with hot soapy water and simmered for one or more hours. Victorian soap was usually the basic yellow household variety, although white curd soap might be used on more delicate items. Traditionally soap was bought in large lumps then cut into smaller bars and dissolved in boiling water to form a semi-liquid jelly: when combined with hot water this produced a strong, soapy solution for immersing clothes. In 1884 Lever Brothers launched the first packaged and branded laundry soap, Sunlight Soap, which was clear in appearance. Some women used alternative detergents, such as paraffin, an excellent solvent for grease, and the soapwort plant, whose boiled leaves and flowers produce alkali.

Once linens were fully washed and boiled, ideally they were rinsed in clean hot water, then cold water, to remove any traces of soap, soda or other cleaning agents. It was usual to blue the final rinse, which effectively turned yellowing fabrics into a more acceptable grey-white. Traditionally the blue was often smalt (ground cobalt glass) or small lumps of indigo and starch called ‘stone blue’, wrapped up in a cloth bag and squeezed into, or drawn through the water, mixing it well, to avoid blue streaks in the linen. To make linens even whiter sometimes bleaches and softeners such as saltpetre and borax were added to the washing water. Eventually the washed linen should be of good colour and fresh-smelling, but it had involved many hours of hard labour, especially the constant lifting of wet, heavy clothes and filling, emptying and re-filling of tubs.

Starching
Men’s shirts were laundered with the family linen, but then required special care and attention. Until the 20th century respectable shirts were always white and needed effective starching. Various starches were manufactured by the 1800s, rice starch producing a good glazed finish, while corn starch could be made at home. Starch was always mixed with one or more substances such as paraffin, borax with milk, or white wax, to obtain the requisite shine that helped prevent dirt from attaching to the shirt fabric. Once diluted with boiling water, the front, neckband, collar and cuffs of the shirt were submerged, rubbed, left to dry, then dipped again into cold starch and rolled in a thick towel, to retain the damp until ironing. White caps, aprons and frills were also stiffened, for example by combining white starch, borax and candle wax, the mixture then heated until it became a transparent jelly. Items were then dipped in, but had to be dried before ironing, whereas cold-starched articles could be ironed while still damp. It was also customary to use a very thin, diluted water starch on all white cotton and linen underwear, thought to make washing easier and improve colour and overall appearance.

Woollens
Woollen clothes, including warm flannel underwear and hand-knitted items featured more prominently in dress from the late-19th century onwards and were easily ruined in the wash. Hot water and soap alkalis caused shrinkage and yellowing, while over- wringing turned the soft, pliable woollen fibres into a stiff felt mass. Ideally woollens were plunged straight into a mixture of warm – never hot – soapy water and ammonia (a gentle bleach), then were drawn up and down and swirled about without vigorous rubbing, before rinsing. Bright red flannel petticoats and other coloured garments were also washed separately, to avoid fading or streaking the colours with harsh cleaning agents. Home Notes (1894) recommended carefully hand-washing coloured flannels in a boiled solution of flour and water, with added suds, then rinsing three times in fresh water; other sources suggested soft rain water with a dash of ammonia, then rapid drying outdoors in the wind.

Drying and ironing clothes
Wringers or mangles with large hand-powered rollers were used to squeeze water out of wet washing and to flatten and press sheets and towels. Traditionally tall, heavy contraptions these were a major domestic investment, while in poorer communities they were sometimes shared by several households in a terrace or hamlet. Later Victorian models were smaller, cheaper and more adaptable, often attaching to the sides of wash tubs. After wringing, clothes were hung up to dry, either outside or indoors, draped on a clothes horse, airer or ‘maiden’ suspended from the ceiling. Ideally washing was best dried outdoors, for natural bleaching of whites in the sunshine, and to avoid an unhealthy damp atmosphere inside the house. Country women sometimes followed the time-honoured practice of laying washing out on the grass or on hedges, but more commonly it was pegged on lines. Drying clothes in built-up city neighbourhoods was problematic: often it was suspended from lines stretched across narrow streets, the rags of poorer families even tied to sticks hung from windows, storey above storey.

Ironing clothes
Ironing clothes was another time-consuming operation. Different articles needed different irons, the basic form a triangular flat-iron, heated on the stove or before the fire. Fashioned entirely from metal, it became extremely hot and had to be held using a padded holder. It was easy to scorch clothes, although an experienced laundress could gauge the temperature by holding the iron close to her cheek or spitting on it. Flat-irons also became sooty from the fire and attracted residual starch from clothes, so had to be cleaned constantly, but used properly, on a board or a clean table, they were effective for large expanses like the bodies of shirts and petticoats. Conversely box-irons, hollow and filled with hot coals or metal bricks, less liable to mark or scorch, were preferable for fragile garments and details like dainty collars. Many female items, from caps to petticoats, were ornamented with rows of frills and keeping these in shape required special goffering or ‘gauffering’ irons. In 1882 an ‘electric flatiron’ was patented in the United States, but few British homes had mains electricity before the 1920s, some much later. From 1938 Morphy Richards made modern electric irons with electrical cord and temperature control, reflecting a new era and the development of labour-saving electrical equipment to help post-war women with wash day.