After a constant use of the UNIVERSAL CLOTHES WRINGER for more than four years in my family, I am authorized by the "powers that be" to give it the most unqualified praise, and to pronounce it an indispensable part of the machinery of housekeeping. Our servants have always been willing to use it, and have always liked it.
And in July 1869, a classified in the Brooklyn Eagle praised this wonderful washing machine:
Be very particular about getting the "Universal Wringer" with cog-wheels. This is the only one we recommend, and our endorsement of this is without mental reservation or modification. - Universalist.* [July 10, 1869, p. 3]
The lady without the benefit of cog-wheels, on the right, looks like she has a mental reservation or two, doesn't she?
* The Universalist was a Boston newspaper published by the Universalist Church between 1864 and 1878.
[The advertisement is from a guidebook called Miller's New York As It Is (1865).]
6 comments:
Actually I still use my clothes wringer and wash entirely by hand.
We've always called them a wrangle here. There always used to be one in my grandad's garage.
By the way, I just posted an award for you :-)
Cool! I love the idea of a clothes wringer. It must definitely cut down on drying time.
I knew Henry Ward Beecher made some advertising endorsements, but that one is really too smarmy for belief. Authorised by the powers that be?! And as if he would have gone anywhere near a clothes wringer in his household!
And I was JUST complaining about my washer and dryer not being front-loaders. Never again will I mock thee, modern conveniences.
I don't know about John, but we (also from the UK) called them mangles. Wrangle sounds much better. My grandmother had one in a shed and I was always forbidden from playing with it, which made it seem all the more fascinating. Visions of trapped little fingers, no doubt.
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