Seeing all those clothes hanging out before dryers became common, you have to wonder if everyone really did their laundry on Mondays, or did you see this kind of thing every day? Buzzfeed has a collection of 15 pictures of laundry day in New York City in the 1930s. Link
(Image credit: Marjorie Content)
Lots of whites!
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I was brought up in Dundee, Scotland, in the 1960s and our tenement buildings were similarly strewn. It's quite an ingenious system - the washing lines are attached to the poles in the center of the yards with pulleys. The housewives would reel the washing in and out like naval flags! In the basement of the buildings or in special out-houses would be the communal wash tubs, great big vats heated by a fire. Huge loads would be tipped into these vats and then stirred with a big wooden paddle or a washing 'dolly' before being scrubbed by the traditional wash-board. Mondays were indeed the traditional day for doing this, it was all part of the strage routine that went on in tenements and it was seen as 'bad form' to have washing hanging out on any other day. As the 1970s came and the tenements started to disappear - and electric washing machines became available - this way of life started to disappear. Although I still know older Scots who still abide by 'Wash Monday'.
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