Origins; A Long Line of Laundresses

As I looked at the mountain of laundry I had to organise today I stopped for a moment to think about the women on my maternal grandmother's side of the family who made their living taking in laundry. Generation after generation of women in this branch of the family tree were listed as laundresses in census reports.

Lucy Woolven was born in 1780, in Eastbourne, Sussex; a lovely seaside town on the south coast of England. She is the first woman in the family that I have found recorded as a laundress. She married Andrew Munro and had a son (James) and a daughter, (Jane). In the 1841 census, by which time Lucy was a widow, and living with Jane and her family, she was 60 years old and a laundress. Ten years later Lucy was a 70 year old laundress, employing 7 women. This work was probably done in the home, and was heavy, hard work, involving boiling water, harsh chemicals, and mangles with no safety guards. Whilst it was horribly dangerous, and not well paid, it was work women could do in their home, where they could also watch their children (those  that were too young to help with the laundry, that is!) and run their own homes too. For many women this work was what would have kept them from the workhouse. The 7 women Lucy employed in 1851 would have been family members, and neighbours. In fact, we can see in the census return that her daughter, Jane Vinall, was also a laundress, as was their next door neighbour, Sarah Bartholemew.

Lucy died in 1855, and by the census of 1861 Jane had clearly taken on the laundry mantle. Still living in the same small house at #3 St Peter's St, in Brighton Jane was working as a laundress, as was her daughter Elizabeth (aged 22) and her neighbours Caroline Dowling (at #1), Mary Jackson (at #2 1/2), and Elizabeth, Emily and Fanny Cripps (at #6). There is no way of telling if they all worked together, at #3, or if they each worked out of their own homes.

The next in the line of laundresses was to be Jane's daughter Mary Jane. In the 1871 census we can see that at the age of 14 Mary was not a 'scholar' as so many children were recorded in census returns of the time. Instead, just below her mother, the laundress, is Mary Jane who 'helps mother'. 

When Mary Jane was 24, and married to Joseph Funnel, she was living with her husband, 6 month old daughter, her parents and two siblings at #4 St Peter's Street, Brighton. She was working as an 'ironer at laundress', which was also what her sister Louisa was doing for work. Mary Jane died in 1888. Her death certificate recorded her occupation as 'laundry porter'.

When Mary Jane died she left behind 3 daughters, Alice, Louisa, and Margaret. They were 7, 4, and 2 years of age at the time of her death. Joseph married quickly to another laundress, Sarah Jane Marshall. She died in 1899. Whilst Alice appears to have swerved the laundress role, her sisters Louisa and Margaret were both recorded, working together as laundry maids at St Clere, Ightham, Kent. St Clere was a big house owned by Sir Mark Edlmann Collet; the son of a previous Governor of the Bank of England.

Whilst Alice (my great grandmother) avoided the life of a laundress, her daughter was to go on and run laundrettes on the south coast of England. She opened the first coin operated laundry in Christchurch in about 1956; a Bendix laundrette! My granny took the family occupation and shoved it into the 20th century!

A vintage Bendix laundrette in Lincoln.

So, next time I look at the mountain of laundry I need to catch up on, I shall think myself lucky that I have a washing machine and a dryer in my own house, which I can just load up, switch on, and leave for my kids to unload!

(To find out more about laundressing in Victorian Brighton this website is great!)

#Edgill