Tag Archives: barracks

Mopping Up Action

05 Tuesday Apr 2016

Posted by in Events, History, Living History, Museums, Reenacting

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Photo by Asher Lurie

Photo by Asher Lurie

This past weekend, I took my show on the road down 95 to Trenton’s Old Barracks Museum, where once again, soldiers’ rooms needed cleaning. Hannah Glasse exhorts servants (housemaids and housekeepers) to clean household rooms daily, and I can tell you this: if you’re cleaning 18th century spaces using period techniques, daily is the way to go.

Unpaved streets and sidewalks meant people tracked significantly more mud and grit indoors, and soldiers would have brought the parade ground indoors every time they crossed a threshold. Not a pretty thing– and then there’s the straw mattresses (to be changed monthly at a minimum), wool uniforms, skin, hair, and vermin that could accumulate as well. Filth: a major contribution to ill health if not managed properly.

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Brandy-new broom sweeps clean. Photo by Drunk Tailor

Being possessed of a particularly detail-oriented mind, I went in search of a more 18th-century correct broom at an affordable price and found a broom enthusiast on Etsy who agreed to make and priority mail custom brooms just in time for the trip to New Jersey. On the whole, I’m very pleased with these. They make a satisfying sound as they move across the floor, and draw a fair quantity of dirt. Turns out that strewing wet sand on the floor before you sweep is remarkably effective and absolutely the way to go. The damp sand keeps the dust down and is swept out the door with the filth without harming the floor.

Mop making: surprisingly contemplative.

Mop making: surprisingly contemplative. Photo by Drunk Tailor

After sweeping, mopping. Once again, I used the lavender-infused vinegar in the mop water (though I forgot to strain the solution this time). The mixture has a unique but not unpleasant smell, and as the floors dry, the room retains the odor, a sure indication of cleanliness.

This weekend was also the first run for a new wool scrap mop, which was proven the best mop yet. Many thanks to my secret source for the contribution to the effort. It’s clear that mops could easily have been made by binding rag strips to pole handles, and whether made by poor house inmates or soldiers, mop making is cheap, low-tech busy work.

Women’s Work

04 Monday Apr 2016

Posted by in History, Living History

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Paul Sandby (1731-1809) A kitchen scene circa 1754 Pen and ink and watercolour | RCIN 914332

Paul Sandby. A kitchen scene circa 1754. pen and ink and watercolour | RCIN 914332

The irony is not lost on me: I do stereotypical women’s work as I struggle to bring a feminist interpretation to a traditionally male hobby: 18th century living history or reenacting.* Even as it irks me, I enjoy being busy and believe in the importance of the everyday, the mundane, the lulls. Life moves pretty fast, as the saying goes, and the moments when you think nothing’s happening are often the most important.

Everyday work is what most of us do, and most of us will be remembered not at large, like Abigail Adams, but writ small, like Bridget Connor. But we matter, and the roles we play and the work we do matters, too, to the people close to us, and the details of our lives– not just the mugs, chairs, and shoes, but the vacuum cleaners and the way we live our lives– would matter to us in two hundred years if we were recreating 2016. So why do we skip over the domestic details?

EnglishBarracks_Malton

English barracks/ drawn & etch’d by T. Rowlandson ; aquatinta by T. Malton. [London] : Pub. Aug. 12, 1791, by S.W. Fores, N. 3 Piccadilly. Lewis Walpole Collection

Look: if  mopping barracks is good enough for Kubrick, it’s good enough for me, especially when you consider that the military understood the importance of hygiene in the 18th century, and that there are multiple treatises to be found on the subject, freely available online. Keep them barracks clean.

 

Observations on the means of preserving the health of soldiers and sailors : and on the duties of the medical department of the Army and Navy

Observations on the means of preserving the health of soldiers and sailors : and on the duties of the medical department of the Army and Navy

So I clean barracks, as a means of bringing the everyday back to life, because daily life, even in the military, is in fact remarkably mundane and domestic, centered not around the glory of battles but around the minutia of cleaning barracks, washing clothes, and preparing food.

Thomas Gainsborough, The Housemaid. 1782-86. Tate Museum, Presented by Rosalind, Countess of Carlisle 1913, N02928

Thomas Gainsborough, The Housemaid. 1782-86. Tate Museum, Presented by Rosalind, Countess of Carlisle 1913, N02928

Is this also the feminization of masculine space? Perhaps it is, in the way that our culture associates indoor domestic tasks with women. Either way, maintaining hygiene and cleanliness within a military environment is  documentable in detail and a critical, if sometimes overlooked, area of interpretation.

* I use living history to describe the re-creation of daily life. Re-enacting or enacting [the past] is, I think, better used for events of either military or date-place-and-time specific historical commemorations.