The continuing story of the house Joe and Mary Ann Scott lived in for over 50 years and the families that have lived here since. *
Now I have no idea where Mary Ann Scott did the ironing, or if she just sent it away to one of our local laundries, which offered the full service of washing and ironing.**
And of course despite the very un PC assertion, given the time, it would have been one of the many tasks which fell under the heading "unpaid domestic duties", which is a description which crops up on census returns and the 1939 Register.
If she indeed opt for the laundry, there was one on Beech Road and the big Queen & Pasley one on Crescent Road.***
But if she did her own, I suspect as soon as she could she bought or rented an electric iron, and given the absence of power points around the house, she may well have used one of those Heath Robinson looking attachment which drew power from an electric light cable.
Mother used one in our old house, although I suspect on a scale of one to ten of Health and Safety don'ts it would command a minus 13.
Leaving me to return to the picture .... because if you have to do the ironing, .... always choose a view. Or in the years when foreign holidays were just a dream, there was always the alternative of ironing in the garden in the sunshine, achieving the double of getting through the boring task and getting a suntan.
But of course these days I know better.
Picture, Ironing with a view, 2021, from the collection of Andrew Simpson, and inside the Queen and Pasley, Crossland Road, [Crescent Road] date unknown, from the collection of Tony Walker
*The story of a house, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/The%20story%20of%20a%20house
**One hundred years of one house in Chorlton part 110 ......... washing day with Mr. Baxendale’s amazing labour saving device, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/2019/07/one-hundred-years-of-one-house-in.html
***The Queen and Pasley, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/search/label/The%20Queen%20and%20Pasley
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