Doing Laundry in the 1800s

Howdy again, everyone! Welcome to 2020. As this new year starts, I’m looking forward to the upcoming release of my eleventh title, Blacksmith Brides, a 4-in-1 novella collection coming on May 1. The other authors include Amanda Barratt, Angela K. Couch, and Pegg Thomas.

In my story, A Malleable Heart, the hard-hearted town blacksmith falls in love with the town’s laundress. While I don’t spend a great deal of time in the story in the heroine’s job of doing other people’s laundry, I did research that job to find out just what it entailed. (Can I just say that I’m THRILLED to be living in this era with my nice washing machine and dryer? LOL)

So how did one get clothes clean in the days before such “new-fangled contraptions”? 

If the families didn’t have store-bought soap available to them, they’d have to make their own. That was a long process, which started with gathering the wood ashes out of their fireplace, soaking them to get “lye water”, then rendering beef fat to get tallow. Boiling the lye and tallow together in a cast-iron pot made a liquid that could be poured into molds to create soap. Once the mixture was almost fully hardened, it would be removed from the molds and cut into bars or cakes. These would then be left in the sun to finish the hardening process. Most people would make huge batches of lye soap at once, so that they would have to go through that laborious process only a few times a year.

Most of the domestic guides seemed to recommend women do their washing on Monday. However, the process started days ahead of the actual washing.

On Saturdays, the laundry was gathered, sorted, and mended. Any rips or tears were sewn, socks darned, and the like. On Sundays, the clothing was then soaked overnight in warm water, often with a bit of soap or other cleaning agents like soda or lye.

Once Monday arrived, the real work began. Women would rise early, gather a great amount of fuel for their fire, and haul many gallons of water to fill their wash, soak, and rinse tubs. From here, they would go through the following steps:

·       Wash the clothes right side out, including applying soap and scrubbing on a washboard. Wring to get excess water out.

·       Wash the clothes inside out, including applying soap and scrubbing again on the washboard. Wring.

·       Boil the clothes and linens in soapy water, agitating them with long sticks. Wring again.

·       Rinse the clothing in fresh, clean water to remove all traces of the lye soap. Wring once more.

·       Dry on a clothesline, the nearest bush, or even laid flat in the grass.

How to keep your whites white? Try bluing!

In addition to the above steps, it was also necessary to “blue” the laundry to counteract the yellow hue that came with age, laundering, and wear. One would use a bluing agent, easily purchased in stores in the later 1800s (and still available today, just as an FYI). A bit of blue dye would be added to the water. When used properly, the amount of blue was negligible enough you wouldn’t stain your clothing blue, but it would cause the eye to see less of the yellow and, instead, see more white. What a nifty trick, right?

Some domestic guides mentioned bleaching agents as well. Ammonia worked well for flannels. Buttermilk or turpentine for cotton, and chloride of lime for muslins.

Once the washing and drying was done, the process wasn’t over. Oh, no. Then came the starching and ironing. Sometimes, the bluing stage was part of the starching process, but not always. Starch would be mixed with water, the clean, dry clothing submerged in the concoction, and then wrung out again. Once the garment was almost dry, a “sadiron” would be heated on the stove until super-hot, and then applied to the garment to remove the wrinkles. Typically, a home would have two irons so that one could be heating while the other was being used, so that no time was lost while the iron heated again.

After all this, the clothing would be neatly folded and put away.

I can’t begin to imagine how much work this would be, particularly when you factor in that many families in that day had an average of five or six children. It was no wonder why a family might hire a town laundress to do their washing, just to save the hours of backbreaking work each week.

It’s your turn: Were you aware of all the steps it took to wash clothes in the 1800s? What is the most surprising part of this process?

Jennifer Uhlarik discovered the western genre as a pre-teen when she swiped the only “horse” book she found on her older brother’s bookshelf. A new love was born. Across the next ten years, she devoured Louis L’Amour westerns and fell in love with the genre. In college at the University of Tampa, she began penning her own story of the Old West. Armed with a B.A. in writing, she has finaled and won in numerous writing competitions, and been on the ECPA best-seller list several times. In addition to writing, she has held jobs as a private business owner, a schoolteacher, a marketing director, and her favorite—a full-time homemaker. Jennifer is active in American Christian Fiction Writers, Women Writing the West, and is a lifetime member of the Florida Writers Association. She lives near Tampa, Florida, with her husband, college-aged son, and four fur children.

Available Now for Pre-Order:

 

Blacksmith Brides

Hearts Are Forged by the Flames of Gentle Love in 4 Historical Stories

A Malleable Heart by Jennifer Uhlarik
(California—1870) A hard-hearted blacksmith finds acceptance with the town laundress. But when his past comes to call, will he resist love’s softening or allow God to hammer his ruined life into something of worth?

The Civil War Army Laundress and GIVEAWAY

by Kathleen L. Maher

Glamorous it was not. Backbreaking, long hours bent over a washtub and kettle made this profession perhaps one of the hardest jobs women have had through the centuries. Scrubbing laundry for one's family is one thing but for a company of soldiers? Not an assignment for any fading lily or simpering coquette. 

So who were these washer-folk who served the Union and the Confederacy during our country's War Between the States? Statistically, they vary. There were men launderers. Convalescent soldiers might be tasked with wash at an army hospital, or the slaves of wealthier officers and soldiers. But most often they were women. Some were freed slaves, contraband, and indentured. Others were wives of soldiers, widows, or even indigent women seeking a modest income and the one-meal-a-day ration the army provided them. Respectable women whose reputation was expected to be above reproach, complete with  written character references. 

The United States army had commissioned laundry service since 1802. During the Civil War the laundress was the most common role for women in the armed services, and dwindled until in the 1880's when the official position was terminated. That is to say, no pay or rations were offered. 

Some served in garrisons, some at army hospitals, while a number traveled on campaigns with the army. At the height of their ranks, each company of up to 100 soldiers had four laundresses. These four would share an army-provided tent, a hatchet for chopping firewood, a kettle, and two mess pans to share between them. Pay would either be administered directly from the company they served, or from individual soldiers, under the direction of the captain at the pay tables. Their wages preceded the Sutler's in priority. Often they were looked after as sisters, mothers, like adopted family, and they would strike deals for help with hauling water or firewood in exchange for extra care, such as darning or bluing or starching. But there are records of laundresses married to soldiers killed in battle who married again within the company, in some cases more than once or twice. 

Though wives of officers held a higher social rank, the army laundress held more rights. For instance, if an officer was killed, the wife had only 24 hours to vacate, but a laundress wife had six months, in which time she could choose to remarry or continue on in service as a single woman. 

Some laundresses were not as virtuous as others. As with any other time in history, women living in close quarters with men far from home can produce loose morals even in those not normally predisposed to such wanton behavior. But by and large, laundresses were considered respectable. 

Wash tubs were fashioned from barrels obtained from the quartermaster, but the average laundress would have to procure her own scrub board, brush, and lye. A ringer would be considered a luxury. 

In my new book, The Chaplain's Daughter, my heroine is a laundress with the Army of Northern Virginia following the Battle of Second Manassas, more commonly known as The Second Battle of Bull Run. It was a real eye opener for me to enter the world of this often overlooked heroine and her service to the war effort on both sides.  

****A feisty army laundress takes up her father's calling when a proud artillery captain finds his heart and hope shattered. Will the devout care of a minister's daughter bring healing to his soul or rub salt in his wounds?***

I'm offering a GIVEAWAY to two lucky commenters of an ebook copy of The Chaplain's Daughter. Just answer this discussion question to enter: Could you be a laundress if you had few other options? What would be the hardest part to you, or any possible good sides of the job?

Drawing April 5 at 8 PM, winners announced then. Bonus entries if you share this post or follow any/all of my pages (see below). Let me know in the comments.
Good luck!

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Kathleen L. Maher has had an infatuation with books and fictional heroes ever since her preschool crush, Peter Rabbit. “Love Brick by Brick,” a novella with her hometown’s history, appeared in BARBOUR’s 2018 Victorian Christmas Brides collection. Her Civil War romance The Abolitionist’s Daughter is an Amazon #1 bestseller that won the ACFW Genesis Award, and is followed by Book 2 in Sons of the Shenandoah series, The Chaplain’s Daughter. She has another novella coming out in Barbour’s schoolteacher collection Lessons on Love in Oct 2019. Kathleen shares an old farmhouse in upstate New York with her husband, children, and a small zoo.

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