THE ABOLITION OF WASHINGDAY.

Northern Advocate, 27 August 1924, Page 3

THE ABOLITION OF WASHINGDAY.

A MUNICIPAL EXPERIMENT

Nothing could be further removed from the drabness," the discomfort, and the toil of washing-day -in the small home than the interior of Poplar's newest municipal wash-house the day I visited it with a woman councillor who was largely responsible for its existence. Chronological extremes meet there; for it is one. of the most modern of its kind to be found anywhere, and

it occupies the site of a swimming bath which was built in .1851, and was one of the first eight public baths opened in the kingdom, writes Evelyn Sharp in the "iranchester Guardian."

It is, in effect, a little self-contained steam laundry, used on an average by fifty women a day on six days of the week, Saturday being reserved for women who work outside the home. All have to book their names a week in advance; they pay one shilling for the use of the machines, and threehalfpence per hour for the time spent in the wash-house. I found one or two of them in the ante-room, sitting on their washing baskets a waiting their turn, though -without impatience; for they might wait much longer, and still have time compared with the old wearisome business of washing by hand at home, often with no copper or dryingground, and perhaps hampered by the baby and one or two toddlers clinging to their skirts. "What more they saved besides time could be seen when we followed one of them inside.

Hero she emptied her bundle into one of the six machines, known as a. sixty-shirt or ten blanket Ava slier, and just about the right .size for the house and personal linen of a family of eight or so. Having- kept. out. flannels coloured articles, she proceeded to wash these in a neighbouring enamelled basin while the machinist set the washer going, just for a three-minute "breakdown" in warm water and water-soft-ener, then for 20 minutes in hot water with soap, then for a further 20 minutes with water-softener. Two rinsings followed, by which time the mother had finished her hand-washing and the whole was placed in a hydro-extractor, the machine prototype of a wringer, and the water squeezed out; from this they were transferred to a trolley and wheeled to a row of dryers on castors, where the owner hung them up in rows, afterwards running the dryer into the hot-air chamber. At the end of .15 minutes or so they were ready for her to smooth in one of the six screened steam mangles, after which she could, if she liked,.finish off anything special with an electric iron.

Imagination can scarcely picture what the existence of this and other washing houses means to these women, all of them from small overcrowded homes, who would otherwise have to sjand many hours weekly at the washtub, polluting tlie already exhausted atmosphere with fumes nnd humidity, lifting about heavy pails of water and piles of wet clothing, drying them in a smutty back yard, or more often on a line stretched across the living-room. Washing-day always seems to me the breaking-point for the overworked #

mothers of mean streets, and it is 110 wonder that they so often go down under it :ind cease to do more than a minimum of their tiisk. "When Are opened," a sympathetic official told me, "we had more flian one 'wash' on which we could make no impression at first, so ingrained was the dirt. It is a pleasure to see the women's things coming whiter week hv week; and one effect of the municipal washhouse is to encourage the mothers to make white garments for their family, instead of the depressing coloured clothes they now often wear because they do not 'show the dirt.' "Their whole hygienic standard has been lifted," he added; "clean clothes demand clean bodies, and both demand clean homes to live in." The same official told me that since last Christmas, when this newest washhouse was opened, 3-lSfe "washes" have been done there. It was his ambition to see oil Poplar's washing done municipally, collected, and delivered from door to door, and he believed it could be made to pay. I am not sure, however, judging by the sociability of the women I saw there, working side by side, that they would not just as soon have this outing once

:t week from homos that arc in no cast' palaces of delight.