In rural regions of poor countries, people still wash clothes in watercourses today. Agitation helps remove dirt from fabric. Workers rub, twist, or slap textiles against flat rocks known as beetling-stones. A wooden implement called a washing paddle beats the dirt out of the cloth. Sometimes they use a battling-block made of wood instead of stone. Portable rub boards eventually replaced these fixed surfaces. Factory-made corrugated glass or metal washboards followed later. Once clean, workers wrung out the clothes by twisting them to remove most water. They hung items on poles or clothes lines to air dry. Some spread laundry on clean grass, bushes, or trees instead.
Communal Washhouses Of Europe
Villages across Europe built communal buildings called lavoirs before machines existed. Water flowed constantly through two basins inside these structures. One basin held soapy water while another rinsed the garments. An inclined stone lip allowed washerwomen to beat wet laundry against it. Facilities were often roofless but protected users from rain. The city authorities wanted to give poorer populations access to laundry facilities. These spaces became obligatory stops in many women's weekly lives. Washerwomen took in laundry from others and charged by the piece. It was a women-only space where they could discuss issues or simply chat. The Catalan idiom fer safareig means to gossip today. Many village wash-houses still stand as historic structures with no obvious modern purpose.Gendered Labor And Community Spaces
The job of doing laundry traditionally fell to women known as laundresses. In ancient Rome, workers called fullones cleaned cloth in small tubs standing in niches. A fuller stood in the tub and trampled the cloth using a technique known elsewhere as posting. Tub walls surrounded low walls known as treading stalls. In India, a washerman was called a dhobiwallah. Dhobi became the name of their caste group. Until the early 1980s, much laundry work in the Philippines was done manually. This role was generally assigned to women. A professional laundrywoman was called a labandera. European cities had public wash-houses combined sometimes with public baths. The aim was to foster hygiene and reduce outbreaks of epidemics. Some large metal cauldrons filled with fresh water were heated over fire. Hot or boiling water removed dirt more effectively than cold water.