Antique household equipment, furnishings, utensils - housekeeping as part of social history. Domestic life, household management - how people organised their homes and did the daily chores. Yesterday's everyday objects are today's antiques or museum pieces, and we may view them with nostalgia or curiosity about past ways of life. Old & Interesting takes a look at how these everyday things were actually used, how people managed their home life - and more. Alongside articles illustrated by excerpts from advice manuals, period novels and other literature, this page is updated every couple of weeks.  RSS feed or email will let you know about new articles.

Lime power for cooking - medieval pots to 21st century cans

Quicklime fireless cooking, slaking lime with water for heat without fire

I was intrigued to discover a medieval version of today's self-heating cans of soup, beans, and coffee. In a Welsh museum is an Anglo-Norman double pot, a smaller cooking pot inside a bigger one, designed for cooking without any need for lighting a fire. In the space between the two pots you could set off a chemical reaction by mixing chunks of quicklime (photo right) with water. It created heat to cook the food inside the sealed inner pot.

Quicklime, also called lime or unslaked lime, is what's inside many of today's self-heating cans too. (More explanation at bottom of page.)

A recipe from 13th century England explains how to cook with a pair of pots and no fire. It really was cooking, not just heating up pre-cooked food and drink:

To cook meat without fire....
Take a small earthenware pot with earthenware lid of the right size. Then take another pot, also earthenware, also with a suitable lid that fits well. This should be five fingers deeper than the first, and three fingers bigger round. Then take pork and chicken, cut them into nice pieces, get good spices and put them in, and some salt. Take the little pot with the meat in and put it inside the big pot. Set it upright, cover it with the lid and seal with damp, sticky soil, so nothing can come out. Then take lime that has not been slaked [quicklime], put it in the big pot full of water, but take care that no water gets into the small pot. Leave it alone for as long as it takes to go five to seven leagues. Then open your pots, and you will find your meat well and truly cooked.
The original late 13th century recipe in French (A quire char saunz fu/A cuire chair sans feu) is in Hieatt and Jones' Two Anglo-Norman Culinary Collections

So who cooked this way? Was lime cooking for medieval outdoorsmen like the modern explorers, soldiers, and campers who carry survival rations in self-heating food packs? Is the "five to seven leagues" a clue that the recipe was for people who would walk fifteen to twenty miles while their dinner was cooking and had no time to sit tending a fire? How did the meat go on cooking once the lime and water reaction died down? Was the pot insulated with grass or earth?

Cooking an egg in lime and water doesn't need a fancy double pot, since the shell keeps the food and chemicals separate. One method is described in a popular French cookery book from the 1650s (see left-hand column), but the idea is much older. An early description of an egg cooked in a potful of water and lime seems to have come from the 10th century Persian scholar al-Razi, once known in Europe as Rasis. He treated it more like a magic trick than kitchen cookery.

Quicklime cooking took on a scientific tone in an early Victorian demo at the London Gallery of Practical Science. Here the "chemical lecturer" had apparatus for cooking a steak. The meat, which was cut up for the audience to taste, looked like boiled beef but had the "richness of a broiled rump steak" according to the Oxford Herald in 1836.

The most novel matter was a lecture by Mr. [William] Maugham, on an apparatus for cooking without fire. The experiment was shewn with a tin box, in the centre of which was a drawer, where beefsteaks and eggs were deposited. In the compartments, above and below, lime was placed, and slaked with water. The usual process took place, heat was disengaged, and the victuals were perfectly dressed, without receiving any peculiar flavour or taste from the means employed. ... The operation took about half an hour.
Literary Gazette, January 1835

Twenty years later in the USA, a "vapor stove" for cooking a full meal plus coffee (see the handy faucet!) with lime heat only was patented by W.W. Albro of Binghamton, Broome County, NY.

Coffee or tea is made in the space between the two vessels A C. Meat and vegetables are placed within the dish or vessel D, which may be provided with partitions to separate the different articles. A requisite quantity of quicklime is placed within the vessel C and the cover H is placed over the dish or vessel D. A requisite quantity of water is then poured [in and] falls through the perforated tube G in a shower upon the quicklime....

From then on there were plenty more attempts to harness the power of slaking lime with water to cook food away from home and hearth. This generally seems to have been an experiment, not part of ordinary life, despite optimistic remarks in patents about the convenience of being able to cook away from a kitchen or campfire. Self-heating cans for ready-made soup etc., which came on the scene around 1900, were useful for special situations like war and travel by air balloon. The most recent cans have a simple push-button to trigger the heat-creating reaction. Other chemicals as well as lime have been tried for self-heating food and drink.

With all the disposable packaging as well as the energy used to make quicklime, the cans are nothing like a green new way of cooking, even though they use no firewood and no electricity. But if you could make a safe low-tech lime stove, and use solar energy to "recharge" the slaked lime, turning it back into quicklime.... Yes, some people are working on a "rechargeable solar stove". A long way from a medieval earthenware double-wall cooking pot found on the English-Welsh border?

Quicklime has been known for thousands of years. It is made by heating limestone to high temperatures in a lime kiln. Slaking it, or mixing it with water, produces heat. The slaked lime is a traditional ingredient in mortar, plaster, and whitewash, and has many other uses.

Don't try heating food with lime if you're not sure how to do it safely. Handling lime is dangerous unless you are experienced with such chemicals. Skin contact or inhalation can cause severe reactions.

• Some other pages about cooking and food:
• Baking over an open fire: bannocks and flat breads
• Baking peels and paddles
• Hasteners and meat screens
• Pressure cookers
• Sugar nips or nippers

10 Aug 2010

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History of starching fabric

Laundry starch: from medieval luxury to Victorian mass market

Starch has come a long way: from a sour brew boiling for days to a press-button spray. Manufactured starch that could be conveniently mixed at home as "cold starch" without boiling was available by the 19th century, suitable for clothes that didn't need a perfectly clear starch mixture. Victorian science and new styles of commerce made starch into a branded product. Buying it neatly packaged instead of in lumps was not just convenient; it suggested a "modern", well-prepared formula. No wonder one company made its selling point, from about 1881, the cardboard box its starch was sold in. (See advertising photo right)

It's often said that starching was "introduced" in the 16th century when it was essential for fine ruffs and fluted collars, but that's not accurate. Starch was already in use for fine linens and laces, but in the 1500s starchmaking became more organised and commercial in Northern Europe. Flanders, home of the famous Flemish lace, was one of the earliest centres of starch manufacturing and skilful use. A Dutchwoman brought some of that knowledge to Elizabethan London, and set herself up as an expert at a time when there was high demand for well laundered and elaborate collars and cuffs. And that's why some websites tell us that starch "arrived" in 1564.

Early use of starch

Laundry was not a hot topic for medieval writers and there's not a lot known about it before the age of ruffs. The first clues in English are from the 14th century.* Then 'starch for kerchiefs' appeared in a 1440 dictionary.* Also around 1440, we know the nuns of Syon Abbey were starching altar cloths and other church linens. Only starch "made of herbes" could be used for communion linen.* This was probably prepared from the roots of the cuckoo-pint flower (arum maculatum or starchwort):

The most pure and white starch is made of the rootes of the Cuckoo-pint, but most hurtful for the hands of the laundresse that have the handling of it, for it chappeth, blistereth, and maketh the hands rough and rugged and withall smarting.
Gerard's Herbal, 1633

Ordinary starch was made by boiling bran in water for three days, according to a 15th century recipe.* Once the bran had been strained out, cloth was dipped in the sour, starchy water, dried, then smoothed and polished with a slickstone. For obvious reasons starch was a bit of a luxury. Who had time for all that? Although professional 'starchers' existed before elaborate ruffs came into fashion*, from that time on there were more starchmakers, and more laundresses who could handle fine lawn and cambric trimmings.

Coloured starch

The 17th century saw a controversial fashion for ruffs laundered with "yellow starch", and then red or green starch. In London this provoked disapproval, mockery, and was linked with scandal. (See Renaissance Clothing.) The best-known colour was also the earliest: blue starch. Used in moderation, this made whites seem whiter, and not blue at all.

Tinted starch came back in Victorian times. Packeted écru and buff sold well for use on blonde lace and beige/cream colours, while blue starch continued popular for brightening whites. More unusual colours were marketed but didn't sell as well.

JUST LANDED: Reckitt's COLOURED STARCH, Pink, Ecru, Heliotrope, in boxes 6d. each, far superior to any other brands.
The Mercury, Hobart, Tasmania, 1896

Gloss, glaze, and gleam

Recipes and household tips from the past remind us that most fabrics looked limp and crumpled after laundering. There were special instructions for starching delicate, droopy muslins. Starch helped make clothes and table linen firmer and glossier, and you could add extra ingredients for an even better finish. A little candle grease or cooking fat went into starch mixtures for more gloss. Salt was the most common ingredient recommended for helping the ironing to go smoothly.

There are various things which diferent people mix with their starch, such as alum, gum arabic, and tallow, but if you do put anything in, let it be a little isinglass, for that is by far the best. About an ounce to a quarter of a pound of starch will be sufficient.
The complete servant maid: or young woman's best companion. Containing full, plain, and easy directions... , Anne Barker, c1770

All the well-known recipes were imitated by 19th and 20th century manufacturers who emphasised gloss in their advertising and chose brand names like Fairy Glaze. Borax was often added to increase gloss. Not sticking to the iron and ease of mixing were other key qualities. Added bluing was a desirable extra for use on white laundry. However much soaking, boiling, scrubbing and bleaching you did, blue would make whites gleam more brightly.

Starchmaking could take up to a month, with long boiling, soaking, draining, rinsing, drying and so on. In the 17th century the use of wheat was criticised as wasting food on fashion. The 18th century saw experimentation with different sources of starch, including horse chestnuts and potatoes. In the 19th century new ingredients and manufacturing methods were developed in the quest for pure white, refined starch. Rice starch was considered to give a good glazed finish. Corn starch made a more opaque mixture but could be made at home. There were recipes for this and other starches in US domestic advice manuals. It was also used in North American branded laundry starch products: often called "gloss starch" to distinguish it from cooking starch.

Even when some starch could be used "cold", home boiling with water and other additives continued. It depended not only on the type of starch but on the kind of fabric, the judgment of the launderer etc. etc. Some starch mixes were milky and more suitable for thicker fabrics. Good laundresses were expected to "clear-starch": preparing transparent starch mixtures and knowing how to use them. Clear-starching meant keeping delicate muslin and similar fabrics from being clogged with starch granules in the loose weave, and avoiding thickening caused by visible traces of starch clinging to the threads.

Historical references:
* Earliest in English c1390, church records from Norwich list eightpence for "vestiarium: pro coole, pro starchyng"
* Starch for kerchiefs "starche, for kyrcheys" in Promptorium parvulorum sive clericorum: dictionarius anglo-latinus princeps, by Galfridus Anglicus (dominican friar), c1440 - also
* Instructions for nuns laundering from c1440 in George Aungier's The History and Antiquities of Syon Monastery, 1840
* Recipe is in Sloane MS 3548
* Professional starchers: "Butlers, sterchers, and musterde makers;
Harde ware men, mole sekers, and ratte takers;"
from Cock Lorelle's Bote - ballad c1515
Harold Auden, Starch and Starch Products, London, 1922

See also:
History of Laundry: washing and drying
How muslin clothes were starched
History of Ironing
Site map with full list of laundry articles

21 July 2010

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History of Laundry

Washing clothes and household linen: early laundry methods and tools

Once upon a time a metal washboard and bar of hard soap with a tub of hot water was a new-fangled way of tackling laundry, though today it's a common picture of "old-fashioned" laundering. What went before? How did people wash clothes without the factory-made equipment and cleansing products of the 19th century?

This is an introduction to the history of washing and drying household linen and clothing over several centuries: from medieval times up until the 1800s. It concerns Europe, North America, and the English-speaking world more than anywhere else. (Look out for part 2, about laundry methods in the more recent past, coming later this summer.) It's not only an overview; it's also a guide to the other laundry history pages on this website. The links take you to more detailed information and more pictures.

Rivers, rocks, washing bats, boards

Washing clothes in the river is still the normal way of doing laundry in many less-developed parts of the world. Even in prosperous parts of the world riverside washing went on well into the 19th century, or longer in rural areas - even when the river was frozen. Stains might be treated at home before being taken to the river. You could take special tools with you to the river to help the work: like a washing bat or a board to scrub on. Washing bats and beetles were also useful for laundering elsewhere, and have been used for centuries, sometimes for smoothing dry cloth too. (See 14th century picture left and 16th century painting above.)

Long thin washing bats are not very different from sticks. Both can be used for moving cloth around as well as for beating the dirt out of it. Doing this with a piece of wood was called possing, and various styles of possers, washing dollies etc. developed as an improvement on plain tree branches. Squarish washing bats could double up as a scrub board. Simple wooden boards can be taken to the riverside, or rocks at the edge of the water may be used as scrubbing surfaces. (The more sophisticated kind of wash board with ridged metal in a wooden frame came later.) Two other techniques for shifting dirt are slapping clothes or trampling with bare feet.

Domestic laundry was often treated like newly woven textiles being "finished". Today we have only vague ideas about how the fabrics in our shop-bought clothes are manufactured, but traditional laundry methods often followed techniques used by weavers, including home weavers.

Lye, bucking, soaking

Soaking laundry in lye, cold or hot, was an important way of tackling white and off-white cloth. It was called bucking, and aimed to whiten as well as cleanse. Coloured fabrics were less usual than today, especially for basic items like sheets and shirts. Ashes and urine were the most important substances for mixing a good "lye". As well as helping to remove stains and encourage a white colour, these act as good de-greasing agents.

Bucking involved lengthy soaking and was not a weekly wash. Until the idea of a once-a-week wash developed, people tended to have a big laundry session at intervals of several weeks or even months. Many women had agricultural and food preparation duties that would make it impossible for them to "waste" time on hours of laundry work every week. If you were rich you had lots of household linen, shirts, underclothing etc. and stored up the dirty stuff for future washing. If you were poor your things just didn't get washed very often. Fine clothing, lace collars and so on were laundered separately.

Soap, mainly soft soap made from ash lye and animal fat, was used by washerwomen whose employers paid for it. Soap was rarely used by the poorest people in medieval times but by the 18th century soap was fairly widespread: sometimes just for tackling stains, not the whole wash. Starch and bluing were available for better quality linen and clothing.

Drying, bleaching

The Grand Wash or the Great Wash were names for the irregular "spring cleaning" of laundry. Soaking in lye and bucking in large wooden bucking tubs were similar to processes used in textile manufacturing. So was the next stage - drying and bleaching clothes and fabrics out of doors. Sunshine helped bleach off-white cloth while drying it. Sometimes cloth was sprinkled at intervals with water and/or a dash of lye to lengthen the process and enhance bleaching.

Towns, mansions, and textile weavers had an area of mown grass set aside as a bleaching ground, or drying green, where household linens and clothing could be spread on grass in the daylight. Early settlers in America established communal bleaching areas like those in European towns and villages. Both washing and drying were often public and/or group activities. In warmer parts of Europe some cities provided communal laundry spaces with a water supply.

People also dried clothes by spreading them on bushes. Large houses sometimes had wooden frames or ropes for drying indoors in poor weather. Outdoor drying frames and clotheslines are seen in paintings from the 16th century, but most people would have been used to seeing laundry spread to dry on grass, hedgerows etc. Clothes pegs/pins seem to have been rare before the 18th century.

Richmond, Virginia in the 1770s:
Customers took their laundry to washerwomen's homes and returned there to collect clean clothes.... ...Much washing took place in public. ... washerwomen "boyle[d]...the cloaths with soap" ... Laundresses then gathered near the market house where Shockoe Creek approached the James River. They "washed in the stream" and then allowed clothes to dry on a nearby pasture...
James Sidbury, Ploughshares into Swords: Race, Rebellion, and Identity in Gabriel's Virginia, 1730-1810
Quotes and info from Journal of John Harrower: An Indentured Servant in the Colony of Virginia 1773 1776

If you want to know about one particular time and place, you may need to do more detailed research, but there should be lots of information on this site to get you started!

See also:
History of Ironing
Site map with full list of laundry articles

13 June 2010

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Linen presses and napkin presses

The screw press as furniture for smoothing and displaying household linen

A linen press often means a big old-fashioned cupboard where you keep household textiles, but it can also mean a screw press for keeping linen smooth and neatly folded. This kind of press was used by the Romans for giving a good finish to new and laundered cloth. Over the centuries presses of this type have been used for smoothing both freshly-washed and recently-used linen, especially table linen, which led to the name 'napkin press'. Tightening the vertical screw puts pressure on a board sitting on top of a pile of folded cloth.

Ornate carved presses were more than functional. They were a good way of displaying your best white cloths and napkins in a fine piece of furniture, and this was particularly true in 17th and 18th century Europe and North America. Often called napkin presses, they were kept near the dining table - for show and for convenience. Plainer presses might be in a pantry or laundry room. See one press with very elaborate carving from Wawel Castle in Poland, or this drawing of a plain press.

The pressure on the cloth does more than flatten it. It may give linen a slight sheen, and it emphasises the folds. So folding linen neatly in a regular pattern was important and could even be decorative, as in the medieval tablecloth shown at the bottom of this page. Folding along the old creases when putting a tablecloth back in the press after a meal was important - as Victorian servants' advice manuals insist.

Having shaken the breakfast cloth, folded it in exactly the same folds as it had at first, and put it into the napkin press, she will next proceed to have her own breakfast...
Common Sense for Housemaids, 'By a Lady', 1853

Inventories and wills on both sides of the Atlantic often mention napkin presses during the 17th and 18th centuries. This was the period that produced the two presses in the photographs here - a German linen press from Goethe's late 18th century house (above), a c1675 press from Brooklyn, NY (left) - and this press from the early 1600s. They were still being made in the 19th century.

Inventories from 1707 and 1712

The halle: a dozen chairs £4 16s, a paire of tables 8s, a napkin press £1 10s, 2 glass sconces 9s
In the stair case: One table 1s 6d, Ten chares 3s 6d, One napkin press 1s 6d
Hylton Castle, Durham, England, 1707

In the Haull: a "napkin press of wallnut" valued at 3 pounds and an "oke table ovoll" valued at 2 pounds
Boston merchant who died in Rhode Island in 1712

We can see how similar the presses used by textile workers in ancient Rome were. A mural from Pompeii (see right) shows a press with two screws set in a frame. The remains of a single-screw (cochlea) press from Herculaneum are preserved in a plexiglass case. These presses were part of the fulling process for newly-woven cloth, and were also used to give a good finish to togas that were sent to "the cleaners" (fullonica) for laundering. They are sometimes called clothes presses, but are more suitable for clothing based on straight lengths of cloth, like a Roman toga, than for delicate or fitted garments.

Pressing then gave the cloth a smooth, lustrous surface. For this purpose the Romans used the screw-press invented in the days of Pliny. The cloth was carefully folded backwards and forwards and placed between the plates. The left- and right-hand threads of the upright screws facilitated equal tightening. Before pressing the cloth was usually sprinkled with water held in the mouth of the bleacher.
Robert James Forbes, Studies in Ancient Technology: The Fibres and Fabrics of Antiquity, Volume 1

Detail from painting of a medieval banquet where the top table has a cloth with clear fold lines of the kind made by a screw press.

24 May 2010

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For sources please refer to the books page, and/or the excerpts quoted on the pages of this website, and note that many links lead to museum sites. Feel free to ask if you're looking for a specific reference - feedback is always welcome anyway. Unfortunately, it's not possible to help you with queries about prices or valuation.