In this edition of Remember This, the Timmins Museum: National Exhibition Centre looks back on the division of labour inside the home in the early years.
The lady of the house needed to be on call and ready 24 hours a day to meet the needs of her family. Her unpaid and often backbreaking labour literally kept communities going. Our grandmothers and great-grandmothers scarcely complained, but It’s safe to say the contemporary reader may not be as stoic when faced with the same task.
Where would we be today without our labour-saving devices? Imagine if you will, wash day at the turn of the century. It began with manually heating water in copper washtub and then gently “boiling” clothes and linens. Then with an agitator, Madame would manually churn the grimy laundry with a good dose of elbow grease. The recommended routine of the day suggested removing stains manually (with the help of a knuckle-busting washboard) these contraptions now highly decorative and collectable were essential to shift the grime and dirt. One would then rinse in another tub of cold water, followed by wringing out the wet clothes with a mangle (which looks like an actual torture device).
After starching, drying and often mending this onerous task which would sometimes take several days, washing was finally over. Washers with motorized agitators were eventually introduced in the 1930s but remained prohibitively expensive and a bit of a novelty until the advent of front-loading washers in the 1940s. These spanking new units combined the innovation of washing and spinning all in one — a real game changer considering the entire hand-operated tedium of the past.
The Timmins Museum: National Exhibition Centre regularly provides TimminsToday readers with a glimpse of the city’s past.
Find out more of what the Timmins museum has to offer here and read more Remember This columns here.
