Christina Hollis: Writing History—Wet Washing and Drying Days

It's been raining cats and dogs here in Gloucestershire for days. While the downpour setting has swung backwards and forwards from "car wash" to "drizzle" it has at least been mild. The winds, though blustery, have been nothing compared to the terrible hurricanes and typhoons suffered in other parts of the world. I love letting the washing dry on a line strung across the kitchen garden, but there's been none of that this week.

My first few weeks back at university have been busy. I've been deciding on modules for this semester and the next, along with my ideas for my dissertation. One of the reasons I signed up for this course in Creative and Critical Writing  was because I found researching Struggle and Suffrage in Bristol fascinating. I wanted to find out more. Where better to do that than in a university? It  has zillions of books, and a huge archive.

I'm working on the effect technology had on women's lives during the twentieth century—specifically, the way it made household chores easier.

Find out more at
mybook.to/BristolWomen

Until mid-December 1930, the wives of miners in the Forest of Dean didn't have one wash-day a week. They had at least five days of hauling water, and heating it on the stove in order to scrub their husband's work clothes. Men came home filthy at the end of their shift at the pit. After stripping off his boots and dirty clothes outside the back door, a man would soak in a tin bath in front of the fire in order to get clean.

Meanwhile, his wife had the mammoth task of getting his clothes clean and dry as fast as possible. That wasn't easy at a time when Forest villages had no electricity supply. There wasn't much money about in those days, so when it came to clothes the general rule was "one on, one in the wash". During the summer, drying clothes outside on a washing line was easy—until it rained. Then, and during the winter, it was a case of living with steaming wet washing draped over clothes horses and fireguards all around the house.

On Saturday, 20th December 1930, Christmas came early for some of those Forest of Dean wives. After months of anticipation, Cannop Colliery opened some state-of-the-art pit head baths. 

Instead of walking home filthy, men stripped off their wet clothes as soon as they reached the surface. They showered in comfort, then dressed in everyday clothes for their walk home. They left their sodden workwear to dry overnight in the bathhouse's specially-designed heated cabinets. From that day on, the women's drudgery of doing laundry after every shift down the mine became a memory. Washday became a task done once a week, usually on a Monday.

Not to be thrown out with the bath water...

In the days before my family bought a washing machine, that was the routine in our rural Somerset home, too.  It was an all-day job. Water was heated in an electric boiler.  Shirt and blouse collars and cuffs were scrubbed before being worked up and down in soapy water. 

Then the washing was rinsed, hauled out of the water, wrung, then put through the mangle (mind those fingers!) 

Even as a tiny child I was involved in every stage. I used to love blowing soap bubbles between my cupped hands. I wasn't so keen on getting wet cuffs, though. Gran would roll up my sleeves but somehow they either slid down again, or the water would run up my arms!

The best things about washing day before automation was the sound and sight of fresh washing cracking and dancing in March winds, or the fragrance of Fairy Snow and Sunlight soap on a hot June morning.

Do you have any memories of wash-day?

Christina Hollis's first non-fiction book, Struggle and Suffrage in Bristol is published by Pen and Sword Books. You can find out more about that here, catch up with her at https://christinahollisbooks.online, on Twitter, Facebook, and see a full list of her published books at christinahollis.com

#Suffragette -- a must see film for women

Sometimes films are not easy entertainment but powerful statements about humanity. Suffragette, the recent release about the struggle for British women’s equal rights is such a film. It is the first major film to examine the issue and long overdue. Until now, the stereotypical image of a suffragette is Mrs Banks parading up and down the hall, singing and then requiring Mary Poppins to rescue her and her children.  It is a film every woman (or man for that matter) should see, preferably with their daughter or their mother. Women account for 50% of the human race give or take and it is easy to forget how hard one sex had to fight for basic human rights. And the fight (which isn't fully over) took place less than a hundred years ago.

The film went on general release in the UK on the 12th. It is going on limited release in the US on the 27th of October. It is worth tracking down to see it.

The subject is not an easy one. The struggle for equality was not peaceful in the UK. But there again, the stakes were high. Women were the property of men. They did not have the right to vote, to look after their own money or indeed have any say about their children. Such things were considered beyond their capacity.  The film makes this abundantly clear. They were also not taken seriously until they started to misbehave.

The film follows Maud, a worker ( Carey Mulligan) in a laundry who has few prospects. She was born out of wedlock, and the laundry has been her home. She is married with a son but it is clear that she still is being abused by the manager. At the start of the film, she is not interested in politics but by the end, she is committed to the cause of improving women’s status in society. There were parts of the film which made me cry and parts that had me literally sick to my stomach. There were a number of times I wanted to punch various men in their smug over-bearing faces.

One of the most poignant parts of the film was at the end when the list of countries and the year when women gain suffrage happened. In 2015 Saudi Arabia promised, only promised mind you, to give some women the right to vote.  And because of this film, one can easily imagine the difficulties that those women suffer.

The film highlighted the big injustices as well as the petty ones. For example, a well to do suffragette asks her husband who is an M.P. to post bail for the five other women who were arrested with her. She in part feels responsible for the predicament Maud is in because she was the one who encouraged her to take part and to give her testimony to parliament. He refuses. She says in a low tone but it is my money and he still refuses, saying she shamed him. The larger injustices such as a man being able to put children for adoption without consulting his wife is also highlighted.  Giving women equal rights to their children in the UK only happened in the 1920s. So the struggle was not just about voting, but also about how women were treated in society. There is no love interest. Maud’s husband who seems decent enough at the beginning has no epiphany. But that is fine, the film is powerful and shows Maud’s growth. Helena Bonham-Carter is excellent as the woman who married a pharmacist so that she could use her intelligence.  And Meryl Streep has a brief cameo as Emmeline Pankhurst. (Something which is not brought out in the film is that Mrs Pankhurst had she not died, would have stood for election as a Tory, not a Labour candidate. Labour came late to the woman’s movement as they were formed to serve the working class man.)

After the film finished and the credits started to roll, my fellow movie-goers and I sat, no one moving and then someone started to clap. The applause echoed through the cinema and then people started to move. My daughter and I had a lively discussion about women and their rights after the film. I suspect that once the film is out on dvd, many high school history teachers will acquire it to show their students.  But it is important to support this film so that more films are made about the same subject.

The struggle for equality does continue today and it is easy to forget the price many women paid so that women living in Britain can enjoy certain freedoms, freedoms we often take for granted.  Women have obtained/regained many rights but they were hard won. One of the things I know from my own research is how women lost some of those rights and had their freedoms curtailed.  We have to be vigilant. And some of that can start by seeing this film.

Michelle Styles writes warm, witty and intimate historical romance in a wide range of time periods. Her most recent book was Summer of the Viking published in June 2015. You learn more about Michelle and her books on her website – www.michellestyles.co.uk

I've Priced Myself Out of the Market

I can no longer afford to be me. At least not the me I wanna be.

All those luxuries I've added to my life over the years—the highlights, the pedicures, the nice nails--were all rooted in a little dabbling here, some experimenting there. But now they've become needs, adding up to more than my limited budget can tolerate.

The hair coloring began innocently enough, ages ago. As I sat with my hair cooking in a bath of chemicals to achieve that "natural" wave my Irish setter-like hair lacked, I stared across the salon as a mousy-haired woman transformed from caterpillar to butterfly with just a bowl of colored paste, a handful of foil, and an skilled hairdresser. While I ended up with yet another bad poodle perm, this woman was leaving the place looking like a million bucks.

"Oooh, I want that," I told the girl doing my hair, pointing at blondie. Maybe my stylist should've kept mum, cause I soon "divorced" her in lieu of the one who did good color, and--realizing that God invented hair coloring for a reason--I became a devotee for life (or so I'd hoped). I justified the quarterly expense, because I'd have been paying for the poodle perm anyhow, so I just traded one set of chemical costs for another. But no one told me the older I got the more I'd need to "use." Yeah, like a junkie with an expensive habit, this four time a year gig needed yet more upkeep. It didn’t help when a drunken guy at a party called me out on my emerging roots while towering over my scalp at the bar, waiting for a drink he clearly didn't need.

"Whatsh with the giraffe look?" he slurred, pointing at the definitive color change at the top of my head as he spat in my direction, unable to control his spittle.

"Um, I think you mean skunk," I snarled, wishing I had the moxie to toss a drink in his face for his rudeness. Nevertheless, I took the hint: I could no longer conserve cash by holding out on highlights a few extra weeks.

Then came the pedicures, which started innocently enough. And took on a great urgency after considering my husband's grandmother's feet. I'd be lying if I said I didn't recoil in horror just a bit the first time I saw Grandma Jo's untamed honkers, feet that clearly had not seen a day of maintenance in at least a generation. After regaining my composure, I duly vowed to never neglect my feet till they crusted up and had to be jammed awkwardly into orthopedic shoes like hers. Surely a pedicure could help to avoid such a downward spiral.

Little did I know that the older you get the more a regular pedicure is essential for both body and spirit (okay, maybe in a vain and superficial way).

Then came the nail gels, which started innocently enough. A couple of years ago, my daughter tried to quell a nail-biting habit by getting gel nails, which are impossible to bite. When she began sporting attractive fingernails like you'd see on a hand model, I couldn't stop the nail envy that crept in, because I'd always had weak, wimpy nails. An added bonus? That wonderful nail-tapping ability I was sorely lacking in my life. So I got a little hooked.

Then came the brows (to avoid the brow-less look), which started innocently enough, at the behest of a neighbor. My eyebrows are fair (proof I really was once blonde), and so you can barely see half of them, leaving the other part to look like Hitlerian mustaches perched above each eye. The results of that first brow tint were, uh, eye-opening, like a mini stitch-free face lift. Cue the waxing, which really did become a necessity as my middle-aged vision deteriorated--who can see to tweeze those tiny stray hairs above your eyes if you can't wear reading glasses? And then my eyebrow expert suggested the eyelash tinting. I was a skeptic. But not keen on mascara. In fact, you know I've gone all out if I show up at your event with mascara on. So the idea of dark and luxurious lashes without annoying mascara was very tempting. And wow, what a difference! Is this starting to sound familiar? I won't even get into the gym habit at this point. Suffice it to say it's hardly in my limited budget.

I actually have a serious point to convey while poking fun at my vanity. My expensive habits make me especially sad for so many other people, and not because they might soon witness the unadulterated (i.e. more like Grandma Jo) me. But because my costly indulgences are superficial ones. So many others these days who once could afford groceries, mortgages, even health insurance are having to make hard decisions—like whether to "splurge" for food or shelter--in order to keep their lives together. I've seen them waiting patiently in line at my church's food pantry, and lined up for dinner when I help with meals at the Salvation Army.

So while I hate having to make choices that mean I might not be the me I want to be on the outside, I remain mindful that these are small sacrifices by comparison to many others in these tough economic times.

Of course the hard choice now will be whether I want to more resemble a giraffe, or Grandma Jo.