Laundry History 1800s

A tub of hot water, a washboard in a wooden frame with somewhere to rest the bar of laundry soap in pauses from scrubbing - this is a familiar image of how our great-grandmothers washed the laundry. It's not wrong, but it's only part of the picture. Factory-made washboards with metal or glass scrubbing surfaces certainly spread round the world in the 19th and early 20th centuries, and bars of soap were cheap and plentiful by the late 1800s, but there were other ways of tackling the laundry too.

Water could be heated in a large metal boiler or copper on a stove. A big pot boiling over an outdoor fire suited much of rural America. In urban areas there were public laundries: some with hot water and modern equipment, some much simpler and older, like the communal open-air sinks with a water supply in Italian cities. There were washing machines of a kind, but not many homes had them. Ideas from inventors working on washing machines helped improve the design of simple washboards and dollies. A plain wringer was the most common piece of home laundry machinery in 1900.


Read more on Laundry History 1800's here...

(A special thank you to Old and Interesting for this information.)

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Tracy - Simple Living
My love of vintage goods, antiques
and handmade primitives!
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