Did Hotpoint (UK) ever make a wringer?

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vacbear58

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Lyle posed this question in the Hotpoint replicas thread, and rather than bury an answer in there I thought I would answer it here.

The answer is yes - in fact they made three (in order of size decreasing) The Empress, Countess & Princess. The Empress was by far the longest running from at least 1939 until the early 1970s - largely unchanged in external appearence although various changes were made including the addition of a heater (with thermostat - the only wringer washer I have ever seen with one) and for quite a long time it had an octagional drum. The others appeared towards the end of the 1950s the Countess smaller but with power wringer and Princess (physically smaller but I believe same wash capacity as Countess) with manual wringer. The Countess also continued until the early 1970s, the Princess had a shorter life having disappeared by 1965, if not earlier.

The picture is courtsey of Chestermike

vacbear58++4-18-2012-17-23-41.jpg
 
Empress in 1939

In styling terms very much at the leading edge with squared off cabinet and integrated wringer storage, all the other machines in the catalogue look more like the Apex-Vactric and in most cases not even as advanced as that.

By the way, I do not know if Vactric manufactured the washers under licence from Apex or imported them. The latter i suspect as they were primarily a vacumm cleaner manufacturer and relativly small scale too compared to Hoover or Electrolux. Vactric also marketed the Apex Airflow models as their TOL upright cleaners, so I suspect they imported them

vacbear58++4-18-2012-17-25-34.jpg
 
The Countess was always the magical wringer washer for me as a 5 year old child at my nanna's house. Even at that young age i can remember it & i so much wanted to see it in action but it never happened.
 
Hi Al,

Nice line up there of Mike's machines..it is fascinating how the Empress & Countess carried on right up to 1979 -ish.

Reference the Vactric machine, I thought they manufactured the only machine they had here in the UK, it was a lovely looking machine with the pale green fibre glass tub, which was very revolutionary at the time. I know they used a Acme folding power wringer on the machine.

Cheers
Keith
 
Wringer Washers

Keith

I am surprised that the Countess and Empress went on so long given how the market must have shrunk so much although I suppose the tooling and metal presses must have been long paid for so perhaps manufacturing costs were relitavly low

The Vactric machine you refer to is some 20 years after the one shown above and I have often been curious about where it come from as it was certainly advanced in terms of its tub etc. I did wonder if it was imported from Europe as they would hardly have had the design and manufacturing capability to build them themselves - their cleaners hardly changed at all throughout their lives.

Getting back to Hotpoint, here is a Persil ad which features the Empress. One thing that surprises me about this is how old "Mum" looks, you would think early 30s with children of that age - looks like early 40s to me.

Another interesting thing about this ad (and indeed most Persil ads of this time) is how they "spoke to their market" - no glamour here, just an ordinary mum in an ordinary kitchen, doing her best for her family.

Al

 
Hi Al,

I guess they just thought they would let production run to a point where it was non-profitable, plus I thought I read somewhere once that new safety laws were passed in the late 70's and that may have also caused them to cease production.

Arhh just saw the Apex-vactric machine you were referring to, I thought Apex were an American brand..I guess Vactric could have teamed up with Apex and imported them from the US to the UK, I know I once got hold of an Apex machine, single tub washer with wringer. It had the famous Spiral dasher agitator which I still have. Many US brands did make their way onto the UK market like Universal, Thor..etc

Just had a look at the Persil clip, I thought that when I originally saw it..due you think some women back then looked older than what they actually were, because of the fashions of the time ? Persil always use to adopt the traditional approach, no frills !! If you took Fairy Snow's advert with the slogan "white to the heart of the wash" it was very catchy for the time (can't remember the man in the ad) & Sunshine Rinso advert :)

I think it would be very rare for a Fiber-Glass Vactric to turn up, from what I can gather the machine was only on sale for about 2years max, it had great features thou..built in empty hose, fold-in-tub wringer, 8 vane agi etc..we can live in hope !!

Cheers
Keith
 
1970s & more

Of course Keith, I was forgetting about the new safety feature requirement, was Hoover the only company to adopt this?

The Fairy Snow ad you refer to is some 10 or so years later than the Persil ad and is much more a reflection of the up to date, not to say, swinging 1960s and in fact some of the Persil ads of that time reflect this too.

From around 1961 to 1966 Fairy Snow (by the way Fairy Snow is a P&G brand - I read that the powder was indentical to a US brand which I cannot remember, it was trading on P&G's established Fairy Soap brand ID) were promoted in a series of humorous ads by real life husband & wife team Leslie & Joan Randall.

Here is one:

 
Hi Al,

Some of those Persil are later than you think, I know when I had a video tape made by J Walter-Thompson in the early 90's of persil ads, some of the black & white ads for persil dated from the early to mid 60's.

Was Fab the US version of Fairy Snow ?

The washer was always a mistry to me, a re-badged Tallent machine as Goblin, I would have thought it would have been the other way round, and the machine looks like it originally started out as a Rolls.

That vactric booklet is great, I have an A3 advert for the machine in my bathroom, just luv it. Could i be cheeky and ask if it would be possible to get a complete scan ? if there is anything you want me to scan please let me know :)

I have the same info on the Goblin wringer washer, it's a nice neat machine.

Cheers
Keith
 
Tallent

Keith

You are bang on with the comment "the machine looks like it originally started out as a Rolls" - it did!

My understanding is that the Rolls manufacturing was carried out by a separate company which continued trading after the "fall" of Rolls, this company was Tallent who made a number of machines for other companies - I believe at least one of the EE twinnies (Twinstar?) was also made by them - cosmetic differences, particularly in controls but the fundimental machines were the same. As I am sure you know these machines ended up as Colston and there may have been some tie up there as the original Colston dishwasher was also badged as Rolls. There was also a Bylock twinnie which would have been similar - Bylock were taken over by Rolls in around 1963 (Bylock were better known for vacuum cleaners) but they did not survive the failure in 1964.

I have quite a few Persil ads which go from 1955 right through to the 1970s, if I have time I will post some later ones this evening along with the Fairy Snow you mentioned earlier in the thread - I find it very interesting how the ads change through the years in both content and approach.

It would be a pleasure to give you a full scan of the Vactric washer instructions, I also have instructions for the Parnall Spinwasher (I <span style="text-decoration: underline;">SO</span> liked your example when I saw it a few years ago) if you would like a copy as well.

Al
 
Afternoon Al,

I didn't know that a seperate company produced the twinnies for Rolls, I thought they set up production themselves. Another make was PYE I have one of these machines, virtually the same as the Rolls apart from the controls etc.

The ads of the time were great, most of them show a real life set up, nothing fancy..I remember I approached P & G once about getting some Daz adverts and they were very guarded, and wouldn't release the authority to gain duplicates from master copies.

Thank you regarding the Vactric instruction booklet, that is great !! I still have the Parnall Spinwasher Mk1 & Mk2 instruction booklets & accompaning literature, but thank you away.

How's your washer collection coming along..? Lovely to have, nightmare to store..LOL

Cheers
Keith
 
Twin Elements

That Vactric Washer has a strange heater set up with the twin 1500W Elements, with one being switched off in the Washing mode. I have never come across this, but what a good idea for such an early Machine. Love the powerful looking Agitator.
 

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