Now the washing machine gave up on us recently.
All of which seemed more of a disaster given that launderettes are now hard to track down.
Of course they do still exist but you have to go looking for them and soon they will be as much a part of the past as the washer woman or the char.
And washer woman like the char are just that, occupations which were common well into the beginning of the last century but no more.
Most of us will be able to find a family member who fell back on taking in washing or charring somewhere in their family history, and in my case it was Marie Lowe forced to char after the death of her husband in 1848.
He had been a framework knitter in a declining industry and on his death she had to support their four children.
So for her it was a necessity and one that lasted for just a while to meet the immediate needs but for others it was their chosen occupation.
And here in rural Chorlton in the 1850s there were more than a few women who did just that.
In the March of 1851 none of the char woman working in the township were married.
Of the seven who worked as charwoman, Sarah Ann and Elizabeth Green were in their twenties, as was Mary Axon. Eliza Axon was thirty, and Ann Turner 18. The remaining two who were Mary Gresty aged 71 and Mary Hesketh 69 were widows.
For many married working women the alternative here in the township was to wash other peoples’ clothes, either by attending at the customer’s house or washing them at home.
There were 23 of them and most were married with some of the younger ones working alongside their mothers. They were by and large concentrated along the Row, up by Lane End and in a cluster by the Royal Oak in Renshaws Buildings.
Before the widespread use of hot water and soap, the traditional way of washing clothes was by using cold water and homemade alkalis to dissolve the grease. For centuries wood ash was the most common material for dissolving grease.
The real work came after soaking the clothes in the solution of water and wood ash and involved forcing water through the fibres using a wooden bat.
At its simplest this was just a matter of hitting the clothes with the bat before wringing out the water using a wringing post set in the ground.
The clothes were wrapped around the post and by degree the clothes were wrung dry.
All of which makes me reflect that for us it was just a matter of waiting a few days for the repairman.
Pictures; Renshaws Buildings and Sutton’s Cottage circa 1850 by Barrie Sparshot, 2011
Adapted from THE STORY OF CHORLTON-CUM-HARDY, Andrew Simpson, 2012, ,http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/2011/11/the-story-of-chorlton-cum-hardy.html
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| Sutton's Cottage, on the Row, 1851 now the site of the Launderette |
Of course they do still exist but you have to go looking for them and soon they will be as much a part of the past as the washer woman or the char.
And washer woman like the char are just that, occupations which were common well into the beginning of the last century but no more.
Most of us will be able to find a family member who fell back on taking in washing or charring somewhere in their family history, and in my case it was Marie Lowe forced to char after the death of her husband in 1848.
He had been a framework knitter in a declining industry and on his death she had to support their four children.
So for her it was a necessity and one that lasted for just a while to meet the immediate needs but for others it was their chosen occupation.
And here in rural Chorlton in the 1850s there were more than a few women who did just that.
In the March of 1851 none of the char woman working in the township were married.
Of the seven who worked as charwoman, Sarah Ann and Elizabeth Green were in their twenties, as was Mary Axon. Eliza Axon was thirty, and Ann Turner 18. The remaining two who were Mary Gresty aged 71 and Mary Hesketh 69 were widows.
For many married working women the alternative here in the township was to wash other peoples’ clothes, either by attending at the customer’s house or washing them at home.
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| Renshaws Buidling now the site of the Royal Oak |
Before the widespread use of hot water and soap, the traditional way of washing clothes was by using cold water and homemade alkalis to dissolve the grease. For centuries wood ash was the most common material for dissolving grease.
The real work came after soaking the clothes in the solution of water and wood ash and involved forcing water through the fibres using a wooden bat.
At its simplest this was just a matter of hitting the clothes with the bat before wringing out the water using a wringing post set in the ground.
The clothes were wrapped around the post and by degree the clothes were wrung dry.
All of which makes me reflect that for us it was just a matter of waiting a few days for the repairman.
Pictures; Renshaws Buildings and Sutton’s Cottage circa 1850 by Barrie Sparshot, 2011
Adapted from THE STORY OF CHORLTON-CUM-HARDY, Andrew Simpson, 2012, ,http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/2011/11/the-story-of-chorlton-cum-hardy.html
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