History of Women Stitching Ep. 3 : All About Laundry and Privilege
To confess, I mostly do this podcast to hear my own voice, after a week alone in the studio arguing with the dog. But the last part of 2024 and the first months of 2025 have giving me and I am sure you, an overload of things to worry about and ponder. So do I add to the “voices and the noise” already out there declaring what is wrong with our world? Do I have any insight to bring good to the current wack a doodle-ness? Probably not, so instead let us talk about the history of laundry and how, who is doing that laundry, had been a pretty good indication of privilege. Trust me, it will come back around to stitching.
But first , we need to review. If you have not listened to or read the first two episodes of The History of Women Stitching (one here and two here)you can listen to them on Spotify, iHeart Radio or my own website, kellylewispodcast.com and go to moonflowerstudio.biz where there is a written post of this podcast and a lot of wonderful art to illustrate what I am talking about plus links to the books and places I go to find my info.
But in a quick summery- The invention of continuous thread, cord, yarn, at least 20,000 years ago, was an invention equal to the laptop I am typing this on. It was that life altering, the bases of most invention.
Across the world, at different rates, in different places- linen, silk, cotton and wool developed to be the main fibers used in those regions. Their evolutions I will leave up to the experts but in the first two episodes and on my Kelly Lewis Podcast Pinterest page I have links to the excellent books on fiber I have been perusing. I just finished another one on silk…
Did you know that there are dozens of different moths plus creatures from the sea and spiders that produce silk that can be woven and sold? The history of fabric is beginning to have its due.
Another important thing to remember- fabric, because it is measurable and standardized in yardage and quality was a form of taxation and in trade became a world wide currency sometimes in preference to gold or silver. And just like cheese- or wine taking its name from the regions they were produced in- so are certain types of clothes named for where they come from. For example Muslin cloth (more here)
comes from the city of Mosul in Iraq, which was a major trading center for the fabric in the Middle Ages.
Although not the main focus of this podcast it is always important to point out that in the era of world exploration it was the desire for the exotic including fabrics that was often responsible for the colonization and destruction of many vulnerable cultures and natural resources including the extinction or endangerment of many indigenous tribes in the Americas on first contact, the African slave trade to profit from the sugar, tobacco and cloth industries in Europe and the domination of India by other world powers to break their cotton industry for example. This is a time we are beginning to exploring the history of our Avarice which is…
an excessive desire for wealth or material gain (here)
I’d recommend
available HERE
If you want to understand more fully the consequences of that part of our shared history.
But what interests me for this podcast is the underrepresented history of women- just women.
It is also important to remember that at first all women, in almost all cultures, were the soul spinners of thread up to the the Industrial Revolution in the mid 1700’s and some experts think that more spinning implements have been found in archeological dig sites than pretty much any other kind of tool, laid out in our graves so that we could keep spinning in the afterlife, because apparently women’s work actually never does stop!
But for being the soul provider for such a needed commodity - the spinning, weaving, sewing, producing of clothes and household good was so boring, so everyday, so common then as now it barely needed to be noticed. So on that declaration of how boring such things are, lets talk about them, or lets talk about who exactly was doing them…. or not doing them, along with the cleaning, cooking, child rearing, etc.
Again, on the encouragement in Elizabeth Wayland Barber’s book- Women’s Work the First 20,000 Years
We need to get creative in pondering the historic division of labor between Man and Women. We did that in episode one imagining a conversation between husband and wife leaning against the cave wall. Let’s do it again in the Medieval era, by asking the question, “ Okay, who is going to do what?” - who is providing food, who is protecting us, who is making a wage, who is traveling, who is serving our Feudal Lord and Master and who is taking care of the children.
But now in the 1300s we have names for the roles!
Do you know what husbandry was and is and why it was called that? Wikipedia defines husbandry as…
meaning "to manage carefully", derives from an older meaning of husband, which in the 14th century referred to the ownership and care of a household or farm, but today means the "control or judicious use of resources", and in agriculture, the cultivation of plants or animals.[1] Farmers and ranchers who raise livestock are considered to practice animal husbandry
From HERE
And in Medieval Europe it was a rural setting for most, the 90% that lived under the feudal lords and were controlled by the crown and the church. Tenant farmers, they owned nothing, had no say for their future and were at the whims of those who controlled their livelihood. But they did not live on the farms we think of here in America like Ma and Pa Ingalls. They probably lived in a cluster of village and farmed on allotted land owned by that feudal lord. What did that mean?
It meant they were not walking out their doors to tend their fields and their livestock. They might not be able to see their wheat glistening in the sun from their windows. Their allotted plots , assigned to them as a hereditary right for decades or appointed to them by the Lord himself or a village counsel could be a distance away.
But what was the opposite of husbandry - wivery? Is that a word? Well, housewifery is…
The state or activity of being a housewife; household management, domestic skills.
So what Barber described in her book is still true- there is a distinct division of labor because of the needs of childrearing and rearing. Men can go out to harvest, trade, war while women were bonded to the home, to take care of children and therefore did chores as described in Women’s Work that were safe and easily interrupted- like food prep, gardening, spinning and weaving. Of course, seasonally everyone in the village would come out and plant, harvest, shear the wool, pick the orchard, process the migrating fish, etc.
In the era of the Crusades, Robinhood and Little John, Merlin and Camelot, all but a few who were royal or rich, this is how most lived out their lives in Medieval Era. That is until the plagues came. There were several in the 14th century, killing possible 1/3 of Europe’s populations….
With such a decrease in the workforce population, the Lords and the Church lost much of their power and guilds or unions of wool growers, cloth producers, miners, goldsmiths started to have some say. And through that upheaval the middle class was created.
Bankers, explorers, merchants, traders, scientist, publishers sometimes had more money then the royal few. And bargaining began between those who had the money and those who had the power.
But this new class, coined the Bourgeoisie or New Money…
wanted the life they saw higher up in the social ladder if yet on a smaller scale. Their houses, their dress, their manners, their children all where orchestrated to show the wealth and the power they did posses. And we can see that world created by the beloved authoress- Jane Austen. Think of all the daughters Mrs. Bennet has to find suitable marriages for in Pride and Prejudice.
But before we dive into Austen’s wonderful novel let’s remember the setting- or supposed setting- very early 1800’s. Why is that important? Because that would be less than 20 years since the French Revolution- where many of the rich and the privileged ceremonially lost their heads largely due to their cold unconcern for the plight of their fellow man…
Of course, across the pond, in England the Monarchy and the Gentry were pondering such things, how could they not? Is it possible there was a bit more “inclusion” in the interactions at the county dances and festivities in Austen’s novel because of the unrest on the Continent?
My favorite movie version of the book would be the 2005 version starring Kiera Knightly and Matthew Macfadyen. and I might add- what a beautiful way to start a movie. Elizabeth Bennet walking through the morning dew of a meadow, without a care in the world reading a book to the lyrics of birdsong. Then coming upon her father’s manor house, she navigates the narrow foot bridge of a water ditch as the chirping of birds is replaced with the piano playing of her sister Mary. Lit by the sun, Elizabeth maneuvers around the day’s washing of glistening white bed sheets and underclothing blowing in the morning breeze. I actually don’t have to go any farther to explain privilege, it is so wonderfully illustrated in the opening scene of director Joe Wright and writer Deborah Maggach screenplay…
Here is the test, if you, as a women, can walk across a meadow in the morning light, chorused by birdsong, reading a book with nothing else to do- you are privileged. If you can cross your father’s bridge and be backlit by the filtered light coming through gloriously placed white sheets you did not wash to the sound of your sister’s constant practice on a keyboards first thing in the morning, you’re privileged. If someone else did your laundry, then or even now…your privileged.
But back to one of the best opening continuous scenes in filmdom.
If you look real quick, behind our beloved Elizabeth walking into her father’s house you will see two women, one old and one young on their knees wringing out by hand another wet batch of those glorious white sheets that soon will be hung and provide us with this cinematic backdropped to Regency Era, England. Do you feel for the two ladies in the back of the Bennett’s manor house? Doing the sheets, undergarments and well menstruation pads of five young maidens.
The young humming maid in the 2005 version of Pride and Prejudice is called Betsy, according to the imdb.com website and played by Sinead Matthews. I wonder if the writers of the script were inspired by the novel Longbourn, written by Jo Baker , which I have mentioned before and tells a much harder to grasp love story of two of the servants almost out of site in Jane Austen’s beloved tales.
According to Chatsworth modern day website- the estate used in the film for Mr. Darcy’s humble country home…
a housemaid in 1811, about the time Elizabeth Bennet became Mrs. Darcy, would only have about 1,000 English pounds or 1,200 American dollars for her spending money in a year, not including her room and board. That is $100 a month with probably one day off a week. Ironically those maids could possible only have a few chemises themselves, possibly only two dresses to their names, one for work and one for church. One only knows how often their linens were changed, possible sheets too worn for the their noble masters, how did they deal with menstruations?
A short video from the English Heritage you can view from my blog post gives a great Victorian tour of a great house’s laundry room where dirty linens might be consolidated and transported from a Lord’s many houses to one laundry facility, where the laundering process could take weeks or months to be returned and used again. I heard recently that even after there was automation and advancements in chemistry to make laundering easier, much of the “well to do” or royals still preferred their laundry to be done the old fashioned way, by hand, not their hands of course but servants hands.
Guaranteed the servants found in any of Jane Austen’s novels did not wash their bedding, undergarments, outer clothes or their own bodies nearly as much as they tending to the washing of their masters linen, clothing, etc. William Savage, in Georgian Washing Day, writes…
the costs associated with keeping yourself clean were considerable, both in money and time.
Savage goes on to say that how clean you were, how white your linen was -was a statement of how wealthy you were. .
The British Broadcasting Company has a great documentary to watch, if you can find it. A History of Art in Three Colors… The Episode on the obsessions with “white” is a little disturbing.
Linen, considered easier to launder compared to wool and silk is not naturally white, it is a dirty white so great effort was taken to get it white in production of the cloth and then to keep it white. Not only did it take great amounts of time to keep everything white, which we will get into in a second, but also to mend, starch and iron was a massive undertaking.
How did laundry become such an indicator of status? I mean at first we all did it on our knees at the side of a creek with rough rocks to scrub against. Later on with a big culdron of hot water behind our own cottages…
Okay, I have to pause and encourage you to go to the written blogpost on my moonflowerstudio.biz webpage, cuz ohhhh the artwork. Although men did not like doing the laundry they sure did love illustrating us women while we we were up to our elbows in water and suds. I’m looking at a wonderful pencil sketch of ladies hanging the wash on the clotheslines by the artist Vincent Van Gogh, ahhhh what a dynamic, an artistry word you will hear again, way to capture such a daily occurrence. Go check the blogpost just for the pictures!
Another way we women, got the laundry done before hot water heaters and agitating washers and caught up on the town’s gossip is beautifully illustrated in the the opening scenes of the recent live movie production of Beauty and the Beast, where Belle ( Emma Watson) sings of the little town her and her father have found themselves in, she walks around a lavoir
a public place, where a water source has been redirected, set aside for the washing of clothes.
Slowly through time we did find things to make it easier to get our clothes clean and help our whites get the whitest starting with buttermilk, urine and wood ash. A treatment called bluing (late 1700’s) finally came on the market that in it being blue, would nullify the yellowing of the linen and make them appear more white. But for a long time the main way to get your whites the whitest was by the bleaching power of the sun.
So often behind our houses, whether simple or great, there were designated areas situated in a way the usual visitor would not see- A mews, not m-u-s-e but m-e-w-s is the back end of a grand townhouse, where the carriage, the horses, the servants or slaves were housed and where all the dirtier work of the household happened. I was able to go see the “townhouse” of a wealth slave owning plantation family, the Aiken- Rhett House in Charleston South Carolina…
It’s “mew” or back end was very isolated and interesting, a place where the business could get done but not hinder the daily lives of residences. The back end of the great houses in the country are not called “mews” but have the same activities and there is another great scene in the 2005 Pride and Prejudice when Charlotte comes to tell Elizabeth she is marrying Mr. Collins.
Again if you look close as Elizabeth twirls on the swing… (clip up on moonflowerstudio.biz) you will see the servants hard at work doing all sorts of the daily chores a manor house requires, leaving Elizabeth, her sisters, her mother and Mr. Bennet to spend their days pondering other things.
Laundry a few hundred years ago was not like the “Wash on Monday, iron on Tuesday” system we think of today.
That is a more modern idea and reflects how most of us, our mothers and grandmothers have done laundry. Today a load of wash might take two hours, including bleaching the whites, even if you still hang things up, maybe a half a day. And yes there is still those of us, including me, who like that fresh laundry smell of the outdoor clothesline and utilizing the sun, it not only whitens it sanitizes and it is free energy.
But awhile ago, described in William Savage’s blogpost, though hard for us to imagine now in our modern society doing the laundry before our modern conveniences, could be on a 4-6 week cycle.
(so it) demanded the purchase of large numbers of sheets and the like to be able to enjoy that freshly washed feel until washing day came around again.
He also points out linens were often listed in people’s wills and probate along with items like fine China or furniture.
Another reason a great lord might send all the laundry from his town house or London house to his country house was because laundry need a lot of space to be done. An article, on the Colonial Williamsburg website is titled-
Laundries, Largest Buildings in the Eighteenth-century Backyard by Michael Olmert
Architectural historian Willie Graham of Colonial Williamsburg thinks it (large laundry facilities) was mainly to do with the number of linens and other prestige textiles. “It was a way of showing money,” he says.
But the outside was as important in the laundry process where like at the Bennet’s the linen sheets and unmentionables could be hung behind the manor. Linens were even spread out on the grassy lawn and yes one needed a whole lot of grass to catch the sun, where apparently even the action of the green grass helped in the whitening process.
You might be wondering about the critters wandering around most country houses, the sheep, cows and pigs, well these lawns could be guarded by children to shoo the animals off or by an “ha ha” fence…
A raised lawn was guarded by a sunken ditch surrounding it, but gave the illusion of a continuous lawn from the windows of the great house. I have no idea if this protected area was actually used to lay out the sea of of white linens being bleached by the sun or not, nor do I know how they dealt with the occasional bird flying by, I just know about the “ha ha” from the long running British show- Time Team, but it sounds pretty odd to me.
We also know that laundry was sent out a very long time ago…
There is an image on my website of a small pillow, from Colonial Williamsburg, with a hand stitched list of all the linens a house would need- towels. napkins, blankets, and the undergarments of its residence- shirts, skirts, vests, drawers, etc. and then the numbers 1-12 listed out beside each item. What is it for? Well…
Jane Jamson of Aberdeen, Scotland stitched it or had it stitched to keep track of what laundry was out for washing and if it had come back yet. Though the inventory list stitched on the little pillow does not say for certain how many collars she sent out for her husband, father or master- the idea being she would place a pin in the appropriate number of items out to be cleaned, the numbers go out to 12..
Your heart go out to the laundress collecting the linen after a hunting party weekend like in Downton Abbey or the one portrayed in the very English who done it murder mystery- Gosford Park (2001)
But before all the domestic advancements of the modern era how much laundry did a “great house” or a “middle class house need if some was always being sent out or to wait between washing days that according to Savage could have been on an over a month cycle.
Think about how many sets of linens you have for all your beds, all you and yours underwear, shirts, pants, plus towels and kitchen things. Well the privileged of years gone by probably had more and remember the obcession with white, the whitest white was a statement of class. Well those who could afford it were not sending their laundry to the nearest town with good water source because the make up of water has a lot to do with how yellowish or white the end result is. This is another crazy part in the indulgences of the rich- In her book, Fabric - The Hidden History of the Material Word, Victoria Finlay…
Finlay writes-
My grandmother would have sent (her linen) out to a commercial laundry. But her forebears would have sent theirs to the bleachfields or ‘bleaching greens’ around Glasgow (Scotland). Three hundred years ago the workers there would use sour milk and fern ashes and set all the cloths outside in orderly lines for many days.
Researching for this podcast and reading Finlay’s book, I had an ahaa moment when I remembered studying the painting and drawings of the “bleaching fields” by mostly Dutch masters in Art School, check out moonflowerstudio.biz to see some of them…
They depict a surreal sea of white linens spread out on acres of green fields with windmills, churches, thatched roofed cottages or castles in the background, with large skies and white clouds above the horizon. What a dynamic, there is that artistic term again, composition. Today we would call it a Kodak moment.
Called “Bleachfields” or “Bleaching Greens” and located near desirable water sources with the right mineral makeup to guarantee the whitest white, garments and linens would be laid out to catch the sun’s rays. Servants, of course had to be on hand to supervise any inclement weather or livestock and then get to the starching, ironing, mending, sorting and packaging to return the laundry to it’s owner.
Some were commercial and were bleaching the just woven linen cloth ready to be sold but some were places the “well to do” sent their laundry to be cleaned and at the height of the whiteness crazy, according to Finley, that could be across the world in places like far off Martinique. Which if you do not know, I googled mapped it and that is 4,185 miles from London, across the Atlantic ocean kind of near Puerto Rico. Yup, the rich sent their laundry on a sailing ship almost across the known world to be whitened and that indulgence could possible not have the laundry back to London for six month.
After the advancements of the laundry chemicals like bleach the whitening process could be accomplished with less time and space and these greens no longer served a purpose, many of them became the greens and parks of the village where they had inevitably stopped any urban sprawl from happening for hundreds of years.
So, how did they make sure all those linen got back to the right lord or lady? Yes, the lady of the house might have a stitched pillow for her to track her returned linens, but what about packaging them up from the laundry service side?.
How did the logistics of sending the laundry out of ones household actually work? They certainly did not have those plastic laundry bags and forms you find in every hotel closet.
When my husband and I were first married, we bought a tiny Victorian mining shack in a cool Colorado mountain town to renovate. During the last few days of refinishing, the beautiful pine wood floors in the front room caught fire and although the fire department was able to save the rest of the house, the smoke damage was horrible. We spent a summer living in an RV while the house was cleaned and all our belongs were treated for smoke. Everything, all our clothes, dishes, nick knacks came back to us with little purple pieces of paper attached to everything with our last name printed on them. I still come across some family heirlooms like old blankets that still have those little pieces of paper attached over thirty years later.
But in an area before the safety pin or whatever those plastic thing ama bobs that attach the price tag to your clothes were invented how was laundry that was sent out returned to the right house. Actually, attaching a paper label wouldn’t have work then as it does not work now, sense laundry involves water. How so did they do it?
That would be monogramming. Which is the placement of intials, usually from a person of importance like on a coin, or placed, sometime stitched to identify ownership…
But placing or stitching, embroidering the initials of the family or individuals onto items was not alway done with such grand style it also identified , the bedsheets, the pillow cases, the towels and the napkins and garments possible even a code for which house and bedroom the item needed to return to when moving around what could be a six month trip to get clean and the rest of this podcast is almost total conjecture, I’m guessing. Well at least google.com agrees with me…
Monograms were used to identify clothing and linens so they wouldn't get mixed up-a Laundry marker
Now we need to talk about samplers. stitching samplers and why there is so many alphabets to stitch in the needlework world and it was not, in my opinion to teach little girls to read. But that is a whole argument to leave for next time when we talk about the history of the embroidery sampler and guaranteed someone is going to get mad at me.
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