Backwords: Washday Rituals
Mike Shaw recalls the implements and routines of an old-fashioned washday.
Our old wash kitchen would have made a marvellous museum.
But, alas, the wooden lean-to and all its ancient contents are no more.
The building itself fell down a long time back, as it had been threatening to do for years.
We looked on it as an old friend and patched up the obvious signs of old age. But, just like humans, it couldn’t last for ever.
The end came in the dead of a winter’s night. Heavy snow was too much for the groaning roof timbers to bear and the whole lot collapsed in a heap.
The wash-day paraphernalia would have been worthy museum pieces as well. But -- like so many other mementoes of the past -- they finished up on the scrap heap.
Everything had to go, my mother said one day when a rag and bone man came round. So off it all went. The ancient gas-fired set pot, mangle, dolly tub and even the old posser.
It must all sound double-Dutch to the young housewives of today. But it added up to an astonishing Monday morning ritual for my mother when I was a boy.
It was a proper pantomime, I can tell you. With my mother in the starring role as Widow Twankey.
First, fill the huge set pot -- otherwise known as a boiler -- with water, using a piggin or lading-can -- otherwise known as an enamel or aluminium pail.
Then use a posser to stir up the clothes in the boiling hot water and give them a good soaping on the rubbing board.
Pop all the whites into a dolly tub -- not forgetting to add the little dolly-blue bag to give it that extra bit of whiteness -- and then put all the washing through the mangle.
On a nice fine day a line of washing blowing in the breeze was a satisfying sight for the women of yesteryear. But on rainy days there was no tumble drier to tip the wet clothes into.
It was a case of spreading them in front of the fire on what my mother called a clothes horse, my father called a winter hedge and some other folk called a maiden.
That wasn’t the end of the washday saga. All the washing had to be ironed. And the steam iron hadn’t been invented, so it was a case of dashing away with the smoothing iron.
We used to warm up our flatirons at home by standing them on a gas ring. To keep me out of mischief my mother used to leave the handkerchiefs until last and then hand me the iron to finish off.
The climax of this long-winded rigmarole came with the neatly pressed clothes being strung over a creel and hoisted up to the ceiling.
They tell me that all the washing and ironing meant that working class wives had no time left to make a proper tea on Mondays. That was why we had to make do with a treacle sandwich or something similar.
No wonder the dear old mums of my childhood slumped exhausted into a chair after their jam butties. I reckon they deserved a little nap.
