Tag: laundry

Categories
1900-1949 Adverts Women

Oxydol advert, 1937

The Mirror, 1937

If I was a 1937-era housewife, this advert would definitely work on me. The thought of spending one whole day a week washing all the dirty laundry in one big go, the hard way, is a tiring thought. It’s bad enough having to handwash the essentials on those occasions when my washing machine has given up the ghost, but adding towels, bedding and baby-stained clothes to the mix – well, I’d be pretty happy with someone giving me advice on how to make it all end faster so I could go to the theatre instead.

Oxydol has a bit of a history as a pioneering product – it was the first commercial washing powder produced by Proctor and Gamble, introduced in 1927. And it’s left a lasting impression as the original “soap” behind the term “soap opera” as it became the sponsor of the “Ma Perkins” radio show in 1933, considered to be the world’s first soap opera.

The Mirror, 1937
The Mirror, 1937

Maybe that’s why their adverts are little soap operas themselves. Here’s another from 1937:

Lancashire Evening Post, 25th February 1937
Lancashire Evening Post, 25th February 1937

If you want the details on what exactly “wash-day” consisted of in the 30s, see my post here of instructions on how to manage it in 1938.

And then there’s this rather lovely little film also from 1938, produced by the American HQ of Oxydol, with the “Scientific Tintometer” mentioned in the advert above, shown in action. I’m rather fascinated by the washtub set up with the electric mangle.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=wPpCJ1l2Zvs

Categories
1900-1949 Adverts Ephemera Women

Persil “photoshopping”, 1937-style

The Mirror, 1937

Oh, naughty Persil! Now I suppose showing just how brightly Persil washes your whites in a black and white advert is a bit of a tricky problem. But look what they’ve done – cut out the nurses apron and hat and replaced them with a bright white background and unrealistic drawn-on creases.

And that’s before we get onto the issue of whether a woman, having just given birth, should be worrying about the whiteness of her wash anyway…

The Mirror, 1937
The Mirror, 1937
Categories
1900-1949 Women

How to Do Your Laundry, 1938

Titbits Book of Wrinkles, 1938

My washing machine is slightly on the blink at the minute. The drying cycle keeps stopping every 20 minutes so you have to keep pushing the button again. And sometimes I forget that I need to do this so it can take hours to get a load dry. Plus, since having a second child my laundry pile has grown so fast! I’m washing every day and yet there’s still a full basket of towels, babygros and felt-tip covered school shirts pretty much all the time.

“Well, boo bloody hoo!” I can hear a 1930s housewife called Elsie saying to me, quite tetchily.

These were the days when you had to have an entire day a week to get your washing sorted – Tuesday is recommended as you’re clearing up after the weekend on a Monday. Soap flakes, blue to get the whites white, cracked hands and all, this is how to do it 1938-style, from Titbits Book of Wrinkles.

Not that they’re grumbling – this is a positive piece emphasising how things have got so much easier for the housewife these days. I dread to think how much harder it must have been before their “labour-savers” were developed. Although reading the piece I’m not entirely sure what they are – soap? A mangle? I remember my Grandma’s mangle, sat on the end of the worktop in her tiny kitchen in Morecambe. I was fascinated by it, and I wish I had it now. But, oh, my RSI-impaired wrist is aching just at the thought of all this effort…