Tag Archives: women’s work

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?

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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.

The Dirt on Ti

22 Tuesday Mar 2016

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

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On the road in: dirt.

Seen on the way in to Fort Ti: dirt. (Kitty Calash photo)

The dirt on Fort Ti came home on my shoes. And my petticoats. And my gown. And possibly my face, which could explain the reactions I got when I stopped for gas on the Pike Saturday evening.

It’s incredible how how dirty, dusty, and straw-filled a room can get– and that’s just the officer’s room. For all I know, a horse had been sleeping in the back corner of the barracks room we cleaned– who else would leave so much straw?

Regular readers know I have a thing about portraying women’s work in the past, as well as historical cleaning methods and what I like to call “experimental archaeology” and other people call “that crazy hobby- thing- where you get cold and dirty.” We started with mop making, of course, and when I loaded the car on Friday morning, I was pretty well pleased with my swag.

So, what happened? How did it go? What did we do? Our Girl History provides a descriptive photo essay overview of the day. My experiences were more limited, as befits someone of my status: officer’s servant.

Every good experience begins with a meal. Friday night supper included bread, cheese, pork loin and apple, imported from Rhode Island. Yes, I also helped myself to bacon, to ensure none was wasted. Bedtime for officers’ servants comes early: I’m not a stranger to rope beds, but found this straw tick far more comfortable than a previous arrangement elsewhere. 

After formation, to tasks. I was ably assisted by Miss Sam, who was a better height for the brooms than I. The brooms are speculative on the one hand, and later on the other. The corn broom was markedly more effective than the broom straw, which disintegrated with use, though not for lack of care in making. We were up against some serious accumulation.

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Housekeeping and servants manuals from the period, like Hannah Glasse, tell you the cleaning must be done every day. It’s certainly something I heard within my own lifetime, though an ideal I continually struggle to achieve despite the advances of Mr Kenmore. The general rule is to begin at the top and work your way down: gravity is, at last, your friend. I use brushes– a large, soft round paint brush and a stiffer circular whisk– to remove dust and dirt from upper surfaces, and cobwebs from corners, and other wall-borne detritus. Gentlefolk: your cleaning ladies know much about you in any century.

After sweeping (yes, into the fireplace or out the door, it’s that simple), scrubbing. I scrubbed the baseboards first with vinegar and water (the vinegar infused with lavender for several years). Filth, my friends. Then we mopped. Again, filth.

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I would have preferred to do another dust collection on the floor– the water did pool a bit on the dry dust that remained, but swabbing seemed to work and I believe we left the floor cleaner than it had been. The three mops we tested (wool, cotton, and linen strips) each had benefits and deficits.

The cotton and wool caught on the rough floor boards, but did a good job spreading water around the floor and lifting dirt. The linen strips were better at not catching and at scrubbing.

No matter what, the water got filthy and took on the look and nearly the consistency of the chocolate we drank that day. Remember the iron museum rule: don’t lick it! That rule applies everywhere.

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Everyone and everything got cleaned Saturday. Miss V broached the laundry with vigor, but discovered that possibly untoward things had been done in her laundry tub. Things that might involve shoes, and blacking. Marks were left on shifts and shirts, so even the wash tub got a scrub this garrison weekend.

Some of the best comments came after the fact: I’ve never heard cleaning called “one of the coolest things” seen all day, but when someone says it helps them see a space in an entirely new way, I’m incredibly happy. There’s so much about the everyday use– and maintenance– of space and objects and each other that we take for granted in our own lives. Surely the people of the past who had servants took all that work for granted.

But for me, enamored as I am of details and of the quotidian, transforming a space through the everyday work of women is a job with doing. Thanks to Fort Ti’s staff for giving me the chance to step back in time and enjoy (really, I mean it) a day of hard work bringing the mundane back to life.

Unless otherwise noted, all photos by Eliza West, courtesy of  Fort Ticonderoga.

Flopsy Mopsy

16 Wednesday Mar 2016

Posted by in Events, History, Living History, Making Things, Reenacting, Research

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Mop sellers, red chalk on paper, Paul Sandy, 1759. Museum of London 65.59/5#sthash.EaUTT9dg.dpuf

Mop sellers, red chalk on paper, Paul Sandy, 1759. Museum of London 65.59/5

They’re pretty consistent: mops appear to be made of fibers attached to a handle. These look like they’re simple string mops. A stick and string? A stick and rags strips? Something along those lines. But what kind of string? What kind of fiber? How was it attached?

I’ll confess that I have been too lazy to search collection for extant mops– no, seriously, if someone offered me an 18th century mop my first reaction after “Absolutely!” would be, “Wait a second…how can there be anything left of an 18th century mop? My own mops don’t last all that long….” so I assumed no such critter exists in captivity (feel free to prove me wrong, I could use an assist here). Instead, I went ahead with the daft notion of replicating what I saw in images.

Sandby helpfully supplies us with mop sellers who carry fuzziness on a stick. Most likely wool, since sheep were plentiful and cotton expensive in this period. But maybe not. In any case, a simple business.

Supplies assembled

Supplies assembled

After work on Saturday, I went mop-top-shopping. It was not one stop. An internal rant developed about how companies can call anything “wool” that is less than 100% wool, but I managed to contain myself and with enough hunting turned up hero cord, 100% wool yarn and 100% cotton yarn as well as dowels. Sadly, I could not find wool roving in any color but grey. So, making a mop from craft and hardware store supplies is a pretty easy thing, especially when you don’t have many tools to complicate the business.

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This is not my first rodeo where string is concerned, so I wrapped the yarn around a cutting board just the way you’d make a pom pom. How else will you get it all the same length (more or less)? The result: a somewhat sad hank in search of purpose, tied off in the more-or-less middle of the strands.

Temporarily secured
Tied off with hemp cord

Secured temporarily with a rubber band, I tied the hank to the dowel with hemp cord. Then I turned the wool (and later cotton) back over itself, and tied it off again. I pulled as tight as I could manage, much to the chagrin of my now-blistered pinky finger. Small price to pay, though, for two new entrants in the experimental archaeology of cleaning. As I looked at the images in Sandby’s drawing and in the prints, I was pretty confident the mops are not tied off again in this second way, but one band didn’t seem secure enough. So, yet another compromise, but one that I hope will result in less hilarity from losing mop heads in the midst of washing floors.

Wool…
…and cotton

Now, if I would but turn my attention to the lint, string, and yarn scattered about my floor at home…

Mopping Up

14 Monday Mar 2016

Posted by in Living History, Making Things, Research, Uncategorized

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A City Shower. Oil on canvas by Edward Penny, 1764. Museum of London

A City Shower. Oil on canvas by Edward Penny, 1764. Museum of London

Springtime sadness is best remedied by scouring[1], so in the best Scandinavian fashion, I have been looking into 18th century cleaning. Dem barracks, right?

First of all, were you wondering about what exactly they “smoked and cleansed” smallpox victims’ rooms with? Brimstone and frankincense.[2] Now you know what Edward Langford would wake up smelling when the house next door was free of smallpox.

But what about those floors? They need to be cleaned. Swept, yes, and scrubbed with sand. But also mopped, and the doorstep mopped.

Tit for Tat. stipple etching, London, Printed for R. Sayer Map, Chart & Printseller N° 53 Fleet Street, as the Act directs Novr 24. 1786. British Museum 1861,0518.958

Tit for Tat. stipple etching, London, Printed for R. Sayer Map, Chart & Printseller N° 53 Fleet Street, as the Act directs Novr 24. 1786. British Museum 1861,0518.958

I have a broom and a whisk broom, and can substitute a kettle for my sad bucket[3] but I lack a suitable mop. Lack never deterred me, whether of skills, knowledge, or supplies, so off to the interwebs and library I went.

I started with Foul Bodies, the 2009 monograph by Kathleen M. Brown. Nothing on floors, sadly.

I remembered the 10th Massachusetts Orderly book from 1782, that was more helpful.

Some part of the Camp and about the long Barracks in particular is relaxing into nastiness. Regimental QuarterMasters have been ordered to have them Clean and keep them so. An Officer of each Company has been ordered to visit the Barracks every day and to Confine & Report those who throw bones of meat Pot Liquor or filth of any kind near the Barracks. Yet all this has been done and no report has been made. it is hatefull to General Howe to Reitterate orders as it ought to be shamefull those who make it necessary.

The Unfortunate Beau, etching, Publish'd as the Act directs 12th Sept 1772, by S.Hooper, No.25 Ludgate Hill. British Museum 1991,1214.20

The Unfortunate Beau, etching, Publish’d as the Act directs 12th Sept 1772, by S.Hooper, No.25 Ludgate Hill. British Museum 1991,1214.20

Nastiness. Those barracks sound noisome, don’t they? We can’t have that.

So let’s cast out the bones, sweep the floors of the branches and dirt and grit the men have brought in, and mop them, too, now that it’s spring.

Mop, you say?

What did mops look like the in 18th century?
And how on earth will we acquire one?

Tune in next time for another exciting installment of “historical cleaning instead of cleaning my own house.”

 

 

[1] Dude, I have scrubbed baseboards with a toothbrush. Not one of my finer moments, but a memorable one.

[2] Kathleen Brown, Foul Bodies: Cleanliness in Early America. (New Haven: 2009) p. 129

[3] Really really: I meant it when I said keep the bucket wet.