Thread Number: 67595
/ Tag: Vintage Dryers
Vintage Laundry Related Film Clips |
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Post# 903258   10/16/2016 at 07:20 (2,749 days old) by Launderess (Quiet Please, There´s a Lady on Stage)   |   | |
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Commercial Laundry In Chicago - Circa 1917
OSAH would have fits if things like this were still going on. What damp, hot, and back breaking work this must have been. Saving grace is during the freezing Chicago winters the warmth must have been somewhat welcomed, www.criticalpast.com/video/656750... www.criticalpast.com/video/656750... www.criticalpast.com/video/656750... Circa 1946 Newark, NJ Westing House showroom/store display. www.criticalpast.com/video/656750... |
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Post# 903265 , Reply# 2   10/16/2016 at 07:38 (2,749 days old) by whirlykenmore78 (Prior Lake MN (GMT-0500 CDT.))   |   | |
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Post# 903269 , Reply# 3   10/16/2016 at 07:57 (2,749 days old) by combo52 (50 Year Repair Tech Beltsville,Md)   |   | |
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Post# 903275 , Reply# 4   10/16/2016 at 08:33 (2,749 days old) by Launderess (Quiet Please, There´s a Lady on Stage)   |   | |
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Worker operating the hydro-extractor broke several safety rules including the two biggest; operating that thing with lid open and reaching into the basket while it was still turning. Again OSAH or local inspectors would shut that place down! *LOL*
Those pocket washers were a solution to customers wanting their laundry not mixed with others, but allowed a laundry to still have one large machine doing the same rated pounds of wash; it was just separated into different compartments/pockets. Today of course there would be a series of smaller twenty or whatever pound washers so each customer's wash could be done individually. However many commercial plants still insist on mixing laundry, hence the marks and now bar codes that are on laundry when it comes back from the plant. You notice there is really nothing automatic about those washers, other than they reverse IIRC. Stopping, starting, adding and draining water, introducing steam, etc.. all were done manually. The first thing that laundryman adds from a bucket is soap. It would have been made up daily or weekly in a "cooker" from either soap flakes or bar soap shaved into bits. Some laundries "built" their own soap solution by adding soda, borax and or phosphates, others would add what was necessary to the wash cycle. The last thing he ladles out was bluing it seems. In other video that mending department probably was quite busy. In addition to customer wear the overall laundering process does not look very gentle (hint; it wasn't) so am going with most shirts, sheets, tablecloths, etc... sent out routinely sooner or later needed some attention. It was very labor intensive to run a laundry back then; happily Chicago like New York City was full of immigrants mostly if not all Europeans. Laundry work wasn't great but it beat domestic service. The mustache on the guy who jumps into the picture reminds me of old school German or maybe Eastern European. A neighbor of mine (sadly now departed) who came to the USA from Hungary as a child had that same type. |
Post# 903302 , Reply# 6   10/16/2016 at 14:48 (2,748 days old) by Yogitunes (New Jersey)   |   | |
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Post# 903309 , Reply# 7   10/16/2016 at 15:51 (2,748 days old) by Launderess (Quiet Please, There´s a Lady on Stage)   |   | |
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Detachable collars both stiff and soft faded out of daily men's fashions by the 1930's or 1940's. Some men still wore them (and still do) but this is largely either a die core group of fashion sort. Then again "stiff collars" are still part of many men's formal evening wear or say for special events like a wedding. In places like the UK they are part of the traditional "uniform" for barristers, judges, etc... Indeed one of the few if not only places left that still has the equipment to launder, starch, and iron stiff collars is in London: www.barkergroup.info/barker_colla...
www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-... Elsewhere such collar ironing and other specialized machines were long ago scrapped. However you can still find side loading H-axis washing machines including pocket units that are fifty or more years old chugging away. While newer offerings can extract, there are still those in operation that do just one thing; wash/rinse. Soaking wet laundry must be moved to an extractor: http://www.ebay.com/itm/Commercial-Laund... Because the washers shown in OP didn't extract, starching was done in another machine department. Smaller laundries could get away with returning the wash to same machine or another after extracting to starch, but large plants like this had to keep things moving. Rather than tie up the "washing" machines there was another that did starching and it varied by what was being processed. There were actually machines that starched just stiff collars, shirt bosoms, etc... This was to replace the slower work of hand starching. Stiff collars and bosomed shirts are an art. You have to get the starch into the fabric but not just on the surface. In the case of shirt bosoms only that part and maybe the cuffs and neck band were starched. Thus obviously you couldn't put the entire shirt into a starch bath. Again this was often done by hand in the domestic setting or small laundry. A place like the "Palace Laundry" shown above that did hundreds if not thousands of stiff collars per week required faster through put . Final bit of trivia: the detachable shirt collar was invented by a woman. Tired of laundering her husband's shirts when only the collar was dirty it came to her why not have the two separate. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Detachable... Troy, New York became known as the "collar capital" of the USA. Not only did the place produce much of the inventory, but many laundries that specialized in cleaning and starching said garment were located there as well. You simply packed up your dirty collars and mailed them (in a small box), and clean ones came back via same. Due to hygiene habits being what they often were then, and the expense of having collars laundered many men wore the same one more than once, sometimes for a week or longer. As you can imagine by the time the things went to the wash it suffered a major case of "ring around the collar". Hence all the scrubbing, hot water and so forth you see in above clips. It would have involved a heavy dosage of bleaching and bluing to counteract the yellowing that came from built up collar soils. Because the industrial laundering process was so harsh many did tend to wear things longer between cleaning to help preserve. |
Post# 903338 , Reply# 8   10/16/2016 at 20:37 (2,748 days old) by Frigilux (The Minnesota Prairie)   |   | |
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Post# 903364 , Reply# 11   10/17/2016 at 03:42 (2,748 days old) by BigWashingDayAU (Gold Coast, QLD, Australia)   |   | |
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