April 26, 1987
By Jan Buffington
Vigo County Historical Society
Washboards eased laundry day blues
New laundry methods were slow to be developed. Even in the early part of the 19th century, methods used by the Greeks 30 centuries earlier were still in use.
Soap was just becoming available to the general public as its cost became more reasonable. A formula for soap also had been developed so that a homemaker could make it easily by using grease from her cooking and ashes from her fires.
Down through the ages laundry was done primarily by women. When Florence Nightingale went to the Crimea to nurse the wounded, she made laundry her first task. She found that only six shirts had been washed in a month.
When few women were around, laundry either was not done or was sent to another settlement. During California’s Gold Rush, when the prospectors outnumbered women 12 to one, some men sent their shirts all the way to China to be done.
During the Victorian Age, women sent out their washing or consigned it to domestic help whenever possible. Washing was one of the few avenue in which a respectable woman could contribute to her family’s income. Washing chores, which were very taxing, would bring in around $2 to $2.50 a week.
Nowhere was laundry work more a part of a woman’s life than on the American frontier. Women worked with wooden washtubs and scrub boards and followed a custom established by the Pilgrims at Plymouth Rock which made the Monday wash day an institution in the American way of life.
In an attempt to ease wash day drudgery, several devices were invented to help remove dirt and stains in clothing. One of the first was a form of the washboard. It was a hand carved piece of wood that was connected to the middle of a wooden bucket. Subsequent models did away with the attached bucket and were rectangular wood frames surrounding a corrugated surface made of glass, tin, zinc, glazed pottery or wood. The wood ones also had models made with movable or stationary spools.
The deluxe models had a “soap saver,” a recessed area at the top to hold a cake of soap.
In the 1940s, all washboards were made of wood “for the war effort.”
There are several washboards in the museum, including a child’s toy washboard. The one chosen for this week’s historical treasure was donated by Bob Hoff of Forsyth, Mo. It is made of wood and has movable, grooved wood spools. An inscription on one side says “Hubbard’s Roller Bearing Wash Board by Abingdon Manufacturing Company, September 5, 1905.” Part of the readable advertisement tells us that the “cylinders will not corrode or wear out,” and that it “can be used with less labor than other wash boards.”
The Historical Museum of the Wabash Valley 1411 S. Sixth St., is open from 1 to 4 p.m. Tuesday through Sunday.