Philips TopTwin De Luxe Boiling - Lessiveuse Style

[launderess]

Self-heating laundromat washers one used in France and perhaps elsewhere on the Continent were steam fed. This makes sense as steam is one of the more efficient ways of providing heat. Hence the reason commercial laundries going back through the years to the first "steam laundries" used vapor not only for heating but perhaps to provide motive or generate electrical power.

That being said these days regulation as least in much of the United States limits who can operate boilers. Know in NYS boilers above a certain PSI require certification and or a license. To become a superintendent of a NYC building with steam heat for instance requires such certification. Ditto for running a steam locomotive (well if you could find one, *LOL*) and so forth.

Of course here in NYC buildings/businesses can purchase steam from Con Edison directly as well.

 

[launderess]

@lej

If your gran had access to a semi or even fully automatic washer, then no her laundry day wouldn't have been *that* much different from our own modern times.

Am willing to bet your great-grandmother or her mother however would have a different story.

Again when automatic or even semi-auto washers came in, boiling as a routine part of washday went out. Unless you were washing really gross things, someone had been sick, perhaps nappies the mechanical action of washer along with a good dose of soap/detergent and hot water did just fine.

Some women liked busy-work so they boiled anyway because that is how they felt things should have be done. District nurse would come around and tell mothers if they had washer boiling nappies wasn't needed. Some mothers or more likely their mothers felt differently so boiling continued.

 

[iej]

@Laundress: Yeah, quite likely although, I still get the impression they didn't really wash all that harshly from what I've heard from my great aunt, it was a dolly and tub and a mangle (wringer).

P&G didn't seem to feature much until Ariel launched. Although, I know Tide was around.

Although, apparently even my great grandmother had some kind of non-automatic top loader, so maybe you'd have to have gone back a generation before that again to get a really manual world.

It's a pity Unilever dropped Omo in the UK and Irish markets in favour of Persil. It's actually an extremely old brand, dating back to 1908. O.M.O. = Old Mother Owl and the original packaging would have featured an owl. It seems to have finally disappeared in this market in the 1980s.

I know it's still used in other markets, but it's just a shame it vanished in the market that launched it and I've always thought it was quite nice brand.

Rinso, another extremely old brand dating back to the same era was also dropped entirely in almost all markets except Indonesia. Again, just quietly dropped in the 1970s sometime.

 

[launderess]

OMO

From what one was given during the war could mean "Old Man Out" by certain housewives.

*LOL*