Who Used Commercial Laundries?
Well back in the day you had really only three choices; you either did the laundry yourself, hired a person or persons to do it in house (laundresses, laundry maids, washer women, etc...), or you sent it out. The latter could be to a private laundress/washer woman or to a commercial laundry of various sizes.
In doing some research was surprised to learn that the biggest battles washing machine makers had in the USA were against laundresses (in house or private employ/business), and commercial/steam laundries.
Housewives and others simply felt they were happy with current arrangements and saw no need to change. Those that employed servants often weren't particularly interested in *how* the work got done, long as they themselves weren't doing all that hard labor. Those who sent things out felt the same.
In large urban areas such as much of New York City where space in apartments didn't allow laundry equipment, service laundries held on longer than elsewhere. Otherwise by the 1960's and into the 1970's places began to close and or make the switch to other types of commercial laundry as the domestic market dried up.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/loca...7d39690c5c0_story.html?utm_term=.c647ed2ac462
https://www.washingtonpost.com/loca...1_story.html?tid=a_inl&utm_term=.f52afbefc800
Quotes from above linked article pretty much sums things up:
"Not so fast, says Arwen Mohun, a University of Delaware history professor and author of “Steam Laundries: Gender, Technology, and Work in the United States and Britain, 1880-1940.” The system sometimes broke down.
“A lot of people were very ambivalent about laundries,” she told Answer Man. “They had a tendency to lose things and also ruin your clothes. They used a lot of harsh chemicals and the machines sometimes tore apart items that were fragile.”
and:
"The washing of clothes has undergone an interesting, boomerang-flight evolution, from drudge work done inside the house, to an efficient service made possible by the industrial revolution, to something that arrived back at home.
“The decline [of steam laundries] starts in the 1930s with the first viable electric washing machines,” said historian Arwen. “People’s reasoning is you get the labor for free, which you don’t really, but nobody thought women’s work was valuable.”
Advances in fabric made a difference, too. “No one in their right mind would iron a sheet now,” she said. “But that was sort of necessary in the age before things were permanent press. And a lot of the clothing we wear is knit, which doesn’t lend itself to commercial processes.”
[this post was last edited: 9/10/2017-19:02]
