The script in Thomas Rowlandson’s 1810 cartoon states:
“Ah! My old Friend I wish you had called
at some more convenient time but this is washing
day — I have nothing to give you but cold Fish, cold Tripe
& cold potatoes — you smell soap suds a mile!
Ah Jack, Jack you don’t know these Comforts!
you are a Bachelor!”
In Rowlandson’s image, two well fed men are seen smiling. The host is apologetic, for his guest will not get anything but cold collations, probably leftovers from the previous day. His wife and maid are seen toiling over a bucket, their hands probably raw and red from the effects of harsh lye soap. Neither of them will have the time to look to his comforts or make a hot meal, which is why he is apologizing to his unexpected guest. Since laundering was not considered man’s work, he had to “suffer” the lack of his wife’s and servant’s attentions until the wash was done.
Doing the wash in a stream, 1806
First Boyle all the Cloaths with soap, and then wash them..” – John Harrower, indentured servant, writing to his wife (June 14, 1774)
Doing the wash in the Regency era was no small task, and housewives had to set aside two days to perform this dreaded duty, for it meant hauling water, boiling the cottons and linens, washing them with pungent lye soap, which burnt the skin, rinsing the clothes in clean water, which meant hauling more water from the well or a nearby stream, twisting the cloths to remove as much water as possible, hanging the clothes to dry, and then praying that rain would stay away long enough for the sun to perform its duty as a dryer. If one had to do laundry in a town or city, one had to pray that coal soot would not drift upon the clean clothes in a cramped back yard before they dried.
The Victorian scullery in a fine household included a copper for boiling water, a wringer, press, and ironing board.
Doing laundry was so enormous an undertaking, that unless the household were of a great size and boasted many servants, the mistress of the house and her daughters would frequently pitch in with the servants. There were chemises to be laundered, bed and table linens, towels, shirts, muslin dresses, handkerchiefs, socks, and the like. First the clothes would have to be treated for stains, the muslins and silks most delicately. After the wash had dried, ironing would commence, another laborious task.
Drying damp clothes over chair backs in front of a fireplace. Elizabeth Bennet and Mrs. Gardiner at the Lambton Inn, Pride and Prejudice, 1980
Chemises and shirts, which were worn next to the skin, were purposefully made with sturdier cloth so that these inner garments could withstand rougher treatment and more frequent washing. People tended to own more under garments for this reason. Outer clothes were subject to less frequent laundering because they were made of finer stuff, though one must wonder at the cleanliness of trailing hems, the edges of collars and sleeves, and armpits in the days before daily baths became popular, when air conditioning was just a distant dream, and when sweat must have stained clothes in a most visible manner. Is it no wonder that a majority of the Regency fashions that have survived to this day belonged to the rich, who probably wore their fashionable outfits once or twice before purchasing others?
For more on the topic:
Jane Austen's World 
Superb article. I will never again complain due to a slow or broken washer.
We really are spoiled brats in this day and age!
Vic, I love how you teach us about every aspect of Regency life. I have a sad laundry story I think of whenever I find myself feeling “put upon” on laundry day. It was during a later era, but one of my ancestresses died doing the laundry. The water was boiling over an open fire outdoors and her long dress caught fire. She died, leaving three small children to be raised by my great grandparents. (If you’ve read my “Cream Gravy” post, you know that my great grandparents already had a huge family.)
Thanks Vic. I love reading these.
I enjoyed the post, but thought I should supply a link to my blog post “My Heritage Victorian Laundry” at http://thewildcatsvictory.wordpress.com/2009/03/17/my-heritage-victorian-laundry/ for another first person inside look.
I don’t know how much the operation of a laundry business changed between the Regency and late Victorian times, but I experienced a real life time shift at the hand-operated laundry my Mother’s relatives ran until sometime in the 1960s.
Chris H.
http://christopherhoare.ca
http://thewildcatsvictory.wordpress.com
http://trailowner,blogspot.com
Thank you for sharing this information!
i appreciate the man in the river helping do the wash. if you ever had to twist a sheet to get the water out, you would appreciate that you had some one strong on the other end. or to do it for you.
Some of this isn’t as far in the past as we might think. I grew up hearing how my mother had to boil and hand wash by diapers on a scrub board during WWII (I was a “war baby,” born in 1942. You couldn’t buy washing machines, even the pre-war models with rollers for wringing, then because all metal. Even after the war the were scarce for a while, but by then at least you could go to a laundrymat (without dryers) and bring home wet wash to hang. When it was cold or wet the garage or basement would be festooned with drying clothes.
You are so right, Ruchama. My family in post war Europe hung their clothes to dry in the kitchen because it was the hottest room in the house (never mind the cooking smells). Some late 19th century inventions made wash day slightly less onerous: the soaps were much improved and not so caustic on the skin, and hand operated mangle wringers and washing machines were invented. Water began to be supplied inside the house, although this is still a luxury for many in the world.
I recall that one of my aunts had a scrub board – thankfully I never asked to use it. Here’s an interesting image from Wikimedia Commons: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Rhof-handwaschen.ogg
I was picturing taking the 2 days to do the laundry and then coming out to check on it only to find that soot had descended on it. That must have been maddening.
I wonder during which era of fashion arm pit pads came on the scene? It sounds like the Georgians and Victorians could have really benefitted from them.
Underarm shields, or protective pads in the form of thin rubber placed between the skin and the garment might have been used. I saw one reference to this. But I could find nothing specific, Karen.
My French friend’s mother was a hoarder. Sorting out trunks of pre-war clothes we came across neat little muslin pads, circular with a seam across the middle. These were underarm dress protectors.
When I was an activity director I talked a lot to the residents about their chores and accomplishment of same. I was marvelling at how many had dressed their children in spotless, starched, WHITE clothing, and I learned all about the boiling and “blueing”…realized it was probably easier and more convenient to dress in white because the color is so uniform and it’s easier to treat stains. They always had their big Sunday dinner so they could eat the leftovers on Monday (laundry day), and chores spread out over the week were their way of organizing. The more I read about Regency and other historical periods the more I realize it would be impossible to live without servants….even servants had servants. How else could you possibly do everything and for such large families and guests who dropped in and expected to be fed and often housed for as long as a couple of weeks? It’s the middle-classed women in the 20th century, sans servants, and before modern technologies, who have really had it hard.
Reading novels of 19th and 20th century and listening, in my longer ago youth, to my grandmothers and great aunts, I learned that because laundry and cleaning in general were so labor intensive and knowledge of bacteria and sanitation rudimentary, standards of cleanliness were much less stringent before the 20th century. People simply put up with more odor and lower standards of hygiene. Many people rarely took complete baths. Some times for modesty’s sake, they didn’t completely undressed, just sponged off under shifts and petticoats. And, think of this, until the Crimean war when Florence Nightingale put together gauze and cotton to make disposable pads, women war menstrual rags that were boiled and laundered and re-used. Even in my grandmother’s day (late 19th century) the disposables were not ubiquitous.
“Two days for washing,” blimey!!!!!!!!!
Just thought I’d let you know I am a dab hand with a washing machine, Vic and I’m brilliant at ironing even though i say so myself. Yes, I can iron most garments (even the ones I shouldn”t ha! ha!). With three daughters and a son and with Marilyn and I both working I’ve had to ,” muck in,” as we say over here
It is interesting to note the Impressionist painter Edgar Degas (1834 – 1917) painted washerwomen and especially women ironing. Apparently a lot of the ironing was done by women in basements below street level. It used to get vvery hot down there so the women would loosen their clothing, shall we say. Respectable gentlemen walking past would look down and see these women displaying their attributes. The ,”ironers,” would often have a sideline to make extra money, not the least, modelling for Edgar Degas.
Toulouse Lautrec was another who used a certain class of lady as his models.
In Thomas Hardy’s ‘Tess of the d’Urbervilles’ he describes Tess’s mother [a slattern] taking all week to do the family laundry, washing the clothes in the same tub of water in the family kitchen/living room.
In Zola’s ‘l’Assomoir’ the chief female character is a launderess, who treads and beats the clothes clean in a tank of water. And I remember seeing French women washing clothes at a special washing area by the side of the river – that continued until quite recently. In fact, in view of the rising price of electricity, we may go back to it…
Another snippet I found was that ladies used vinegar as an underarm deodorant – but not sure how long ago this started. People smelled and only the wealthy could do much about it.
You don’t have to be that old to remember “dress shields.” I never wore them myself, but I definitely recall home economics classes and magazine articles in the 1950’s suggesting them for summer wear if you were wearing long sleeves. And winter wear if you were wearing wool. Dry cleaning was an expensive proposition. And unless you lived in an area (for example the deep south) where women “took in washing,” so was laundry. Not everyone had a washing machine or even a place to set one up and dryers were even more rare. We hang our laundry now for environmental reasons, but then there was simply no choice but to hang.
I too saw French women washing clothes in a river as late as 1970 – during a very cold Easter as well.
Talking of weather, I smiled at the reference to air conditioning being a distant dream. Here in the UK, we do have uncomfortably hot days – sometimes whole weeks of them – but we also have quite frequent chilly days even in the middle of summer. Personally I don’t know anyone who has air conditioning in their home – central heating yes, most certainly, and maybe an electric fan. Our weather is famously changeable – hence a constant subject for conversation and why English men, like mad dogs, go out in the mid-day sun (as the song say) and get burnt!
Hot weather would surely have been a trial to people who had to do hard physical labour, but I would have thought that for the young well-to-do Regency lady, there would have been far more days of the year when she shivered in her low-cut muslin evening gown and shawl than those in which she was unbearably hot. No woolly cardies for her!
PS I also remember underarm dress shields – probably in the 50s!
I remember hanging clothes on the line for my mom. We also ironed just about everything b/c it was all made of cotton, including the sheets and bra straps. I learned to iron at a very young age from my grandmother so that I could help my mom.
Re disposal sanitary pads. My mother grew up in the Depression in the 1930s, and they used rags. With four daughters, they had a special pot set aside to boil them. And I thought I had it bad with sanitary belts!