{"id":184,"date":"2023-06-08T22:28:46","date_gmt":"2023-06-08T22:28:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/earlywithdrawal.net\/victoriana\/?p=184"},"modified":"2023-07-22T22:52:12","modified_gmt":"2023-07-22T22:52:12","slug":"among-the-laundry-girls","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/earlywithdrawal.net\/victoriana\/index.php\/2023\/06\/08\/among-the-laundry-girls\/","title":{"rendered":"Among the Laundry Girls"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

AMONG THE LAUNDRY-GIRLS.<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

CHAPTER I.
WHY AND HOW I BECAME ONE OF THEM.<\/h3>\n\n\n
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\"listen\"<\/a>
listen<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

THE laundry question is like the domestic servant problem. It interests everyone in all classes of society. If it is true that “civilised man cannot live without cooks,” it is equally true that he cannot do without a laundress. Indeed, a man’s happiness is to a greater degree dependent upon his laundress than his cook. Nothing can so quickly transform a kind, thoughtful, and good-tempered man into a frightful specimen of total depravity as a badly-ironed shirtfront or a limply-starched collar. Even men of the most angelic dispositions and piously inclined have been known to lapse into profanity over just such trifles. On second thought, “trifles” is not the word I should have used, for I agree that, of all the deplorable-looking objects in the world, a man not properly “done up ” is the worst. A man’s personal appearance depends quite as much upon his shirt-fronts and collars and cuffs as a woman’s good looks depend upon the way she arranges her hair.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Despite the fact that I live in the days of the “new womanhood,” which demands stiff shirts, high collars, neckties, and waistcoats as proofs of complete “emancipation,” I still hold to the belief that boiled shirts are, or should be, a man’s exclusive property, and I can readily understand his objection to the “new woman” who, in her fierce clamour for what she calls her “rights,” will not stop to consider the wrongs she is inflicting on the opposite sex, and, not content with having, in some professions, deprived man of his means of livelihood, would now take away from him his very clothes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There is one thing in connection with the subject of laundry work that I have never been able to understand, and that is the rooted objection that most men have to paying their washerwomen. One would think that, dependent as they are upon these women for half their life’s happiness, they would, if they could, pay them promptly and without protest. Why men always object to paying laundry bills is something beyond my comprehension. Bachelors in good standing, socially and financially, who are noted for discharging every other obligation, even to their tailors, will let the poor laundress wait for weeks, months, and sometimes years, and then allow her to sue them for her long-accumulated bill. They seem to do these things on general principles. It was but a few weeks ago that the papers reported the case of a nobleman who, out of pure contrariness, refused for three years to pay his laundry bill, although perfectly able to do so; and it was only after he was brought into court and the judge had remonstrated with him, giving him the choice of either paying up or going to gaol, that he would even consider the matter seriously. Laundresses say that men of means give them more trouble than any other customers ; and proprietors of lodging-houses and hotels assert that well-to-do men, who can always be relied upon to pay for their board and apartments when due, will each week pin their laundry accounts upon the wall, until in time the pattern of the wall-paper is almost hidden from sight by these unreceipted bills. It is easy enough to understand why the man in the state of “broke” allows such things to happen ; but why gentlemen of means should be so prejudiced is a puzzle that I doubt if even they themselves would be able to solve.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

About once in a decade the public is agitated over some new or old phase of the laundry question. A few years ago the whole of the United States was nearly frightened out of existence over the subject. Somebody (I believe it was not a newspaper reporter) one day took his linen to a Chinese laundry, and saw a Chinaman in the other end of the room with a white scar on his face. “White spots are symbols of leprosy,” thought he, and then he went to talk the matter over with a medical man, who immediately got out his books on the subject. In a week the papers had taken the matter up, and John Chinaman was in a fair way to lose all his customers. Everybody talked about the dangers of leprosy. People who lived in hotels, flats, or boarding-houses, where washing must be sent out, were thrown into violent hysterics when told by the doctors that many of the Chinese laundrymen were lepers, and that the disease could be communicated by means of clean linen, until finally America became the land of the great unwashed. The baskets of soiled linen got full to overflowing, because people were afraid to send them to the laundries, while the shops, especially men’s furnishing houses, carried on a thriving trade. Ladies living in hotels, where conspicuous among the rules of the house was the legend, “No Washing Allowed in the Rooms,” locked and barred their bedroom doors, and washed handkerchiefs and stockings in the wash-bowl or bath-tub, then hung them on the bedposts and chair-backs to dry, and with the solitary iron they had surreptitiously purchased, smoothed the clothes out on the floor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At that particular time the politician took advantage of the panic to announce from legislative halls and lecture platforms that “the Chinese must go,” and very few there were who ventured to contradict him. After a while the tumult subsided, and it was succeeded by the “typhus scare” and the “cholera scare.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We make a speciality of “scares ” in the United States. Sometimes we are able to run two or three at once, but we are never without one. Our peculiar temperament and the variable climate demand this sort of excitement, and when one “scare” is past, and another takes its place, we are neither better nor worse off than we were before.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I do not suppose that I should ever again have thought of the “laundry scare” had I not gone to reside in lodgings for a time, and so put on my own responsibility as regarded the choice of a laundress. Even then I did not trouble myself much about it, except to tell the housemaid to get me a laundress, and she provided me with the person who did the washing for the other lodgers. For a few weeks all went on well enough, until I one day picked up a medical paper and read an article about ” Infection from Laundries,” in which the writer told terrible tales of how inoffensive people, especially those living in lodgings, suddenly found themselves stricken down with smallpox, scarlet-fever, or diphtheria, all because their clothes were washed under unsanitary conditions. The writer warned his readers against sending their linen to laundries consisting of but one room, which served not only for washhouse and drying-grounds, but bedroom, sittingroom, kitchen, and goat-stable as well. When I came to the part which advised everybody to find out for himself and herself just how and where their clothes were washed, it dawned upon me that, in failing to make the acquaintance of my own laundress, I had been guilty of a crime against myself and society at large. What if I should get smallpox or scarlet-fever, all because of my neglect of this matter!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I rang the bell for the housemaid. Again and again I turned the handle, until peal after peal resounded through the house.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Martha, who washes my clothes ? ” I demanded, when at the end of half an hour’s ringing, she made her appearance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“I think her name is Mrs. Johnstone, miss,” answered Martha, looking at me in a strangely suspicious way; and then she added, “Did she lose anything last week ?”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Do you mean to say that you are not sure of the woman’s name ?” I asked, paying no attention to her solicitude in regard to the number of “pieces ” that had been returned.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“I’m quite sure it’s Johnstone,” she answered again, this time with more decision.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“What is her address?”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“I can’t tell you at all, miss.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“That’s strange. I must know where she lives. I want to call on her.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then Martha suggested that the landlady would probably know, so she went down-stairs and returned with the information that Mrs. Johnstone lived “somewhere near ‘Ammersmith,” but nobody knew just where.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was Tuesday, and the clothes would not be returned until Saturday, and there seemed to be no way of obtaining the address before that time. I blamed the washerwoman for not having yet sent me a bill with her name and address at the top, and I despised the landlady and all her lodgers because of their stupidity. To discover the whereabouts of a Mrs. Johnstone who lived somewhere near Hammersmith looked like a feat far beyond my powers of accomplishment, but that medical paper had wrought my nerves up to such a state that I could neither eat nor write nor sleep until I had at least made an attempt to find her.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I went to the post-office and consulted that part of the “Directory” given up to the J’s, and the multitude of Mrs. Johnstones who lived somewhere near Hammersmith and took in washing threatened to deprive me of my reason. Visions of a horrible hovel, with babies and goats and chickens galore, and a sickly-looking woman washing my best handkerchiefs in poverty, hunger, and dirt, rose continually before me, and would not be dispelled. Yet I could spare neither the time nor the money that the finding of Mrs. Johnstone would involve. What little reason I had left told me that the only thing I could do was to wait till Saturday ; so I gave Martha instructions to get the woman’s full name and address when she returned the clothes. Then I tried to compose myself to write a paper on ” The Duty of Self-Control,” but my thoughts were all of wash-tubs and ironing-boards, and I decided that I ought to know more about the laundry business than I did. I began to think not only about small washerwomen, but steam-laundries and laundry-girls, who, according to common report, were the most wicked of their sex in London. I had heard direful tales of the way they pulled each other’s hair, scratched one another’s eyes out, and insulted good people who tried to reform them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Having once got so far interested in the subject, it was but natural that I should follow it up in the only way that I could conceive of getting correct information, and that was by becoming a laundrygirl myself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In order to get a situation, I answered all the advertisements for ” learners ” that I could find in the morning papers, and then I inserted an advertisement on my own account:\u2014<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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A YOUNG WOMAN wants a situation in a large first-class Laundry, where she can learn the business. No wages.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

It was on that last clause that I most depended for my answers, for I knew there were many people who were waiting to secure something for nothing. I was particularly careful in the wording of my advertisement, so that it should not in any way resemble the one I had inserted when I sought a place in domestic service. I determined that, in this instance, I would not pose as an “educated and refined young woman.” That sort of thing could not be tried again. The proprietor of a laundry would not know how to “place” such qualities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While I waited for applicants for my services, which I had no doubt would be numerous, I busied myself in preparing for a week in a laundry. I got together a suit of clothes neither conspicuously unbecoming nor altogether too nice \u2014 a sort of medium between the coster and shop-girl style \u2014 in which I might apply for a place ; and I bought a black-andwhite polka-dot blouse and apron for work in the laundry. The subject of references would not, I thought, be so troublesome as it had been when I was seeking a place as housemaid, but I arranged to have a reference given if it should be required. I feared that my greatest difficulty would be my American accent, which for the past three months I had tried to lose (for professional purposes only). But it was still quite as pronounced as on the day I arrived in London, and was continually getting me into trouble when I endeavoured to pass for somebody else. Yet now I trusted to Providence that I would not be called upon to account for it when I applied for a situation in a laundry, because, once asked if I were an American, it was always necessary for me to depart from strict veracity in order to explain how I happened to be in London.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Much to my disappointment, I received no answers on the next day nor the day following, and my faith in advertising as a means of obtaining anything and everything began to waver. At the end of the week one lone letter was handed to me. It was from the Y\u2014\u2014 and Z\u2014 Sanitary Laundry in an East London suburb, and in it I was informed that in this laundry there was just such a place as I had advertised for, and I was asked to call on Saturday morning. I had also another appointment at ten o’clock on Saturday with the only person who had answered one of the many letters I had written applying for a place. This was in the neighbourhood of Streatham, and I went there first.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mrs. S\u2014\u2014 , the “proprietress ” of the place, opened the door. From a height of six feet and a breadth of little less, she looked at me in amazement when I told her I was “Lizzie Barnes,” who had written to her for a place as “learner.” It was the same old story, “too little!” I assured her that, though small, my strength was little short of that possessed by Samson, and I reiterated the statement I had made in my letter to her that I could “iron good.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The result was that in half an hour Mrs. S\u2014\u2014 concluded to give me a trial, not only at the ironing-board, but in what she called the “washus.” She made no remarks about my American accent, neither did she ask for references, and I concluded it would be well for me to accept the situation, not knowing whether it would be possible to secure another one.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While talking with Mrs. S , it occurred to me that the proprietors of the Y\u2014\u2014 and Z\u2014\u2014 Laundry might not be so favourably impressed with my abilities as a laundress, so I told her I would like to try the place. She explained that her laundry (” landry ” she called it) was only a small one, where but six girls were employed, and that all the work was done by hand. The “washus ” was in the basement of the house, but the rest of the work was done in a red-brick building, which I could see in the rear of the house. From the windows I noticed several girls ironing, while in the yard a frowzy-haired young woman was taking down clothes from the line.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Will you take me through the laundry ?” I asked, curious to get a look at the girls with whom I expected to associate for the next week or longer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Oh, no, Saturday is such a busy day, I can’t do that,” she answered; and, plead as I would, I could not induce her to gratify my curiosity. But she was very sociable, offered me a glass of ale, and, when I refused it, said she thought I would have to take beer if I went into the laundry business. Then the question of “living in ” came up. She was not particularly anxious that I should “live in,” for, of course, that would necessitate her giving me my board ; but to “live in” was a part of my plan, because all the girls lived there together, and Mrs. S\u2014\u2014 , remembering that, after all, I was not to receive any wages, and that a person of my size was not likely to have an enormous appetite, agreed to “put me up ” with the other girls.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I had engaged to go on the next Tuesday, and was leaving the door, when I thought to ask if I should have a bed to myself. Mrs. S\u2014\u2014 was quite surprised at the question, and explained that, as there was but one room with three beds, and as I would make the sixth girl, a bed to myself would be an impossibility. I decided that I would prefer to “live out” and board myself, and when I bade her good morning, it was arranged that I was to go to work the next Tuesday morning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When I called at the Y\u2014\u2014 and Z\u2014\u2014 Sanitary Laundry, I regretted my haste in engaging myself to Mrs. S\u2014\u2014 . This laundry was worked by steam ; there were about thirty girls employed, and I felt sure that the experience I would gain there would be of greater advantage to me. But Mrs. Morris, the wife of the proprietor of the laundry, was by no means at first inclined to take me, because I seemed to know nothing about the business. However, I assured her, as I had done Mrs. S , that I could ” iron good,” which was to a certain extent true.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“You mean you know how to do plain ironing?” she asked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

” Yes. When I lived home, I did all the family washing and ironing,” I answered ; and even now I wonder how I ever dared to say it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mrs. Morris looked at me rather sharply when I told her of my abilities in the way of washing and ironing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Where was that ?” she asked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then a nursery rhyme of my childhood days ran quickly through my mind\u2014<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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”Oh, what a tangled web we weave
When first we practise to deceive,”<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

but, nevertheless, I answered, ” In Australia.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

” I knew you couldn’t be a Londoner. I thought you talked something like an American, but I suppose the accent is about the same?” said Mrs. Morris.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

” Yes ; I’m an Australian. I lived there with my brother, but I came to London, and want to learn the laundry business.” <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Why I declared myself an Australian I hardly knew. I only thought I must say I was from some place far away, as Mrs. Morris might ask me for more particular references than I was prepared to give. It was fortunate for me that she knew nothing more about Australia than I knew, so that no embarrassment followed, except that, as I looked across the room, one of the ironing-tables seemed suddenly covered with stars and stripes that somehow worked themselves into letters that spelt “TRAITOR!”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Try as I would, I did not succeed in inspiring Mrs. Morris with any sense of my capabilities, but she took me to her husband to ask him what he thought about it. He was also doubtful as to whether I was strong enough, but I begged so hard to be allowed to show what I could do, that he said, “Suppose we try her, as she don’t want any wages,” and I was engaged.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I was told to come in next Tuesday, at the same hour at which I had agreed to go to Mrs. S\u2014\u2014. With two situations on hand, the work to commence at the same hour of the same day, it was clear I must give up one of them ; so I wrote to Mrs. S that I had decided not to take the place, as it would be too expensive to “live out” and not agreeable to “live in.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On Monday, having obtained Mrs. Johnstone’s address, I inspected her laundry, and found it to be a very proper sort of establishment, with a good washhouse, clean ironing-room, and a little yard for drying clothes. But I did not send my clothes to her that week ; I thought I would prefer to have them go to the Y\u2014\u2014 and Z\u2014\u2014 Sanitary Laundry, where I might have the novel experience of giving them my personal attention, so I had them sent there, and on Tuesday I was ready to commence my career as a laundry-girl.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\"A<\/a>
Flower-Girls<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n
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Home<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n
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\"Chapter<\/a>
Chapter 3<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

CHAPTER II.
AT WORK IN A “SANITARY LAUNDRY.”<\/h3>\n\n\n
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An atmosphere thick with steam and the odour of boiling soap-suds greeted me Tuesday morning, when I arrived at the Y\u2014\u2014 and Z\u2014\u2014 Sanitary Laundry to take my situation as a “learner.” Ironing-machine, wringer, and mangle were revolving at a rapid rate, propelled by the large engine. Water was sputtering from the boilers in which the clothes were being washed; a dozen girls and women were ironing, others were starching, sprinkling, or folding clothes, and a solitary water-soaked individual presided in one corner over some wash-tubs, applying a scrubbing-brush to clothes that could not be put into the machines. All the work was done in one immense room, floored over with cement, which was a succession of hills and hollows, more dangerous in aspect than any American pavement. One side of the room was taken up with an ironing-machine and ironing-tables, the other side with the engine, boilers, wringer, mangle, and wash-tubs. A corner, in the vicinity of the engine, was floored over with some boards, and fitted up with crude-looking tables and a half-dozen large boxes. It was called the “sortingroom,” and it was there that I was conducted by Mrs. Morris when I had removed my coat and hat and donned my working costume. Between the door and the sorting corner there stretched a large body of soapy water, several yards square, and in some places almost ankle-deep.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Pick your skirts up,” said Mrs. Morris, as she prepared to lead me across. I was on the point of asking for a boat and ferryman, when I saw her step into the water and walk bravely over; so, acting on the principle that the employee was no better than the employer, I also walked across, and landed with wet feet. I supposed that, of course, there had been an accident, that one of the boilers had turned upside down ; but I was afterwards told that the pond was always there. It was let out from the washing-machines in which the linen was boiled, and allowed to flow about the place until it found its way to a small sewer underneath a board, where it sunk into the ground, and its place was taken by more water from the next boiler of clothes. Taking into consideration the fact that I was in a ” sanitary ” laundry, it was only natural that I should have been surprised that there were no pipes for the purpose of carrying off this water.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the sorting-corner I was introduced to Miss Stebbins, the head packer and sorter, a position considered to be the most genteel in the business. It was there that I spent the first three days of my apprenticeship.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Until I was set to making figures with red cotton I had never thought of connecting needlework and laundry work. I had supposed my career as a needlewoman was ended when, just before I left Mrs. Allison’s, I darned up the contents of the mending-basket; but darning was as nothing compared with the making of figures with red cotton. With constantly-pricked fingers and agitated temper, I tried my best to stitch into the linen the numbers that Miss Stebbins instructed me to make, and, after much perseverance, I succeeded in learning all the figures except 5 and 6. Those two I would never have learned to make had not Janie, one of the girls, come to my assistance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Janie was a sort of general utility maid for the place. She was short and slightly lame, and one shoulder was somewhat lower than the other. Her face had a strangely-combined expression of childhood and womanhood upon it. She had large, wandering blue eyes that looked glad and sad by turns; and her hair hung down her back, half-braided, half-loose, after the fashion of the young girls who live in the East-End. She was an illustration of perpetual motion. She rarely sat down, and seldom stood still. There was an indescribable something about her that made her seem oddly at variance with her surroundings. She looked as if she should have painted pictures or made music for the world, instead of living in and breathing an atmosphere of soap-suds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was towards the end of the second day, when I had been vainly endeavouring to embroider the figure 6 on the corner of a serviette, that Janie came over to the sorting corner and accosted me with\u2014 ” Hi’ll ‘elp you, Miss Barnes.” She took my thimble and needle, and her nimble fingers soon worked out not only one 6 but a dozen of them on a piece of calico she picked up from the floor. She did not sit down, and her feet kept up a rat-tat-tat on the boards while she gave me my lesson.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When five o’clock came, and the girls were allowed a half-hour for tea, Janie invited me over to the other side of the room to share the large pot of tea that she had made for herself and older sister, who was one of the ironers, and at the rate of five farthings a shirt was sometimes able to earn three-and-six a day\u2014 more money than any other woman in the laundry was capable of earning. She poured the tea from the rusted pot into a thick cup minus a handle, and ordered me to drink it quickly, so that she might also have her tea, for there were only two cups for the three persons. Never medicine was more difficult to swallow than Janie’s tea. It tasted stale, and strong, and bitter, although quantities of queer-looking brown sugar had been put into it; but I drank it down heroically.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

During this half-hour the ironing-boards were turned into tea-tables, and, as Mr. and Mrs. Morris had gone into the house, which adjoined the laundry, for their own tea, the workers had a few minutes for social intercourse. A dark-skinned, demure-looking girl sat on a box by the collar-machine, over which she presided during working hours, and read the Church Missionary Intelligencer<\/em> and Church Missionary Gleaner<\/em>, while she sipped her tea. Janie whispered to me that it was Annie Martin, who was very religious, and wanted to become a missionary, but, on account of a defective education, was unable to pass the examination that was required.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Janie’s sister munched her bread-and-butter and read a penny novel at the same time; while Mrs. Bruckerstone, one of the older women, entertained the assemblage by giving a practical illustration of the difference between “piece-work” and “daywork.” She showed how, in doing piece-work, where the number of articles ironed governed the amount of pay, the worker moved about briskly and eagerly. Then, in illustration of day-work, she picked up an apron, shook it out, smoothed it on the board, patted it down, and took her time over ironing it. During that half-hour I became acquainted with all the women in the place, and was surprised to find that they were not at all like the description I had always heard of laundry-girls. I heard no profanity, no bad language, and no quarrelling. With the exception of a few older women, most of them were girls between the ages of fifteen and twenty-five. However, Janie told me that the girls employed in the Y\u2014\u2014 and Z\u2014\u2014 Laundry were superior to those engaged in the surrounding laundries. It seems they did scratch, and fight, and swear in a laundry only a mile distant; but Mr. and Mrs. Morris made it a point to keep their place rather “select” as regarded the characters of their employees.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When Janie and I returned to the marking, she regaled me with an account of all the accidents to which girls working in steam laundries were liable, and this in no way added to my peace of mind. It appeared that boilers sometimes blew up, although they had never done so in the Y\u2014\u2014 and Z\u2014\u2014 Laundry ; leather belts flew off the wheels and hit the bystander’s eyes; fingers were mashed, and sometimes clipped off, in working at the mangle and wringer. Only recently one of the girls had been taken away to the hospital, where she had been obliged to have three of her fingers amputated, because they had slipped into the rubber rollers of the wringer. But Janie declared this affair was all due to carelessness, as the girl was looking about and talking, instead of attending to her work. One of Janie’s fingers, I noticed, was flattened, but it had not been done at the laundry. She had been chopping wood, and hit it with an axe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Hi’m always in the wars, Miss Barnes,” said she. “When Hi were a baiby, Hi were dropped on the paivement, and the bruise went hinside instead of hout. That’s what maikes me laime.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“How did you get the scar on your forehead ?” I asked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Hi fell on the fender.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Poor little Janie! she really had been through the wars. If there was any trouble with the girls or the customers, she was always sent to make it right. If anything got lost, she must hunt until she found it, though having nothing to do with the losing of it. If delinquent customers refused to pay their bills, Janie was sent to make the collections, and usually returned with the money. A few days before I went to the laundry, Janie had, in packing the clean clothes, mixed the tablecloths of two customers, who, it happened, were near neighbours and deadly enemies. Janie, finding out her mistake, went to rectify it, and one of the neighbours, thinking the exchange had been made purposely, took Janie and shook her until she was at last obliged to drop the tablecover she had brought and run back to the laundry for dear life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Don’t you get tired, running about so much from eight in the morning until eight at night ? ” I asked her one day, when she had just come in from collecting long-overdue accounts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“No; Hi’m never tired. Hi like to work all the time. Hi don’t like Sundays, because Hi ‘av’ to be quiet.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Don’t you like to read on Sunday?” I asked her.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Yes, sometimes. Hi always reads the People and the Quiver<\/em>; but Hi’d rather work.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I was beginning to get intensely interested in this strange species of laundry-girl, who, as she one day told me, would be “haighteen years hold in Haugust,” and was earning “haight” shillings a week. At first I was scarcely able to understand the Cockney dialect over which she was complete mistress; but by degrees I became accustomed to it, and I was really in danger of getting to talk Cockney myself. Several times I discovered her looking curiously at me, and one day she asked me if I had had much “schooling.” I answered that I did not know as much as I wished I did; and she began to consider how she might help me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“When Hi first saw you, Miss Barnes,” said she, “Hi said to myself,’ She’s a nice young \u2014'” There Janie stopped, and was lost in meditation. I had half-expected she was going to speak of me as a “young lady ;” but no. She appeared to be thinking for a time as to what was the correct word, and then she ended with “person”! However, I had become used to being called a “young person ” when I was in service, so I took no offence at Janie’s disinclination to place me out of what might be my proper sphere.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On Thursday I was wondering what could have become of the clothes I had sent to the laundry, when Janie unpinned a parcel, and informed me that it had been sent by a new customer, and all the pieces needed marking. They were my own personal property.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“There ought to be some other way of marking clothes, especially the fine ones,” I said, as I picked up my best new handkerchief and proceeded to number it. Janie insisted that red cotton could not hurt anything, but I was of a different opinion. It stood to reason that the coarse cotton must soon tear holes in fine linen, but Janie declared that everything must be marked, and she concluded that as it was for a new customer, and she wanted it done nicely, she had better do it herself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The system of identifying the different articles at the London laundries might certainly be improved. In America the Chinamen have a way of attaching labels by a single thread, which is cut after the clothes have been ironed. This is certainly a much better plan than the use of the disfiguring and ruinous red cotton, although even this trouble might be avoided if all clothes were stamped with the owner’s full name before being sent to the laundry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I one day asked Janie why the place was called a “sanitary laundry.” From what I had seen of the Y\u2014\u2014 and Z\u2014\u2014 Laundry, I could not discover that it was intended to have any very sanitary effects upon the girls that were employed there. Janie thought it was probably sanitary because it was worked by steam, and no chemicals were used. Other laundries used chloride of lime and carbolic acid to whiten the clothes, but the Y\u2014\u2014 and Z\u2014\u2014 people avoided everything but soda and soap. However, this explanation was hardly satisfactory to me, especially as every morning, and several times during the day, I was obliged to walk through the water from the boilers, and I was getting a sore throat in consequence. It seemed to me there should have been some outlet for the steam, which was sometimes nearly suffocating, and must surely affect the health of the girls, though when I complained of it they assured me I would get used to it in time, and would not notice it. The one room served not only for a laundry, but a small portion of it was used for stabling purposes for the two horses that hauled the delivery waggons. Amid the din of the machinery and the whizzing of the steam, the sound of their pawing and neighing could be heard. When they were taken to and from the waggon, they walked directly through the laundry door, and indeed their so-called stable was only partitioned off on one side, and they were in plain sight all the time. The poor animals must have suffered intensely from the steam and heat of the place. And all this in a “sanitary laundry”!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I will admit that I did not hear any of the girls complain of the inconveniences I have mentioned. They probably saw nothing incongruous in a laundry and stable combined in one! But I am sure that, had the poor beasts been able to talk, they would have bad some objections to offer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When Thursday afternoon came, I began to grow tired of marking and sorting, and I begged Mrs. Morris to let me show my skill in ironing. It was difficult to convince her that I had any talents in that direction. She thought I had better keep to the sorting for several weeks before I attempted ironing. “You must not expect to learn everything in a week. It takes months to learn anything about the laundry trade,” she said to me, after I had requested a change of occupation. I told my troubles to Janie, and she, too, laughed at the idea of my leaving off sorting when I had not worked three days. I think I must have looked particularly downhearted at this, for Janie suddenly changed her mind, and said\u2014<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Never mind, Miss Barnes ; Hi’ll hask Mis’ Morris about it in the morning.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n
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\"Chapter<\/a>
Chapter 1<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n
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\"\"<\/a>
Home<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n
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\"Chapter<\/a>
Chapter 3<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

CHAPTER III.
A CONTEST WITH FLAT-IRONS.<\/h3>\n\n\n
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\"listen\"<\/a>
listen<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

ON Friday morning I was sent to the “preparing-table” to sprinkle and fold; some servants’ print dresses. From a distance the work had looked easy enough, but Agnes, the head preparer, who, by the way, bore a striking resemblance to the pictures of the Grand Duchess of Hesse, taught me that there was a special method of distributing the water, and a particular twist and turn to give the sleeves and bodice, to say nothing of the compactness and firmness with which they must be folded up. I was impressed with the kind treatment I received from these girls, who looked upon me as a beginner from their own ranks. Not one but tried to help me over the hard places of my first week’s experience, and, despite the awkwardness that I must have displayed in everything I attempted, they tried to encourage me, assuring me that I would get used to things in time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While Agnes was telling me how hard it had been at first for her to learn the art of shirt-starching, I noticed that an animated conversation was being carried On in another part of the room between Mrs. Morris and Janie. Then Mrs. Morris came over to me, and said she had decided to let me iron a little, and perhaps I would succeed better with it than I had done with marking.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So an extra table was brought into the laundry and fitted up with ironing tools, and, as Mrs. Morris handed me a bag of handkerchiefs, she said\u2014<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Now, mind you don’t pay attention to Mrs. Bruckerstone, that stout woman that’s beside you. She’s the biggest gossip in the place, and will ask you no end of questions about yourself, and tell you all she knows about the other girls.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then I was seized with an inclination to cultivate Mrs. Bruckerstone’s acquaintance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mrs. Morris led me to the stove, took up an iron and held it with one hand close to her face.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“That’s the way to tell if it’s hot enough,” she explained.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“But suppose the iron should slip and hit me in the face?” I asked, horrified already at the dangers that loomed in my path.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“You must take your chances about that. How else would you know the iron was right?” she answered.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Why, try it with my fingers, like this. I always did it so at home;” and then I illustrated the way I had managed with the family ironing in Australia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Well, that’s not right; but you can do it that way, if you like,” was her reply, as she went back to her own table, where she was always surrounded with books and bills.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I thought then that Mrs. Morris had concluded that a girl so afraid of burning her face would hardly do for laundry work, and I had not a doubt but she would tell me so later on; but I went to the table assigned me, and commenced on the handkerchiefs without any regrets. When I had finished my first piece, I thought it time to open conversation with Mrs. Bruckerstone, who stood near me, ironing children’s frocks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“I think you iron beautifully,” I remarked, as she returned from the clothes-horse, where she had hung an embroidered baby-dress, which really did her great credit. I could see that I had put myself in Mrs. Bruckerstone’s good graces at once, as she replied\u2014<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“When ye’ve been at it long as me, Hi ‘ope ye’ll hiron as well. Hi’ve been in the business twenty years.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I observed that, if I ever learned to iron half as well as she did, I’d be content, and then we were friends.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I had supposed I knew how to iron handkerchiefs, but Mrs. Bruckerstone said I needed some instructions, and, though I did very well for a beginner, my method was not quite correct. They must be ironed from hem to hem, and folded together with the red cotton mark on the outside, so that the packer would know to whom they belonged.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

” Where ye from ? ” she asked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

” Near Oxford Circus.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“That’s a long waiys off. Must cost ye a pretty penny for trine fare. Ye ought to find lodgings hereabouts.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Yes, I’m thinking of doing that if I get on all right. I’m only here on trial now.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Going to be a shirt-hironer or finery-hironer?”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“I want to learn the whole business.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Then, Hi suppose, yer idee is to be a managress,” said Mrs. Bruckerstone, with the accent on the last syllable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At that time Mrs. Morris was not in hearing, and all the girls began to tell how they expected to spend the coming Bank Holiday, which was Whit Monday. When several had declared their intentions of going to fairs and “theayters,” Mrs. Bruckerstone turned to me, and asked how I should celebrate the day. I replied that I thought I should go to Hyde Park.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Got a young man?” was her next question.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Oh, yes,” I answered.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“What do he do for a living?”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I was about to say I did not know, when I thought it would hardly do to have a young man and confess to ignorance of his occupation, so I said\u2014<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“He’s a soldier.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“That’s nice,” said Mrs. Bruckerstone, approvingly. “Agnes’s young man’s a soldier, too. What’s the naime of yours ? “<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I was getting into deep waters, and I began to flounder, but I wanted to hold on a little longer, so I said-\u2014<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“His name is Jones.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I thought that would be a perfectly harmless name, but it transpired it was the very one I should have avoided, for my co-worker said\u2014<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Why’s that’s the naime of Agnes’s young man. Hi wonder if they could be the saime! What’s his first naime ?”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The waters were getting deeper and deeper. I dared not invent a first name, lest I should chance to hit upon the one that belonged to Agnes’s young man. I pictured to myself how, in such an event, that young woman might be transformed from my interested friend into a bitter foe. Then the thought of Australia again saved me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“They couldn’t be the same,” I said to Mrs. Bruckerstone ; ” my Mr. Jones is a soldier in Australia, and I haven’t seen him for a year. I didn’t say I was going to the park with him.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That set matters right, and I was thankful to have escaped so easily.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Ye won’t make much money at the rate yer hironing,” remarked my companion, when, after having stood at the table three hours, I counted my handkerchiefs, and found I had ironed just thirty-four. I was so tired, I could hardly stand. I had several times burned my fingers, and once nearly fallen against the stove. Handkerchiefs were paid for at the rate of a penny a dozen, so, had I been a paid worker, I would have earned less than a penny an hour.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The bag of handkerchiefs was empty, and I felt I must rest from my labours. It wanted fifteen minutes till dinner-time, and I wondered how I should ever walk to the queer little restaurant where I bought my midday meal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Suppose ye hiron this pinafore for me,” said Mrs. Bruckerstone, taking from a hamper a much embroidered garment, and laying it on my table. “Hiron the needlework on the wrong side, and don’t crease it in the middle.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“I’ll do it after dinner. I’m so tired, I must rest,” I protested ; but, looking up, I saw Mrs. Morris’s eyes upon me, and, in order to avoid further conversation with the woman, I concluded I had better do the pinafore.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When at the end of twenty minutes I passed it to my teacher for inspection, she seemed surprised that I had done it so well, and announced her conviction that I would make a “finery-hironer,” though I was rather slow.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Ye can ‘elp me again this afternoon,” she said, as she pinned on her bonnet preparatory to going home for dinner.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

All that afternoon I regretted having shown so much skill in the way of pinafore-ironing, for Mrs. Morris told me I might go on and help Mrs. Bruckerstone, only not to talk with her.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After the dinner-hour, another pinafore was handed to me. My burnt fingers were smarting, and my feet were aching from walking to and from the stove. It took me an hour to finish that piece of work, and Mrs. Bruckerstone said it was not done so well as the first. Still, she was not discouraged. Two more pinafores were given me, and had it not been for the fact that I knew she was paid by the day, and not by the piece, I would have suspected she was trying to make money out of me. Finery-ironing was paid for at the rate of three shillings a day. It was done as day work for the reason that some articles were more elaborate than others, and so no average time for doing them up could be calculated upon. In such cases, to pay a stipulated sum for each piece would have been unfair to both employer and employee. Shirt-ironers, I had been told, often added to their own earnings by the work turned out by learners, who, desirous of becoming proficient in the art of polishing, often “gave time ” to the extent of several weeks, and sometimes two or three months. What presentable work they did was counted with that of their instructor, who in this way often made a shilling a day extra money. For this reason “piece-workers” were always ready to take pupils.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But I knew Mrs. Bruckerstone could have no such deeply-laid scheme in regard to myself, and I had no doubt that she gave me pinafores to iron because of a genuine desire to help me, although I did not fully appreciate her interest in me. When, at four o’clock, I was still struggling over the third piece, having in the meantime several times sat down on an upturned hamper in order to rest, she began to lose her patience, which heretofore had indeed been Joblike both in quantity and quality.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

” Hi see yer not strong enough for a fineryhironer,” said she, as for the fifth or sixth time I returned to my position on the hamper. “Hare ye good at figgers?”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I confessed to ignorance of mathematics, and poor Mrs. Bruckerstone looked disheartened, as she replied ;<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Hi were going to saiy ye might better work at books in a shop or factory.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then pointing to some nurses’ sleeves which one of the women was ironing, she continued\u2014<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“That’s the kind of place ye want. Be a ‘ospital nurse. Ye looks fit for that, kinder quiet and genteel.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Hospital patients are too cross and fidgety. I wouldn’t like to be a nurse.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then she grew angry, and declared it was not what I liked, but what I must do. I was a failure at laundry work, and, if I hadn’t “schooling ” enough to figure, nothing was left for me but the hospital.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At that I stopped resting, and changed my iron preparatory to going on with the pinafore. At teatime it was finished, and Mrs. Bruckerstone exhibited her lively interest in my welfare by informing the girls that I had been two hours ironing an apron, working five minutes and resting ten throughout the performance; in the face of which she asked their opinion as to whether or not I was likely to succeed in the profession I had chosen. They all agreed that laundry work was not my forte<\/em>, and they put their heads together to think of some other calling which lay more in the line of my peculiar abilities for resting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One girl suggested that I go into a coffee-house, when Janie’s sister interposed that such a situation would be too rough. Someone else asked me how I would like to be a barmaid ; but, when Mrs. Bruckerstone gave the information that barmaids had often to keep books as well as pour out drinks, that idea was given up. Dressmaking was spoken of, but Miss Stebbins, who had seen some of my early efforts at marking, and did not know of my lately-attained skill through Janie’s instructions, expressed it as her opinion that I was not likely to succeed in any department of needlework. Attendance in a baker’s shop next came up for discussion, and then Janie, who all this time had been keeping up a quiet thinking, announced that she thought a place in a nice confectioner’s in the West-End would be just the thing for me. All the girls coincided with her in this, and so they settled it among themselves that I was to dispense cream chocolates and peppermint drops from behind a counter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So great had been the anxiety exhibited in regard to my future, and so earnest did the girls seem in advising me how to gain a livelihood, that, before teatime was over, even I had become terrified at the outlook, and had worked myself up into the “alone-in-London” state of feeling. For the moment I had a vague apprehension of impending misfortunes, but Mr. Morris’s shrill call of “Half-past five!” which sent every girl to her work, brought me back to my senses, and, telling the girls that I thought I would try the confectioner’s shop, I accompanied Mrs. Bruckerstone to the ironing-table, and proceeded to iron the fourth and last garment. Then Mrs. Morris sent Janie with some towels and stockings, with the message that, when I had ironed them, I might come to her, as she had other work that she wished me to do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Towels and stockings completed, I was again almost overcome with “that tired feeling,” and I went to Mrs. Morris with the hope that there might be no incompatibility between a chair and the work she had picked out for me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She and Janie were examining a large counterpane which had been torn in the wash by too energetic boiling. “Suppose we red cotton hit, Mis’ Morris?” said Janie; “that will maike them think hit was done before hit caime here.” By that time I had learned that to “red cotton” anything meant to put a few large stitches in an article that had been torn before its arrival at the laundry, and I thought Janie’s idea of disposing of the torn counterpane a very brilliant one.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Here, Miss Barnes, you can sit down and darn up all these holes,” said Mrs. Morris, handing the counterpane to me. Wishing I were back at the ironing-board, I took the quilt and sat down to needlework and despair. At first, like the bad workwoman that I was, I complained of my tools. The cotton was too coarse for the needle, and the thimble loaned me was far too large. I declared I could not sew under such conditions, and when Janie, out of the kindness of her heart, removed them, by lending me a large needle and a small thimble, my troubles were only increased. When done, the last state of the counterpane was no improvement on the first; and when I handed it to Janie she looked first at my handiwork, then at me, and, with a pitifully resigned expression on her face, said\u2014<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“You’ll ‘ave to taike it hout, Miss Barnes, and Hi’ll do it when Mis’ Morris goes into the ‘ouse.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was then that my affection for Janie reached its highest point, and I determined that her kindness to me should not go unrewarded.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“How long did you go to school, Janie?” I asked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Hi went through the seventh standard, Miss Barnes ; then Hi ‘ad to work. How far did you go in books ?”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Oh, a little farther than that,” I answered evasively.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Hit’s too bad you can’t teach in a Board School, Miss Barnes. Do you think you’ll get a plaice at a confectioner’s? You might do that work, but som’ow I can’t ‘elp worrying. Hit seems so ‘ard for you to learn things!”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Janie went on with her packing with a far-away look in her eyes, as though she were trying to think up some way by which I might be made capable of earning a livelihood. I also fell into a reverie concerning Janie. Unlike myself, it did not seem hard for her to “learn things,” and I pictured her nervous little fingers flying over the keys of the typewriter, while I dictated to her the results of my future journalistic investigations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\"Chapter<\/a>
Chapter 2<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n
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Home<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n
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Chapter 4<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

CHAPTER IV.
THE DAY OF MY RESIGNATION.<\/h3>\n\n\n
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SATURDAY morning was the busiest time of all the week. The ironing was to be finished, and the clothes folded, packed in hampers, and delivered. It was a day of little rest for the horses, but they probably enjoyed the pulling and hauling in the fresh air much better than breathing the steam-laden atmosphere of their so-called “stable.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The skill displayed by Miss Stebbins and Janie in telling at a moment’s inquiry just which numbers were meant for each of the customers was a source of wonder to me. The Y\u2014\u2014 and Z\u2014\u2014 Laundry had a good “trade,” not only in the various parts of London, but in several of the surrounding suburbs. Between four and five hundred regular customers were enrolled on the books, so that the numbers which marked the clothes ranged all the way from one upwards. To be able to know five hundred people by number as well as by name seemed as marvellous a matter to me as the much-discussed dexterity of the head waiters in Chicago hotels, who can hand out the hat that belongs to each of two or three hundred men, and never make a mistake, though the hats are all alike.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When one of the loads was nearly ready for delivery, I heard rather an interesting discussion between Mrs. Morris and John, the driver. I learned that the securing of credit with his laundryman depended much upon the neighbourhood in which a man lived, the number of servants he kept, and, above all, the quantity and the quality of the shirts he sent to the wash. The customer who soiled fourteen shirts in a week was trusted implicitly, while he who sent only seven or less, with the brand of a less fashionable furnishing house upon them, was not given so long a time. Then there was the customer who wore coloured shirts during the week and white ones on Sundays and Bank Holidays, who must needs pay for his goods on delivery. Some of the accounts were allowed to run from three months to a year, others were required to be settled monthly, and with still others the rule was “pay down.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Shall I leave this ‘amper, ma’am, if they doesn’t pay?” asked John of Mrs. Morris, as he shouldered a large basket and started for the waggon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Well, it’s a new customer,” said Mrs. Morris ; “but they live in a good street, and all the clothes are of the finest quality. Yes, just leave them, and ask if they want a laundry-book.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“But they rents their ‘ouse furnished, ma’am ; the ‘ousemaid told me so,” persisted John.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Oh, that’s different! Better collect the money, then. There’s no knowing how long they’ll stop there!” answered Mrs. Morris.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It seemed that the people who rented furnished houses were allowed no quarter at the Y\u2014\u2014 and Z\u2014\u2014 Laundry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I also discovered that the keepers of laundries knew quite as much about the private affairs of their customers as do the butcher and baker and other tradespeople. John had many a tale to tell of certain strange things that housemaid, cook, and butler related to him concerning the home-life of master and mistress. The kitchen-door confidences that passed between him and the servants, when he made his weekly “rounds,”sometimes made entertaining gossip for the laundry-girls. When I heard some of this interesting talk, it occurred to me that it might be as well if all areas were fitted up with some sort of patent lifts, by which transactions with tradesmen could be carried on at a distance. It would certainly save much time, and family affairs might then be kept more closely at home.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But, so far as Mrs. Morris was concerned, the only personal interest she took in her customers was in regard to the question of their ability to pay their accounts. She was one of the most clever and indefatigable business women I had ever seen. No one in the laundry worked as hard or as many hours in the day as herself. She inspected every department, and there was not a branch of the business with which she was not familiar. She had piercing black eyes, that showed her capabilities in the way of bargain-getting, and her nose was of the kind that physiognomists say denotes acquisitiveness. She was short and wiry, and, though under thirty years of age, she was more round-shouldered than many women of sixty. However, in this respect she resembled her employees, for there was not a straight-backed girl among them, and in some instances their shoulders were so bent that it amounted almost to a deformity. A few of the women were positively humped, and they made an uncanny sight as they stood over the ironing-boards. I spoke of it one day to Janie, and she replied, “Yes, Miss Barnes, all laundry-girls gets that waiy;” and I have since observed that stooping shoulders are a peculiarity among them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mr. Morris, with the assistance of a small boy, attended to the management of the engine and the machinery, while his wife overlooked everything else. She was even able to take his place if he was absent for a day. Both, though of somewhat better education than those who served them, had evidently sprung from the ranks of the lower classes, and their ambition to get on in the world was boundless. Believing in the proverb, “If you want anything done, do it yourself,” they worked early and late, scarcely taking time to eat. Every morning, at seven o’clock, Mrs. Morris was in the laundry to see that all was in readiness for the girls to commence at eight. She breakfasted at half-past seven, and fifteen minutes later she was again at her post, where she remained until dinner-time. She ate dinner in twenty minutes, and was back before any of the girls had returned. At night, when the laundry was closed, she took her books to the house, and it was sometimes as late as one or two o’clock in the morning when she had them settled. On one occasion, during the week I was there, she told me she had run thirty pairs of curtains through the ironing-machine after ten o’clock at night. She was not in any way unkind or unjust with the women she employed, rather putting herself on an equality with them, and demanding no work from them that she was not able and willing to perform herself. If any heavy lifting was to be done, she was always foremost in the fray.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On Saturday, I noticed that she examined every piece of clothes before it was returned to the customers, and, if any article was badly gotten up, it was washed and ironed over again, even though she was obliged to do it herself. She was scrupulously conscientious as to the manner in which the most unimportant part of the work was performed, and she would not, under any consideration, allow injurious chemicals to be used in the washing, no matter how much they might lighten the labour or lessen time. She carefully measured the amount of soda that was put into the washers, and the soap used was of the best quality. Any articles from which the colour had been taken out in the washing or boiling were laid aside for her special attention, and she restored lost blues, pinks, and other colours by dipping them into a solution of acetic acid. If, through careless handling in the laundry, spots of iron-rust got on the linen, she immediately applied salts of lemon to remove them. When goods already iron-rusted were brought to her, she charged a penny for each treatment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, there was one thing she allowed that rather surprised me : that was the stringing of several collars and cuffs together before putting them in the washer. It was a good plan for keeping each person’s collars separated from the others, but it had a tendency to tear out the button-holes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The girls at the Y\u2014\u2014 and Z\u2014\u2014 Laundry, unlike those employed in most places, were allowed to have their own work done at a slightly cheaper rate than that of the ordinary customers. Saturday afternoon I watched Janie hand to the women the small parcels containing their own personal property, and I wondered how girls earning from three to twenty shillings a week could be willing to pay out four or five pence for the doing up of a white skirt or ruffled blouse. Some of their bills amounted to over a shilling.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mrs. Bruckerstone had taken to the laundry, early in the week, a baby’s bonnet, which was supposed to belong to someone in her family, so that the usual reduction was made in the price of it. Over the ironing of that bonnet there had been a near approach to a fight. The bonnet, with several others, was given to one of the women to iron, and when it was finished and hung on the horse the appearance did not please Mrs. Bruckerstone, so she got out her own bonnet-board and re-ironed it, saying it belonged to a neighbour of hers, and therefore must be done up extra well. The woman who had at first ironed it took the insult so much to heart that she turned informer, and reported to Mrs. Morris that Mrs. Bruckerstone had given out that she was the only proper “bunnit-hironer” in the place, and that, moreover, Mrs. Bruckerstone had been attempting to get reduced rates for her neighbours by passing off their goods as her own.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then Mrs. Morris announced that all neighbours must be charged full price, and Mrs. Bruckerstone’s face wore a crestfallen look, when, as she was paying: her bill, an additional penny was charged for the unlucky bonnet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At a little after two o’clock there was a lull in the motions of the machinery, which showed that no more washing would be done that week. Each ironer continued to work until her particular lot of things was finished, and at about half-past three, all the girls were paid off for the week. The lowest wages were those earned by the smaller girls of about fifteen or sixteen years of age, who attended to the smoothing of towels and table-linen by putting them in and pulling them out of the large ironing-machine. Their portion was from three to six shillings a week. Agnes, the preparer, received eleven shillings ; Annie Martin, who stood at the collar-machine, was paid fourteen shillings; Mrs. Bruckerstone had three shillings a day for the time she had worked, which amounted to about five days ; Janie’s sister and her companions in shirt-ironing drew from fifteen to<\/p>\n\n\n\n

twenty-three shillings, according to their talents ; the girl who presided over the washtub received twelve shillings, and Miss Stebbins had fifteen shillings. Miss Stebbins was the only girl among them who did not live “home.” She resided in apartments near the laundry, and for board and lodging paid out ten of the fifteen shillings. Saturday nights she went to the country to stop until Monday, the train fare costing her another shilling, so she had four shillings left over for clothes and extras. When paid off, all the women, except Janie and Miss Stebbins, left the laundry to remain away until the following Tuesday, and as they went out of the door they were talking of various plans for Bank Holiday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The regular hours were from eight until eight, with twenty minutes for eleven-o’clock luncheon, an hour for dinner, and half an hour for tea. I had several times heard the girls discussing the proposed amendment to the Factory Act; but among them the idea seemed to prevail that the new law was to be an eight-hour law, which would reduce their hours of labour from eight in the morning until six at night. Those women who received their wages by the day or the week were in favour of having the hours reduced, while those who did piecework preferred to put in their time as they wished. This feeling was, of course, quite natural, for the ironers did not usually commence work until late Monday afternoon, and finished the week at a little after two on Saturday, thus making only five full days in the week. However, the regular hours at the Y\u2014\u2014 and Z\u2014\u2014 Laundry were about what the Factory Act demands, so that Mrs. Morris knew she had no cause to trouble herself about that phase of the matter. Quite often many of the girls were obliged to work overtime until nine or ten at night, but I was told that in such cases the overtime was not paid for \u2014 most of the employees receiving a weekly wage, and it was expected that they would remain in the place until the work required of them was finished. So far as I could discover, few of them had any complaints to make in regard to the hours. Some of them had been employed in laundries where the hours were much longer, Annie Martin having recently left a situation where the regular hours were from eight in the morning until eleven at night.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Janie and Miss Stebbins were the two most often called upon to stop late, and were always the last to leave. While the other girls had a part, if not all, of the Saturday half-holiday, they were expected to stop with Mrs. Morris until the last parcel of goods was placed in the delivery waggon. On the Saturday preceding Bank Holiday it was after seven o’clock when the two girls quitted their posts, but both of them attended to their duties cheerfully, and took it all as a matter of course. Janie, according to her own statement, was not tired, only a little “muddled,” and she regretted that such a thing as a Bank Holiday should exist, preferring rather to go to her work the next Monday as usual.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On the whole, the girls were a fairly contented set, although the inconveniences under which they did their work was a trial to those who had held situations in more comfortably arranged places. Nearly all of them objected to the cement floor, which, they said, made their feet ache. It certainly would have entailed but little expense on the part of the proprietor to have had at least a portion of the room boarded over ; and the ironers, who were constantly obliged to walk to and from the stove, would have greatly appreciated a wooden floor. Some of the machinery, too, needed fencing in to make it less dangerous to those who were continually passing so very close to it as to make it highly probable that their skirts would be caught when the wheels were in motion. During my first two days I several times very narrowly escaped coming in collision with the hydro-extractor. There should also have been an arrangement for carrying off the steam, the odour from which was most sickening, and the need of an air-propeller, or fanning-machine, was very apparent. The constantly wet floor was another thing that must have been prejudicial to the health of those in the place.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Indeed, taken as a whole, the sanitary conditions of the laundry could hardly have been worse ; and, if the proposed amendment is passed, some of its restrictive clauses will readily apply to the state of things at the Y\u2014\u2014 and Z\u2014\u2014 Laundry. It is no excuse for Mr. and Mrs. Morris to say that they have only lately gone into business, and cannot be expected to have all the comforts and conveniences of long-established laundries. Decency, as well as the laws of health, would demand that a few pounds be expended in fitting up the place to make it properly habitable for themselves, their workpeople, and their horses. The one large room in which the work is now done should be divided into at least three apartments: wash-house, sorting-room, and ironing-room.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When I engaged at the laundry, I had expected to spend between eight and ten days there; but Saturday brought me such a weariness of the flesh that I decided I had better resign my situation before Mrs. Morris should have time to inform me that she did not consider me up to the mark for a laundry-worker.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“I’m afraid I’m not strong enough for this sort of thing, Mrs. Morris,” I said, as, standing with Janie in the doorway, I bade her good-night.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“I was going to speak of that myself,” she replied. ” Somehow, you don’t seem to have very much energy, and I would advise you to go into an easier kind of business.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Energy! If she had only known the large amount of that article it had required to keep me in her laundry for five days, I am sure she would have changed her mind.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Miss Barnes is going to a confectioner’s, Mis’ Morris,” said Janie, in a sort of defensive way, as though she thought I needed a champion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So my brief and very chequered career as a laundry-girl ended; but, not having yet gained as much knowledge of the work and the workers as I wished, I determined to spend the following week among the laundry-girls in different parts of London, to discover if, after all, they were such a formidable and badly-treated class of individuals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

CHAPTER V.
“SOAP-SUDS ISLAND” AND THE EAST-END.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

ACTON is a village of tubs and clothes-lines. So many of its inhabitants are engaged in laundry-work, in a large and small way, that the place has been given the name of “Soap-suds Island.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On Tuesday afternoon I went to Acton to make the acquaintance of the girls, whom I had heard from many quarters were typical representatives of their class.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I waited for some time outside the gates of one of the large laundries, where many young girls were employed. At a little after seven o’clock the gates were swung back, and I found myself in a crowd of some forty or fifty women of all sizes and ages. I opened conversation by asking one of them the way to the station, and then I explained that I had come out to visit the laundry and wanted to interview them in regard to their opinion of the application of the Factory Act to laundries. They became interested at once, and, though some of them were woefully ignorant as to just what the Factory Act was, they one and all declared themselves in favour of shorter hours. I learned that at some of the laundries the girls commenced at six o’clock in the morning and worked until between seven and nine at night, according to whether or not it was a busy part of the season. At half-past seven they were allowed a half-hour for breakfast, which most of them carried with them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A little later I was invited to visit the Working Girls’ Club, an organisation of laundry-girls started a few years ago by a number of ladies who became interested in helping them. There I introduced myself properly, told the girls how I had spent a week in a laundry, and that, wanting to know more about those engaged in the work, had come out to Acton. The fact that I had done laundry-work, no matter for what purpose, put me in their good graces at once, and they treated me as one of themselves, inviting me to become a member of the club by the payment of fourpence a month, the fee required of each member. The little room in which they met had been very comfortably fitted up. One corner at the back served for a sort of pantry, where tea was made on a small paraffin stove, and served to the girls by two young ladies who had been appointed to be their entertainers for the evening.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I was told that it was not until some time after the club was started that the girls could be induced to say “Miss ” and “Mrs.” in addressing the officers, among whom were some of the best-known ladies in Acton. At the time of my visit, however, they had become accustomed to showing a certain amount of respect to their superiors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Hi there, miss, I’ve fetched a copper and wants caike and tea,” called out one girl to a quiet young lady who was boiling the kettle in the back of the room.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Very well, Lucy,” she answered smilingly, without a sign of annoyance, and then a cup of tea and box of cake were brought to the table, where about twenty girls were gathered for what they termed “a bite.” It was an interesting thing to me to watch this young lady taking the part of a servant and administering to the wants of the laundry-girls, who, despite the amusing familiarity of that “Hi there, miss,” tried to the best of their ability to show proper respect by saying, “Thank ‘ee, miss,” when their orders were carried out. I joined them in their late tea, paying the stipulated price, a halfpenny for cake and the same for a cup of tea, including milk and sugar.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The girls poured their tea into their saucers, and setting the cups on the table, made ugly rings on the red cover.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“See, you soil the table-cloth, putting the cups on it like that,” I suggested to the girl who sat next me, drinking her tea from a saucer, while she held the dripping spoon in front of her.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Yes, miss, I sees it,” she answered, and then turning to her companions, called out, “It’s a shaime, girls. The laidy says we’s spiling the cloth with the tea-cups. We must hold ’em in the other ‘and when we drinks out the saucer.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I noticed that most of them were very young, probably under eighteen. Their costumes were of the coster order, but many, if properly dressed, would have been good-looking young women.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After tea, the lady who had served it was requested to “maike some tunes on the pianer,” which she did with a right good will. Then the place was turned into a ball-room, and as each girl chose a partner, I was invited to “taike a turn.” With first one and then another of the girls I joined them in their schottische to the tune of “Knocked ’em in the Old Kent Road,” many of the girls singing as well as dancing. Then followed a polka to “Ta-ra-ra-boomde-ay,” and the programme ended with waltzing “After the ball was over,” for which dance I had offered me a choice of a dozen partners.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was then nearly half-past nine, and, as one of the girls declared “the young laidy couldn’t go to the staition alone,” I left the club-room with an escort of five girls, who showed the liveliest interest in taking proper care of me. All the way to the station they kept up a continual talking on various subjects. They told me that a few of the girls at one of the laundries had lately joined the Salvation Army, and that there had been a “grait chainge” in them. Then they discussed the “Factory Hact,” and begged me to use my influence in their behalf. They were not in favour of the hours that obliged them to be up before a little after five every morning and hurry off to work at six without even so much as a cup of tea or coffee to stay them until the breakfast-hour.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Once, when we had nearly reached the station, a crowd of boys in front of a public-house began throwing pebbles. One of my protectors threw back a missile with the injunction\u2014<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Better behaive there ! Carn’t yer see we’ve got a young laidy with us?” and I could not help thinking what a pity they could not have a “young laidy ” with them oftener. Who could foresee the results that such a state of things might bring about!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As my train moved out from the station, the girls ran along the platform as far as they could, giving me numerous farewell messages, and the last I heard from them was\u2014<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Saiy, miss, don’t forget to maike ’em give us that Hact you told about.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Having an invitation to visit their club on Sunday that I might inspect them in what they called their “church togs,” I made them another call on that day, and found every girl arrayed in her Sunday best Cotton velvet was in great requisition, blue the favourite colour, and long plumed hats the ruling things in headgear. In the jewellery line heavy silver chains and lockets and threepenny-bit ear-rings were greatly in demand. Sunday afternoons they were allowed their tea without payment, the cost being covered by the subscription fee of fourpence a month. When I arrived, most of them had just returned from church, and had sundry original remarks to make about the service and the people in attendance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So I had mixed with the Acton girls, and suffered no bodily injury or moral contamination in consequence! I did not go with the expectation of finding a great degree of refinement among them, and I was in no way disappointed. It is true that I may have met only the best of them, and I have no doubt that, had I remained long among them, some unpleasant knowledge would have been brought to me ; but, on the whole, considering the circumstances of their bringing up and their early surroundings, I could not see that they were deserving of the opprobrium that I had heard cast upon them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some time afterwards, accompanied by a young woman, who was herself a laundress, and had been appointed to make a report of the opinions of laundry employers and workers in regard to the Factory Act, I made a trip among the smaller establishments of the East-End. A few of the employers had not heard of the proposed amendment, and did not understand what it was about; but on general principles they were opposed to it, and ordered us out of their shops. In Brick Lane, Whitechapel, I visited a laundry, that took in the shirts and “starched work” from the inhabitants of the neighbouring streets. Friday was the busy day at this place, for the reason that many of the customers were Jews, who, no matter how they dressed on other days, were always careful to garb themselves in clean white shirts for their Sabbath day. The proprietor of the laundry told me that quite often, when the work had not been finished up Friday night, some of his customers would come into the shop early Saturday morning, and, with their coats buttoned up to their throats, wait about until their shirts were ironed, and then request the privilege of putting them on before going out into the street. This was the sort of place, too, where the young man who owns but one collar and one “front” always has them done up in time for Bank Holiday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In this laundry, as well as in the several other establishments in the neighbourhood of Whitechapel, I had an opportunity to become acquainted with many of the women employed in the ironing-rooms.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I discovered that most laundry-girls married at a very early age. In fact, I found but few girls over twenty who were without husbands. One very pretty young woman smilingly told me that she had only been married the day before, and had come immediately back to her post as collar-dresser. Asking her why she married, when she saw no prospect of bettering her condition, she replied that she liked the work, and would not, if she could, remain at home all day. All of these young wives had what they called “homes” \u2014 that is, two, three, or four rooms, with their own furniture in them. The girl who married and continued to live with her parents or in lodgings was looked down upon as being particularly unfortunate or improvident. One young woman said that ever since she commenced work, at twelve years of age, she had been laying by a small sum each week against the day of her marriage, in order to purchase dishes, linen, and other things necessary for the fitting up of a home.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“But how did you know you would get married?” I asked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“We all gets married. We has plenty of chances, never fear,” was her answer, and she eyed me suspiciously, as if wondering whether I had meant to insinuate that she was likely to have no “chances.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To the minds of these girls the idea of marriage came as a matter of course. One girl confided to me that she had simply married because the other girls did. She was not going to have people say that nobody had ever asked her. That was an imputation that no laundry-girl with any self-respect could endure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yet, notwithstanding the popularity of matrimony, none of them thought for an instant of giving up their trade. They said they returned to the work not so much because they must, as because they liked it. There appeared to be little or no domesticity about them. In the mornings they either left their husbands in charge of the rooms, or they locked the place up until the evening when they returned. Those who had children hired some old person\u2014either a relative or a neighbour\u2014to take care of them, at the rate of about three shillings a head weekly. When four or five children from the same family were to be looked after, there was a small reduction made. These laundry-workers were not without their theories concerning woman’s “emancipation.” When they married they had no thoughts of giving up what they termed their “independence.” They clung to that with the greatest tenacity, and were under the impression that, by earning from ten to twenty shillings a week in a laundry, they were able to hold it fast. In a word, they all seemed “laundry-struck,” and marriage seemed to mean no more to them than an escape from being called an “old maid.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In most of the places that I visited the workers considered a certain daily portion of beer necessary to the proper performance of their duties. Some of the employers gave them a daily allowance; others, though refusing to supply it for their employees, permitted them to get it for themselves ; while in first-class places, where no beer was allowed on the premises, the women went to the public-houses and drank it at dinner and tea-time. In the ranks of laundresses, teetotalism is looked upon with suspicion and ridicule.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In their opinion, a glass of beer is as essential to the correct ironing of a dozen shirts as is the flat-iron itself. I believe the amount considered necessary on which to do a good day’s work (not counting “overtime,” which demands a special allowance) is one and a half pints. If something could be done to convince not only laundry-women, but workers in other trades, that these two things, beer and early marriages, are their greatest hindrances in the way of social and intellectual progress an incalculable amount of good would come to all England.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

All the women were interested in the Factory Act, although some of them had not heard of its proposed application to laundries until it was explained to them. Some of the daily and weekly workers expressed the opinion that even factory hours were unjust, when it was taken into consideration that the day of certain working men lasted only eight hours. Of course, in the laundries, Monday is not a busy day, the work seldom commencing until the afternoon, so that with the Saturday halfholiday, only five full days could be given ; but the majority of the workers preferred working Monday mornings, and being allowed to leave off earlier in the evening, which, they explained, could be easily managed if the employers would be willing to so arrange it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Most of the pieceworkers favoured the factory hours. It would really appear that regular hours from eight until six would be much better for all concerned. Many people, while deploring the ignorant condition of laundry-girls, do not stop to consider that their long hours give them really no time for self-improvement, even though they desired it. Only geniuses rise above their surroundings and surmount difficulties without other help; and, as geniuses are rare and ordinary people are numerous, it is almost useless to attempt to do anything for laundry-workers under present conditions. If the hours of the young girls, at least, could be reduced so that their day would commence at eight and end at six, then night-schools might be established in the neighbourhoods of the large laundries, and from eight until ten the girls could be instructed and amused. Even though the Factory Act is made to apply to laundries, that requires them to work until eight o’clock. These hours are too long for girls between twelve and sixteen years of age, and it would seem that some special provision should be made for them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Many of the mothers, to their disgrace be it said, are opposed to any shorter hours for their daughters on the ground that it will give them more time to get into mischief! I had this reply from several women whose daughters were employed in laundries where the hours were from six in the morning until seven or eight at night. And these women, twenty years ago, married “because the other girls married,” and then left their children to be taken care of for three shillings a week ! At twelve the girls were put to laundry-work, and henceforth left to their own devices. There is not much wonder that they got into “mischief,” and no one is so much to blame for it as their own mothers. To ignorance, more than to a natural inclination for vice, may be ascribed all the immorality that is said to exist among laundry-girls. That there should be immorality under such conditions is no more cause for surprise than that the whitest snow should become tinged with the black of the smoke through which it falls.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So far as I have become acquainted with laundry-girls, I would say that they are not so bad a set as is commonly supposed. They are kind-hearted, and would go out of their way to help the more unfortunate of their own class. They are grateful to anyone who really tries to help them in the right way, which is by putting oneself as much as possible on a level with them and not attempting to show any superiority. To the person who “puts on airs ” these girls have a peculiar method of showing their disapproval, whether she be a worker in the laundry or a benevolent lady from the West-End.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I have discovered that injurious chemicals are not nearly so much used in first-class places as many agitators would lead us to believe. Carbolic acid and chloride of lime are more often made use of in the smaller hand laundries than in the steam laundries, although in the latter places the large quantities of soda and cheap soaps might be considerably lessened.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I spent one day in searching for the “laundry dens” of which I had read and heard so much. I found a few places where the sign, “Washing and Mangling,”led me up or down some dozens of rickety stairs to rooms where I was informed that “a laidy took in washing;” but the clothes washed belonged to people but little above the washerwoman herself in station. On inquiring the names of their customers, I was given certain addresses where mostly working men of the lower orders lived. Such “laundries” are not patronised by first-class people, although the sweating system, which is followed by some superior laundries, may sometimes bring about serious results to their customers. These places, which are really the most dangerous in London, sublet the work they receive to women living in miserable hovels, and then pass it off on their customers as having been done in their own establishments.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From the large steam laundries there is nothing to fear in this direction. It is only the smaller laundries that countenance the sweating system. However, it would doubtless be a good plan if all would personally inspect the places where they send their clothes, and demand references from those who apply for their custom. Such a course would, perhaps, save them all the wear and tear of nerves that I experienced when I started out in quest of “Mrs. Johnstone,” who lived “somewhere near ‘Ammersmith.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\"Chapter<\/a>
Chapter 3<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n
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Home<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n
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AMONG THE LAUNDRY-GIRLS. CHAPTER I.WHY AND HOW I BECAME ONE OF THEM. THE laundry question is like the domestic servant problem. It interests everyone in all classes of society. If it is true that “civilised man cannot live without cooks,” it is equally true that he cannot do without a laundress. Indeed, a man’s happiness…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_kad_post_transparent":"","_kad_post_title":"","_kad_post_layout":"","_kad_post_sidebar_id":"","_kad_post_content_style":"","_kad_post_vertical_padding":"","_kad_post_feature":"","_kad_post_feature_position":"","_kad_post_header":false,"_kad_post_footer":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-184","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-chapter"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/earlywithdrawal.net\/victoriana\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/184","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/earlywithdrawal.net\/victoriana\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/earlywithdrawal.net\/victoriana\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/earlywithdrawal.net\/victoriana\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/earlywithdrawal.net\/victoriana\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=184"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/earlywithdrawal.net\/victoriana\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/184\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":237,"href":"https:\/\/earlywithdrawal.net\/victoriana\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/184\/revisions\/237"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/earlywithdrawal.net\/victoriana\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=184"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/earlywithdrawal.net\/victoriana\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=184"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/earlywithdrawal.net\/victoriana\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=184"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}