Steam Laundry History

PJ Piccirillo

This is a very un-conventional post. I posted my request at the boilerroom.com a while back, and someone suggested I ask it there. They said that some of you guys "work on some very weird and wonderful old stuff." So here goes.

I have been searching the Web and libraries for weeks and can't seem to find any information on the history of steam laundry operations. I am working on a novel based loosely on the life of a man who started out in a steam laundry business in a small Pensylvania manufacturing town at the turn of the century. I'm trying to find a book, pamphlets or other text that would give me some idea of what the technology, machinery, and daily operation of a laundry were like in the 1880's so I can develop a colorful and true setting. Since you are in the industry, I thought I'd ask if you can point me in any direction. I know this is a long shot, but if you have ANY ideas, I would love to hear from you.
Thx - PJ

Joannie

historybookshop.com

This is a good website that has lots of history books that can be ordered. There is one for Steam Laundries. Here's a link:


http://www.historybookshop.com/book-template.asp?isbn=0801860024


Here's some of the stuff noted about it:

A history of the development of the steam laundry industry from the first commercial laundries in the 1840s to their decline in the 1930s. Historian Arwen Mohun argues that the trajectory was shaped within the constraints of what was technologically possible and culturally acceptable. Rising standards of cleanliness, new kinds of machinery, and an increasingly polluted urban environment provided the context for the industry's emergence. The shortcomings of applying factory methods to washing clothes, increased regulation, and rising costs of labour encouraged consumers to abandon laundries for newly available alternatives - electric washing machines and irons - a century later. By comparing this process in Britain and the USA, Mohun reveals differences created by culture, regulation, and social structures. She also shows the unexpected transatlantic character of this seemingly localized kind of business. The text tells the stories of people: exploited but fiesty laundryworkers and the work culture they created; would-be entrepreneurs seeking easy success but finding instead imperfect technology; narrow profit margins, and unco-operative consumers; and reformers who entered laundries in the guise of workers, later using that experience of heat, monotony and danger to argue for regulation. This is a study of the technological, cultural, business and labour dimensions of an important and virtually unstudied industry.


I hope it helps. Good luck with the book.