Working Class life in the 1940’s & 50’s – After Wash Day
88After comes the ironing
My Admiration Grows
In the previous hub I looked at Washday, but of course washing the clothes was not the end of the story because everything that mum had washed she had to dry. Even the when she had dried the washing she still had the ironing to do. In a crowded working class area of two up two down terraced housing this was not always an easy task.
It is amazing how quickly you get use to the conveniences that come with living in today’s world. Until I started writing these hubs about working class life in the forties and fifties I had almost forgotten what it was like back then and there are now several generations who have no first hand knowledge of those times.
Doing these hubs has really made me appreciate so much that I had begun to take for granted and also made the admiration I have for my mother and her generation grow immensely.
What to do with wet washing
On fine weather days of course my mother would peg her washing on the clothesline in the back yard to dry and in the summer she could get several wash-loads dry during the day. However during the winter months even when it was a dry day it was still sometimes difficult for her to get the washing to dry outside on the line.
If mum couldn’t dry the washing outdoors for any reason then of course she had to get it dry indoors.
Surprisingly those old fashioned mangles really did get a lot of the moisture out of the clothes. This was good because it meant that even when mum couldn’t put her washing out on the line her washing wasn’t dripping wet once she had put it through the mangle (wringer I believe for my American friends) a couple of times.
It was difficult to dry washing indoors.
Mum had nowhere indoors that could have handled a load of dripping wet washing. Our home didn’t have a bathroom so wet washing could not be hung over a bath. The only rooms in our home with a stone floor were the scullery and the pantry, both of which had red pan-tiles on the floor. Both of these rooms were so small that there was no space for washing to hang.
It was difficult to dry indoors but mum did manage to get her washing dry indoors. In the winter mum always had a coal fire burning in the living room. The rest of the house was generally left unheated. Each room including the bedrooms did have a fireplace but they very seldom had a fire lit in them. It was quite usual for only one room in the house to be heated in working class homes at this time. My dad was a coal miner so we always had coal but even we would have struggled to heat more than one room constantly in the winter.
Coal miners had an allowance of so much free coal per year I am not sure what that was but I do know that we never went without a fire in the living room in the winter months. I know that many of our neighbours were not so fortunate and many ran out of coal some would come and ask my mum if they could borrow a bucket of coal until payday.
The Kitchen Range
When I was young the fireplace in the living room was an old fashioned range which had a hearth and a fireguard.
Mum would sometimes put the damp washing on the fireguard to finish off drying. When mum put washing on the fireguard to dry she would watch it carefully.
Mum would keep an eye on the washing because there was quite a lot of heat given out by the kitchen range and it was easy for the drying washing to scorch or even be set alight.
The Maiden or Clothes Horse
Mum would also use something called a maiden or a clotheshorse to put the wet washing on to; the frame of the maiden was made out of wood.
Mum would drape the wet washing over the frame of the maiden until she had used all the space up.
After mum put the wet clothes on the maiden she would then take the maiden and she would place it in front of the fire in the living room.
Mum would leave the maiden there until the washing dried or the weather got better.
As soon as the weather showed any signs of being able to dry the washing she would take the washing back outside and peg it on the line.
Sometimes mum would put the maiden in front of a paraffin heater that we had in the front room.
Mum would light the paraffin heater especially just to dry the clothes and then she could shut the drying clothes away in the front room out of sight and out of the way.
Blanket Tents
When mum was not using the maiden to dry clothes or to hang her freshly ironed clothes on, my brother and I would use the maiden as the frame to make a tent or blanket fort out of.
We loved making tents indoors and we played for hours in these tents. It is amazing how different and so much better a sandwich and a drink tastes from the inside of such a tent.
My brother and I spent many happy hours building such blanket tents using all sorts of household items in their construction not just blankets. Sometimes we would build them upstairs in the bedroom and sometimes downstairs in the living room.
The Flatley Drier
Later on mum bought a Flatley Dryer this was a wooden airer that you fixed on an electric heater. When you had put all your wet or damp washing on the airer you would then put a shaped cloth bag over the clothes enclosing them right down to the heater at the bottom. This was so that the hot air would circulate inside the bag concentrating and conserving the heat so the clothes would get the benefit of the heat and so dry quicker.
It sounds good but in reality it use to take ages for the clothes to dry this way and it was not unusual to hear about clothes that had caught fire when using a Flatley. To be fair our Flatley never caught fire but then we didn’t use it very often. Mum didn’t use the Flatley often because it seemed to eat the electricity. I never actually knew of anyone personally that had a fire using a Flatley but the stories you heard were enough to make you careful.
The Pulley
Finally if all else failed mum would use the pulley in the living room to put the wet washing on.
The pulley was fixed to the ceiling and mum would lower the pulley using a rope which would be then tied to a hook on the wall to keep it at that height until she had put all the washing on.
When mum had filled the pulley with the washing she would then untie the rope and hoist the pulley back up to near the ceiling and tie off the rope again to keep it up there.
The pulley could hold quite a lot of washing but mum usually used the pulley to put the freshly ironed clothes on rather than wet washing.
The Flat Iron or the Sad Iron
When mum had finished drying the washing she then had to iron most of it. Now that is not a particularly big deal today because the irons that we use now. My iron can be adjusted so easily to the temperature to suit almost any fabric that I am ironing plus I have a steam setting for ironing the harder to iron fabrics.
My first memories of my mother ironing are of her using what was called flat irons or sad irons. These flat irons and she had several were made from solid metal and she heated them either on the stove or if there was a fire in the range then she heated them on there. I can see my mother even now in my mind's eye testing the temperature of the flat iron.
Testing the Flat Iron's Temperature
My mum had several ways in which she would test the temperature of the flat iron. The first and most usual way that I saw mum do this was she would take the iron off the heat and spit on it.
If the spit sizzled and bounced about she would pronounce it ready. Sometimes I would see mum lick her finger and touch the surface of the iron, again if it sizzled or hissed she knew that the iron was ready.
Finally I would sometimes see my mum simply hold the iron very close to her cheek and she would be able to tell by the heat coming off from the surface of the iron whether or not it was hot enough. I found this photo on the web of a lady doing just that.
While mum was using one of the flat irons to iron the clothes the other two irons would be heating up. Ironing especially in the summer was a hot and time-consuming job. Ironing was not a job that my mum was fond of, the nature of the flat iron meant that mum had to change the irons over every few minutes as they soon lost their heat.
I found this image on the web of a lady using a flat iron and you can see two other flat irons are heating up ready to be used- The irons are on the top of the range over on the right hand side of the picture.
Plugged into the light socket
Most houses in our working class neighbourhood around this time didn’t have many power points.
At the beginning of the 1950's mum got an electric iron but she didn’t plug it into a wall socket, as we didn’t have one back then.
Mum plugged the iron instead into an adapter, which plugged into the light fitting. fig. one shows the type of adapter used in the UK.
Iit was a double adapter that fitted into where you would normally put your light bulb.
The double fitting meant that mum could have both her light bulb on and her iron on at the same time.
The second photo fig. two is of an American version of this type of adapter, which some of you may be more familiar with.
Fig three shows both ends of the British bayonet plug fitting of course the hole you can see would have the wire coming out.
At this time mum did not have an ironing board instead she use to iron on the kitchen table which was situated directly underneath the light fitting.
If the light was on when mum was ironing then the bulb would swing about all over the place casting shadows as she ironed.
I was really glad when we had power points fitted in the house and we didn't have to use the light socket as our power source.
Thankfully by the time I was old enough to be called upon to do some of the ironing we had a wall socket and an ironing board which made the task much easier all round.
Funnily enough my kid brother never did get old enough to be called on to do any ironing or any other kind of housework come to think of it.
The lines drawn back then between what was called woman’s work and man’s work were very sharply drawn and clearly defined.
Girls were definitely brought up differently to the boys back then but that is a subject for another hub. Lol
I hope that you have enjoyed this little wander down a working class memory lane, if you have you might like to check out some of my other hubs featuring the working class lifestyle of the recent past.
Other Working Class Based Hubs
-
Working Class Life in the 1930's The 1930s in England was a time when the Government rode roughshod over the already impoverished working class.
- Working
Class life in the 1950’s – Train Sets and Train Spotting Trains featured in
our childhood not just as a means of transport for taking us on holiday but also
in our playtimes too.
-
Working Class life in the 1940’s and 1950´s Britain ~ Train Travel ...When I was growing up in the late forties early fifties one of the things that stand out in my memory is the old steam trains, of course they weren’t the old steam trains back then they were just trains. Like most working class people back then we didn’t own a car and the only means of transport my father ever owned was a bicycle, which he would use to cycle to work.
- Working Class Life in the 1940s & 50s When I look back on my childhood the late 1940s and into the 1950s it seems almost like it happened in another world. In a way it did because so many things have changed since then that if I were magically plucked up from that time and brought here to 2009 it would be easy to imagine that I had been transported by aliens to another planet rather than just another time.
- Working Class Life in the 1940’s Working Class life in the 1940’s was a time of great change mostly brought about by the fact that war had been declared on September 3rd 1939. The way most people got this news in September 1939 was via the radio more usually called the wireless.
- A Victorian Woman of Substance ...she was born Annie Shingla in 1895 while Queen Victoria was still on the throne and she married my granddad William Johnson some where before 1919 when my mum was born.
- Stay at Home Mom or Working Mom? The choice of a Working Class Mum I was a stay at home mum in the seventies, before the birth of my first child I had suffered three miscarriages. Although I don’t think that was a particular factor in my decision to be a stay at home mum it certainly made me even more aware of how precious the life of my child was.
- Stay at Home Mom or Working Mom? The choice of a Working Class Mum part Two ..The seventies, was the time into which my children were born, it was a time when women were being bombarded with all sorts of new ideas that challenged the traditional role of women in the home and workplace.
- Stay at Home Mom or Working Mom? The choice of a Working Class Mum part three ... I think that this final hub has given me the most joy and it is the one that I haven’t had to write. I wrote an email to my daughter telling her about TamCor’s three questions and I asked her if she would answer the final question for me so that I could write this final hub.
- A 1950's Working Class Mum's Answer to Children Biting ..My mum Jeanie was one in a million she was born in 1919 the eldest of ten children, and you could tell right away she was used to being obeyed. In many ways Jeanie was no different from many of the mothers of that time but is some areas she had some novel ideas.
-
Working Class Girl in Singapore in the late 1960's ...In March1967 I got married to my husband Malcolm who was a Petty Officer in Her Majesty’s Royal Navy. Just three and a half months later Malcolm got a married accompanied posting to Singapore. I had heard of Singapore but I hadn’t a clue where it was, so Malcolm had to show me where it was on a map.
- Bonfire Night in a Working Class area in the 1950’s ...Each November the fifth in England we remember the foiled plot of Guy Fawkes who plotted to blow up Parliament and the King. Fortunately this plot was discovered and Guy Fawkes was arrested before he could put a match to the gunpowder that he had secreted below the Houses of Parliament.
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Thank you for giving so much joy. I loved every bit of it. I often tell my son that if there are bad times, I mean really bad times, that generation would type into the computer 'potatoes' and will be surprised that there none coming out, apart from a picture.
As always ,brilliant.I am inclined to think that if I had to go through all that to get clothes clean I mightn't encourage kids to change so often-gosh it was tough for those ladies.
Maggs, again a wonderful walk back into the past (my past and also my present in a way). I still dry washing on my AGA (wood fired stove) in winter :-) How interesting to read about how washing was dried in your part of the world ... so similar and a walk down memory lane holding my grandmother's hand. Thank you.
Nice write up of this time. I seen an older washer that my grandma had. It is hard to imagine doing laundry this way.
Wow, this is great hub! I feel like I'm reading the Reminisce magazines!
Wow Maggs, this takes me back. You know, while reading this I never thought of what my mother did during the winter for washing. I've never seen the wringer that you showed here. Actually I've never seen a lot of the things that you show pictures of. How do you get these photos? Oh, but the iron, I used to use that. I really got caught up in this hub. I really enjoyed this. I need to go back and read more of your hubs.
This brings back so many memories. My aged great aunt used a flat iron until she died in the mid 1970s. The wringer and clothes horses were used at home. We also had a pulley similar to the one shown. Dad had made it. Wonderful hub. Thank you
Maggs, This was wonderful as well as informative! I learned some things! My admiration grows as well! I am just that much more thankful for having a great Mom! I was born at the right time! So thankful for a washer and dryer! Thank you for sharing, In His Love, Peace & Blessings!
Hi Old 50, as always your comments are a delight to read, I would love to see all these wonderful things that you have and are still using in your home. That is one of the things I really like about stuff that was made in the past, the fact that it was really made to last and we see the proof of that in your home and stories. I wonder how many things manufactured today will still be going strong just ten years down the road never mind fifty plus years.
I have not mentioned block ice delivery because we never had block ice. Most homes at that time in our neighbourhood didn’t have a fridge or any means of storing ice. To keep things cool we had a big stone slab in the pantry which was the coolest place in the house. Of course in the summer months butter would melt and go rancid, milk would curdle or just go sour, and meat would go off quickly.
The way we dealt with this was when buying foodstuffs that had a tendency to go off; was to buy only what you needed for that day.
The nearest we got to having something to keep stuff cool was a thing called an Osokool It was a metal box covered in Plaster of Paris with a dish shaped indent at the top. You poured water into the indent and it drew the heat away from the metal box and so kept the objects cool. This would only keep cool objects cool, it would not cool down stuff it would only keep it from heating up. It was all to do with the evaporation of the water making the metal insert cool. I have found a photo of an Osokool but I don't know how to add it to the comments.
The other thing we would do was fill a bowl or bucket up with cold water from the tap then stand the milk bottles in the cold water and then cover the bottle with a wet tea towel and this would keep it cool. None of these means was very satisfactory. Thank God for fridges.
Hi Hello, thank you so much for your kind comments I appreciate them very much. Although by today’s standards times back then were very hard in comparison to now, when I look back the past only seems to hold happy memories for me. I was talking to my brother via email the other day he had just read my hub on train sets and train spotting and he put me right on a couple of things I had got wrong. He said in the email the same to me that those days held for him very happy memories.
Hi itakins, I know what you mean; in late 1969 we had just returned to the UK after a two year posting in Singapore. My husband was a Sailor in the Royal Navy and we had just had a married accompanied posting. During that two years we had a servant that did all the household chores for me. That included all the washing and the ironing. My husband use to put on a fresh uniform each day and when he came home from the base he would put his ordinary civvies on. This meant that he got through at least two sets of clean clothes a day. Within days of coming back to the UK where I was once again in charge of all my own chores I had to have a little word in his ear. The conversation was about how were not on a tropical routine now and he better get use to wearing stuff more than once before it found its way into the washing pile. Lol
Hi marijanareynders, I am glad that you enjoyed your little walk down memory lane. I love the old AGAs I think that they are wonderful. Over the years we have had narrowboats and we had woodburning pot bellied stoves and I loved to smell the smoke of the burning wood, different kinds of wood gave off different kinds of smoke. Thanks for the memories you evoked,
Hi Sandy, Written records of these everyday ordinary events in a normal household are not the kinds of things that make it into the history books. That is why I wanted to put down in writing somewhere some of the ordinary mundane experiences of working class people back in the 1940’s and 50’s. Hubpages gave me this opportunity and I am so grateful, and judging from the comments I get these ordinary experiences have taken others to visit their own experiences of the past and that has given me an enormous amount of satisfaction.
Hi Gojijuice, I am glad that you enjoyed reading the Hub. Thanks for leaving a comment I appreciate it.
Hi fastfreta, I am glad that this Hub took you on a little trip of your own and I am glad that you found reading the hub interesting. I spend a lot of time looking for the right photos, if I don’t have one from my past that illustrates what I am talking about I search till I find one that does. Often they are not quite right so I spend time making them more appropriate for what I need. Thanks for reading and for leaving a comment it is always lovely to hear from you.
Hi Ethel, I find it the same for me when I read all these lovely comments, it brings back so many more memories and I am always amazed how many things we have in common with other people in countries all over the world.
It is great that we also have many different experiences and I get to learn a lot about how other ordinary folk in other countries lived during this time.
Just read Old 50’s comments and you will see what I mean. He gives a delightful insight into the American way of life back then. Thanks for being kind enough to leave a comment it is always good to see your name.
Hi DeBorrah, having a thankful heart is a great blessing, and having a great mom is a wonderful thing to be thankful for. I think if you are fortunate enough to be brought up in a home where people love you, then no matter what the hardships are that you have to endure you can still come away with happy memories. Thanks for the peace and blessing both gratefully received.
Maggs, we did have a truck that ran every morning but Sunday that dropped off glass quart bottles of milk, butter, eggs, and washing powders. I remember and have a 5 place setting of Melmac Dinnerware and accessories, like gravy bowls and butter bowls as well as napkin holders, the washing powder company would give one piece a week in exchange for buying some amount of their brand I don't remember, I just recall my father getting after my mother for buying enough washing powder to open a laundry company just to get free plates. I was amused as a child that my Mom could get in trouble too.
http://notagaingraphics.com/Branchell/br2j.html and http://oldcarandtruckpictures.com/Divco/
In 1980 I bought a property in Santa Ana, California that was "Arden Dairy Co." they were closing down from the business of Milk and dairy morning delivery. I had a large room, 60ftx60ft that had foam walls close to a meter thick to keep products cold. In summer on days of 90 degrees the inside stayed 60 degrees and less, I sat the offices and parts department, for a truck repair company, up in side the room to keep from paying for cooling as well as heating bills, in the winter a small electric space heater intended for a small room would keep it warm. It was located near three other companies in the same business and the products were delivered by large trucks to them in the early morning hours so they could be delivered in the city by 6am to the door steps of customers. I had 2 qt bottles of raw milk delivered to my home until the last finally went out of business in the mid 1980s. Progress has caused us to loose some nice services, I sure miss farm fresh raw milk, especially ice cold. Not all things passed for the good in my opinion. Cheers, 50
Hi 50, In 1967 my husband was in the Royal Navy we took over the house of the man who my husband was replacing. We shared this house with them for a couple of weeks until they returned to the UK. Linda the lady of the house said to me that she was leaving me her fab coffee mugs and fab bowls. I thanked her for her generosity, I liked the mugs and bowls but I thought that calling them fab was a bit over the top.
It turns out she didn’t mean that the mugs and bowls were fabulous by her remark but that they were in fact Fab mugs and bowls. Fab was a brand of washing powder and if you bought a box of this washing powder you would get a free gift such as a coffee mug or a bowl. I was to amass my own collection of Fab items over the next two years just like your mum did so I can really identify with her. Unfortunately I cannot find any photos of the Fab free gifts.
I loved all the photographs of the Divco trucks, especially the little pint sized ones that they use to give free to the dealerships it sure beat a free coffee mug that’s for sure.
Our milkmen also used to deliver to the doorstep using electric driven milk floats; they still do in the UK. I can’t find any footage of a milk float from the past, but the floats really haven’t changed that much and here is a link to a video taken this year on the 6th of January by the milkman on his round in the snow.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F6YoT0vansI
When you hear the unmistakable sound of that electric engine starting up you would know right off even if you couldn’t see it that it was a milk float because the sound is so distinctive.
Your comments send me on new trips down memory lane each time, thanks for taking the time and trouble to make them. Maggs
A fine video of a person with a job, trudging through the snow and ice to set down a bottle of milk seemed tedious at face value. I wonder if the recipient is grateful, I know that a fresh ice cold bottle of raw milk would get swallowed quite quickly today as the temperature is headed back to 100 degrees. The colors of the Fab ware that I linked are the same as what I have. In those days our tables were chrome plated piping with the tops colored the same as the Fab dinnerware. You mentioned Fab and I remembered the brand. I'm enjoying these hubs, thank you so much. 50
Hi 50, Great to have your input I love your comments thanks for taking the time to contribute like this. When my kids were young we always had milk delivered to our doorstep by the milkman. As they grew up and the money got tighter it was more economical to by the milk from the supermarkets in four pint cartons than in the one pint bottles from the milkman.
The same milkman who made the video you saw also made this video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pPDHX-aI8mw which is a video ride in the milk float and there are text captions that tell you about the milk float like how long it goes on a single charge etc. I think that you might find it interesting.
Hi what a hard life they had - I'm reading this as my other half has the washing machine in bits - one of my bra wires was the culprit so I'm popular! Never heard of the flatley drier- sounds like a Godsend at that time. Really good interesting information, thank you.
Hi Juliette Seems like every cloud does have a silver lining your poor hubby gets the broken washer and I get to enjoy your visit.
I think that looking back sometimes helps us to appreciate some of the things that we now just take for granted. Having something breakdown can also do it too, when the washer is working we hardly give a second thought, but when it breaks down we suddenly realise just how much we have grown dependant on it.
I hope hubby gets it fixed soon though the little village that I can see from my window does have a communal outdoor washing area that you are welcome to use if you get stuck. Lol
I have put a photo below so you can see how it was done in Spain I don’t know why it is not showing but if you click on it you will then be able to see the full sized photo.
I absolutely love reading about the days-gone-by! While it is nice to have all our wonderful conventions, a days work back then really required a lot of thought, planning and true effort. Not to say we have it easy now, but it sure is a lot different. I can't help but long for that "simpler" time.
Thanks for sharing this! I can't wait to read your other work!
Calling Crow, Thank you so much for your very kind comments, like you say it was hard work back then but there was something about a simpler lifestyle in a simpler time that is very appealing even today.
Great memories were brought back to me by this fascinating Hub. So many of the things you have mentioned were part of my childhood also!
Thanks for sharing.
Love and peace
Tony
HI Tony, Many of the people I grew up with all say the same thing as you, that time provided many great memories which we look back fondly on.
It is my pleasure to share, writing these hubs stirs up my own memories of that time and that give me a lot of pleasure, I am glad that you enjoyed your little amble down my old memory lane.
What a step back in time. I don't think many of us could do with the inconveinces of days gone by. Wonderful reasearch and love the writing style.
Thank you KoffeeKlatch for the really nice comment I appreciate it very much.
I sure would not like to be without my automatic washing machine, using my old twin tub was such a chore compared to an automatic.
That pulley system is quite ingenious. I wouldn't mind having something like that now. The irons? Well, they make good doorstops now. Women would not need gym memberships at all working like that! I really enjoyed your description of the swinging light while ironing. Thank you for another wonderful hub! This is where I will come whenever I want to feel all warm and fuzzy :))
Thank you so much for your kind comments they have really made my day.
The Pulley did keep the freshly done ironing in one place and stopped it getting wrinkled up again before it was put away. In a small terraced house the pulley kept the feeling of clutter down once it was pulled up to the ceiling.
I am glad that I never had to iron with those flat irons,how mum gaged correctly the heat required for the different materials I will never know.
What a great history of washing, drying and ironing. We forget how tough it was and how much time went into things - we have so much more time now and we just don't appreciate it. These are great photos too and seeing how it evolved.
Thank you for your kind comments I am glad that you enjoyed taking a peek into a time gone by. Like you I think a glance or two backwards does help us to appreciate more some the things we have begun to take for granted.
What a wonderful banquet of nostalgia. I'm glad you didn't talk about the bathrooms (or the distance to them) ha ha. I remember the cork sprinklers my mother used and many a time I have heard people say "I felt like I was put through a wringer today." I would love for you to visit the unofficial HP gathering we are having at my "How to Succeed..." hub. You are one of the featured hubbers. Thanks for a fun read. =:)
I am glad that you enjoyed this little peek into the past, these cork sprinklers that you mention really have me intrigued you will have to tell me more. Thank you for leaving your comment and I loved your ‘How to succeed’ hub. It was a real honour to to find myself as one of your featured hubbers your kindness to me is very much appreciated.
Fascinating. We are truly spoiled today. But many complain more than in the old days. I enjoyed your Hub very much.
Hi James I am glad that you enjoyed your little trip down my memory lane. I think that back then many people had a more a thankful attitude than complaining one.
Most people at that time still had very vivid memories of the war and all the deprivations that wartime entailed. Just having the streets lit or shop windows illuminated was a cause for appreciation.
It was a time when almost everyone had experienced the loss of someone near and dear to them during the war. Even if your family had emerged unscathed you would have known some one personally whose family had not been so lucky.
This factor inevitably changed the way people viewed their lives and possessions. Because of this I think that they lived their lives focusing on what they still had which gave rise to an attitude of gratitude.
It was through this attitude of gratitude they viewed and experienced what they had and of course this changed how they felt about everything. Thanks for your comment
I love this, combined with photos which have been carefully researched. You respect your Mum a great deal and it is with such gratitude that you remember what must have been a tough life for your mom anyway. Playing under tents consisting of rugs was a wonderful childhood, I observe. She evidently did you right, lucky girl. Great job.
Hi Story, I am totally in awe of the women of my mother and grandmother’s generation. The older I get the more I come to realise just how hard it must have been for them. You are right my brother and I both had a wonderful childhood and I was a very lucky girl indeed.
Maggs224 - what a wonderful hub! Thank you - I remember so much of all that your words explained but only after your words had been 'printed' in my memory - thank you.
Actually I reached your hub-site because I was researching pictures for a hub I have just written about Evacuation. Your name and hubs came up and I so thank you for that too.
I shall read more of your writing now that I have found it - and thank you again. You write with great sensitivity and unassuming skill.
What a kind man you are to leave such a nice comment. I have just been and read two of your poems and I was very moved and touched by them both. I am so glad that you left a comment that led me to your Hubs I will be back to read some more.
Hi, maggs, this was really interesting, I remember my mum telling me about the irons, and she also said they had curling tongs to do their hair that they had to put on the stove! I tend to put damp washing on the radiator even now when it's raining, and when I lived in a caravan we had a mangle! I still think they are a good idea, thanks for a great trip to the past, cheers nell
Hi Nell, When I was a little girl one of the popular things for a mum to do to a little girls hair was what they called ‘Putting it in Rags’ a very long winded process for turning your straight hair into ringlets. I never liked sitting still for long and so I am glad to say I only had my hair done this way a few times.
When I lived in England it was not uncommon on a wet day when everyone was out for me to put the wet washing on the radiators. Here in Spain I don’t have any radiators but I am glad to report I don’t have any wet washing either Lol… In this lovely climate I can put my washing out on the line and in about half an hour it is dry.
Thank you for leaving a comment with you own experiences in. I find the comment sections of the Hubs fascinating it is amazing what you learn from reading the comments.
Greetings Maggs,
What a wonderful hub! It brought back so many memories of my grandmother doing her wash that way! Her old-fashioned hand wringer washing machine, her standing out in the winter hanging up her laundry on the lines, and bringing it in frozen!
Thank you for such beautiful writing and for wonderful memories!
Blessings,
Laurie
Hi Laurie, thanks for your comments and for sharing your own memories. It is amazing how each other’s memories can stimulate memories that have lain dormant for decades.
You brought back my memories of frozen washing being brought in off the line. The washing was so frozen some of it could stand up unaided.
I have memories from the '60's of the by then disused old mangle mounted on top of my grandmothers washing machine in Sydney Australia. My aunt use to tell horror stories of the injuries that could occur using it.
When my father built our home just before the Korean war he built a double width brick backed recess, to the left was an elctric oven with hot plates on top which we used in hot weather while to the right was a solid fuel stove - oven, plate warmer and cooking surface on top. We burnt wood or coal as fuel. The coal ash/embers were horrible to remove. This was lit first thing in the morning and left to go out during the evening. Above the stoves were drying cupboards. Dad built a hoist in the ceiling so mum could lower and raise the wooden rack which was a recycled section of a broken playpen.
Bunyip
some very amzing and insightful stuff, as I attempt to look back into my life I have to try and remind myself what it was like for my parents being brought up in the 40s/50s..thanks
Hi Bunyip, I love your story about the recycled playpen that was turned into in to a drying hoist. Those were the days when nothing was wasted and if something could be reused in another form it was. I am sure that your dad got a lot of satisfaction from building that hoist for your mum. I bet it made him feel good every time he saw your mum use it. Thank you so much for sharing your interesting story with me I love reading about these kinds of ingenious re-use of everyday objects to do something completely different from their intended use. I bet you are proud of your dad.
Hi dswan, thank you for your kind comments. I wanted to record some of the everyday stuff in a working class home in this era before there is no one left to remember it. This is not the stuff that our history books write about and these are not the people that are usually written about. I am glad to say though, that through the invention of the Internet and that access that ordinary people have to it has made it possible for ordinary folk like me and thousands of others to document our own little slices of our common history.
Greeting maggs224,
Just found your HubPages on Google. What you've wrote here is something that other people not prefer to write it. I'm not born on 1940s-1950s but still I can see here how's the technology on that era.
Thank you marinandee I can see from your profile that you are too young to remember any of this yourself :D You are right things are so very different now many tasks have been made easier through the advances in technology.
50 Caliber Level 7 Commenter 2 years ago
Maggs, this is certainly a trip back in time and a mess of delightful memories. I have thought of a few you've yet to mention or I must go back and read like block ice delivery or the block ice dispensers, much like a coke machine except 50 pound or 25 pound blocks came out. I still keep ice picks in the kitchen drawer, funny as you have to search for block ice and there are few machine left, while I still use it for different things. I've got the old coal bucket and scoop I use it now for a huge smoker for smoking meat in and Mesquite wood charcoal or chunks is what it scoops now. The cast iron 5 pound and 10 pound as in your photos are door stops now. It was just last month I was at a flea market and bought a Flatley clothes dryer. The man I bought it from said "those sure are nice when a fellow needs one". I told him I doubted many don't even know what it is any more. Then it showed he was fishing to see what he just sold for 5 dollars so I filled him in, and it's laden in the kitchen right now. I keep it in side as the dogs have a field day with my socks and such and I have to hunt them down in the yard outside, if you could call it a yard. The old electric sockets are in use in light fixtures here in my home. I have old electric Irons and a sprinkler cork that was designed from aluminum to fit in old quart Coke bottles to sprinkle clothes with water as you iron to create the effect of a new steam iron for those who could not or would not afford one back in the 50s. The cranking the mangler reminded me of us kids fighting over who got to crank the ice cream maker and who had ti sit on top of the burlap sack on the top of chipped ice and salt. Now days you'd have to beat a kid to even dream of cranking much less sitting on an ice cream maker. Helping around the house at all is above them. I doubt they would have survived the times back when there was no computers and cell phones and child labor was a must. I suppose they would die if rotary telephones still had to be dialed. They would hate it here as there is no phone at all.
It's been quite fun reading and I thank you for such good articles, I'll have to catch up on them, old 50