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These batlers or battledores, as they are now generally called, are still in use in Yorkshire. They are the prototype of the "patent mangle", and consist merely of a flat rectangular piece of wood, some two feet long, and six inches broad, with a thin short handle. The linen to be mangled is coiled round a roller, which is placed on a table, and then the batler is placed on the top, and pushed forwards and backwards on the roll under pressure of the hands. They were not used in Yorkshire only. I procured a very handsome specimen in Suffolk some years ago, the upper surface of which is rather elaborately carved with a Gothic design. The initials of the owner are burnt in in Gothic letters-, and the article cannot have been made more lately than the beginning of the sixteenth century.
Notes and Queries, 1865
Ironing is generally dispensed with, in the case of all but the garments which require to be starched, and its place will be supplied by a process of stamping, which is also accomplished by the native servants. The result is more satisfactory than might be expected; still an English housewife will be very glad to have her preferences for perfectly smooth linen indulged, as it can be, when she possesses a patent mangle.
Hints for Emigrants' Wives [in South Africa], 1859
Patent mangles
Box mangles, Baker's mangle
Simple box mangles were in use in
the 18th century, but they needed two people to push and pull the
heavy box back and forth with leather straps or wooden handles. The weight of a
box filled with stones, or sand, was used to press household linens and clothes
wound
on rollers below, or sometimes the linen was spread flat under the rollers.
A specially-woven mangle cloth matching the width of the box might be used
to cover the freshly-laundered things and keep them clean.
The early 19th century saw a variety of "patent mangles", all invented to lighten the work to some extent. Systems of gears, wheels, and handles were intended to make it a less tedious and tiring job.
The box mangle was itself a development from the much older custom of pressing with hand-held mangle boards: boards with a variety of names in English: bittle, batler, beetle and battledore among them. (Some of these names were also used for the washing bats used to pound dirty laundry.)
In the following description from 1838, it was clearly for smoothing (or "ironing") cloth, even though in the UK mangle later came to mean a wringer for squeezing out water.
MANGLE. A domestic machine of great utility, employed in smoothening linen, as a substitute for the heated irons extensively used for the same purpose. In the common mangle, as most of our readers well know, the linen or other articles to be mangled, are wrapped round wooden rollers, which are upon a solid level bed or floor, and upon the rollers is placed a large oblong box which is filled with stones, or other heavy substances, in order that they may press with great force upon the rollers, while the box is moved backwards and forwards upon them, by means of a handle attached to an upper roller or windlass, to which straps from each end of the moving box are attached. By this machine, the operation of mangling is very well done, but the labour is excessive on account of the necessity of frequently arresting and changing the motion of the heavy box.
The Engineer's and Mechanic's Encyclopaedia, London 1838
Baker's patent mangle (above right) was one of the earliest and best-known machines invented to
make mangling less laborious. The writer of the Encylopaedia quoted above said "An important
improvement in the construction of the common mangle ... was effected
about thirty years ago by Mr. Baker, of Fore Street, London, by which the otherwise
unwieldy heavy box was moved with great facility backwards and forwards, by a continuous
motion of the handle in one direction; and by the addition of a fly wheel to equalize
the motion, a great amount muscular exertion is saved to the individual working
the machine."
By 1823 someone in England had patented a design for a upright mangle to meet the obvious objection to the "common horizontal mangle": "namely, the great space they occupy". Soon the distinction between mangling as smoothing, and mangling as wringing, became blurred, since very similar machines were suitable for both purposes. Barnard and Joy's "patent self-rolling mangle" from the 1830s was still intended for "ironing"; the bottom roller has an attached mangle cloth which would help keep the newly-pressed fabric clean and smooth. The Mechanics' Magazine of 1838 explained that the "weighted rollers" replaced the "cumbrous travelling bed" of the familiar box mangles. Patent mangle became the British name for all sorts of Victorian mechanical mangles.
US patents from the 1870s show some later innovations in mangles. On the right is
Stephen Williams' "top view of my improved machine ... which shall be simple in construction
and effective in operation, applying the same pressure steadily to clothes whatever
may be their thickness".
On the left is William and James Coutie's drawing of an "Improvement in ironing-machines" with a gas-heated central roller.
More on mangling history, including illustrations of an old wooden mangle-board and Mrs. Beeton's "mangling machine" on the history of ironing page.
8 August 2007
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.