Picasa went bonkers on me and the post I wrote just now just did not respond! Grr..
okay this is 2nd last instalment of the Howick Historical Village.
The highlight for Noel was to do the washing. All the children had a turn washing, and mangling and drying the clothes. washing 200 years ago has not changed that much from when my grandma was doing it except my grandma did it more often than the Victorians did.
The Victorians had to wake up at 5am to do get the water and boil the water for them to wash.
It's a lot of hard work and hence the mother would cook a Sunday Roast (big hearty meal so the children will have lots of energy to do the work the next day)
Here, Noel used the wash board and applied soaps and then started to scrub the cloth.
Given that they don't change their clothes very often back then, clothes would be pretty dirty, and they use this washing dolly to further wash the clothes. I think that's how the agitator of our washing machine is based on.
After washing, the object is rinsed in another basin with clean water, and then brought to the mangler to be wrung . it also act to press the clothes as well as wring out the water . Finally the clothes are hung on the clothes line to dry.
Another shot of the Washing Dolly.
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1 comment:
Interesting. Why did they have a machine to wrung the clothes? We just used hands. It was a great idea though because they don't need to press clothes. Lots of thick fabric then. Not easy. Noel loved the job?
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