Laundries, mangles and polishing the doorstep: not slumming it in Bermondsey

Right folks, I'm on my soapbox so stand by. I am Bermondsey born and bred and very proud of that fact. But I am sick to the teeth of 'newbies' saying that old Bermondsey was full of slums, writes local historian Debra Gosling...

Even a friend of mine, Bermondsey himself, declared that I used to live in a slum – he justified this comment by saying he'd always lived in a flat with an inside toilet!

My house was an eighteenth century cottage, and it might not have been to everyone's taste but it was home. We did have an outside toilet, but we had an inside one too, so stick that in your pipe, darling...

There were plenty of old houses in the area until the 1980s when things all changed and new flats built over the old buildings.

https://southwarknews.co.uk/history/history-plus/chickens-carbolic-soap-and-chimney-soot-life-in-the-back-yards-of-old/

I was the last of the generation that remembers tin baths, washboards and back yards. But far from being a bunch of unwashed, lousy ignoramuses, Bermondsey people were clean, decent and hard-working.

Women worked but they kept house too, and made sure everyone went out in clean clothes.

Whitewash the Copper; black-lead the stove; Dolly Blue for the whites (if you know, you know) and don't forget the starch for his collars. These are just a few examples of life for generations of Bermondsey ladies.

Besides caring for many children there was the preparation of all meals from scratch, shopping for food and part-time jobs. On top of it all there were rituals to attend to: Sunday; cook the roast; Monday; do the washing; Saturday, clean the house, top to bottom.

A really curious practice that only disappeared in the 1960s was the almost religious rite of doorstep polishing. You could either have a nice red doorstep or a white one, and there was a certain way of achieving this.

First off, you swept the pavement outside your house; then you washed the bit around the doorstep in a semi-circular sweeping motion. Then, for a nice shiny red doorstep you would buff it up with red cardinal polish until it gleamed.

Or for a nice white doorstep you'd get a hearthstone, or 'eart stone' as it was known, dip it in a bucket of water and cover your doorstep in its white chalk and let it dry.

Of course, once you had done your doorstep there was the washing to think about – no washing machines back then, it was all elbow grease and chapped fingers. Everyone had a scrubbing board and at least one tin bath in their back yard.

ard Graft in Old Kent Road. Copyright Debra Gosling 2020

On Monday that bath was taken down from its hook and in went bucket loads of water, along with a big red brick of Lifebuoy soap. The washboard, with its green glass ribbed panels, was lowered into the water and away you went, scrubbing off a week's worth of sweat and grime with your bare hands, in cold water, whatever the weather. Then you put your clean laundry through the mangle and wrung it out in the tin bath.

Before electricity was available the iron (damp rag around the handle) was heated on the fire. There was no ironing board, just a thick blanket over the table. As there were no temperature gauges, a quick dab with a damp, sizzling finger told you when it was hot.

Of course, the only problem with hanging your washing out in Bermondsey was the factories. All those chimneys left smudges on the sheets and infused them with a distinct odour. The aroma you got depended on the nearest factory: alright if it was Pink's strawberry jam but not so good if it was Young's glue. Another pungent smell was carbolic soap, strong enough to make your eyes smart, it was used for everything.

For the seriously big washing items such as sheets and blankets the old tin bath would not do, so it was away to the laundry. These forerunners of dry cleaners were dotted all over the place. Here your washing was put in a hopsack drawstring bag that had a laundry mark stamped in black on the bottom. Everything would go in together; sheets, towels, even underwear and socks. When it came back from the laundry it would be damp and fluffy – and stinking of bleach. As you emptied out your bagwash there would always be a rogue sock; unfamiliar and slightly alarming, a sock that belonged on some stranger's foot.

https://southwarknews.co.uk/history/history-plus/bermondsey-after-ve-day-the-treasured-pre-fab-houses-and-the-bomb-sites-that-kids-played-on-what-was-life-really-like-after-the-war/

If, however, you wanted to splash out, so to speak, there were better quality laundries where your clothes would come back with starched collars, all nicely ironed and ready to be hung up, all in a cellophane bag.

Window cleaning was another job that was ‘women's work’ – on certain days some houses would have their upper windows decorated by a woman's overall-clad derriere!

Ladies could be seen sitting on the outside window sill as they polished the soot smears from the glass panes. In the early days it was a bucket of water with a slosh of vinegar and a chamois leather (pronounced 'shammy') but as the chemical industry took hold it was Windolene all the way. This lilac coloured liquid made pretty patterns as it was polished off, amid much squeaking, but what lovely sparkling windows!

Besides all the sweeping and brushing there was also the brass to be done. Doorknobs, fenders and stair rods all had a bit of Brasso applied to them. In fact, polishing brass was quite a satisfying job, seeing the tarnish coming off and the gleam returning. With the promise of an extra penny in the pocket, the schoolboy of the house could usually be persuaded to take on this essential little chore. No doubt much sliding down the bannisters also occurred on the pretence of ‘polishing’.

And, just to clarify, the tin bath was also used to actually bathe in, yes, with soap. Then once you were all pink and shiny it had to be manually baled out and put back outside. But we were clean, thank you...

Today, with such advanced cleaning products the whole cleaning ritual is over and done in a couple of squirts and a twist of the washing machine button.