Middleboro Laundry

If one believes this wonderfully dated piece of advertising from the Middleboro Laundry, the local 1950s housewife "broke her heart" trying to iron the perfect dress shirt for her hard to please husband.  In despair, she no doubt turned to the services of the Middleboro Laundry.  Here her husband scrutinizes the work to ensure it is up to his exacting standards while in the meantime enjoying a cigarette (which rests in an ashtray near his left hand).  Compare this with a circa 1880 Victorian trade card from the George H. Doane Hardware Company and you will see that the lot of women had changed little in the intervening 75 years.

The Middleboro Laundry succeeded Swift's Wet Wash Laundry in 1925 and was owned after 1926 by John Grantham.  Located on Wareham Street at the Nemasket River, the firm operated throughout the mid-twentieth century as Middleborough's leading laundry.

Illustration:
Middleboro Laundry, Middleborough, MA, ink blotter, mid-20th century

George H. Doane Hardware and Victorian Sexism

The relation between the sexes in Victorian Middleborough is readily apparent in this flip-style advertising trade card circulated by local hardware dealer George H. Doane for the Conqueror clothes wringer sometime about 1880. Little thought is given the drudgery endured by Mrs. Jones each laundry Monday, except when it interferes with her ability to have her husband's dinner ready. Salvation in the form of a Conqueror clothes wringer, however, has brought domestic tranquility to the Jones household, for now Mrs. Jones can not only prepare a meal in a timely fashion, but she can get the week's washing done, as well. (Ironically, this labor-saving device has permitted Mrs. Jones more free time in which she may perform even more labor).

Clothes wringers were developed during the latter half of the 19th century and, in fact, did make laundering less toilsome. Further, mechanical wringing was easier on clothes, as well. The device was deceptively simple: rubber covered spring-tensioned rollers in a maple frame were operated by a hand crank which squeezed the remaining water from the clothes. Such innovations were a feature of the Doane hardware store which was located for most of its history in the so-called Union or Doane Block on South Main Street, the woodframe building which stands next to the Mayflower Bank.