This is a mangle. When I was a kid in the 50s my mother used one in the basement. Hers was electric and much more modern-looking than the ones pictured. She used it for ironing sheets, tablecloths and pants, etc. I think the only items she used an iron for was shirts. I don’t recall seeing it after we moved in 1958.
Did you ever have one?
My grandmother did. But my MOTHER was a kid in the 1950s. It was still in the basement when we had the estate sale. Hers was the wringer kind though. Not the type that irons.
I can remember my grandmother owning a hand-operated mangle very similar to the one in the picture.
My grandmother had one, which was my auntie’s job to use on the family washing. There were six children, so a lot of washing. My auntie wasn’t much more than a child herself at the time (1930s), but as the oldest girl had more or less to assist caring for the kids and doing a lot of chores as my grandmother was on her own and out working two jobs to support the family.
Point of the story – if you’re doing a lot of washing and trying to manage a lot of younger siblings at the same time, apparently you will get distracted and run your hand through the mangler along with the sheets.
One of my grandmothers had a wringer washer she used well into the 60s. The wringer was powered off the washer motor. A lot of fiddling to run a load (actually easier to run several loads “in parallel” rather than in sequence). Wash, wring, rinse, wring. All done outside next to the clothesline in the summer with a garden hose used to fill up the tub. They were common among farm folk back then.
My granny had one. She’d set it up in the middle of her living room on ironing day and watch her “stories” (soap operas) and Queen for a Day, and do baskets and baskets of ironing.
Hers had a lever she operated with her knee to raise and lower the roller, and a foot pedal to spin the roller. She could do my grandpa’s white shirts, delicate lacy collars on dresses, you name it. She’d let me do the handkerchiefs.
I don’t think it was ever used during my lifetime, but my great-grandmother had one in her hallway my entire childhood. It had a case over it, and it was mostly used as a table by that point.
No, but the old folks in my family all had wringer washers.
My paternal grandparents owned one; they lived on a small plot of land in Northern Mississippi. Both were dead by 1985.
I have no memory of my immediate family owning one. We were city folk.
Ditto my grandparents. It was stored in the garage, but disappeared sometime in the late 60’s or early 70’s. I wanted to fire it up when I was about 8 or so, and run things through it, but grandpa discouraged me, saying it’d rip my arm off.
We had a toy one in a dollhouse when I was a girl. We had a real one at a catering company I worked at ten years ago, which was used for tablecloths.
My grandma has something like that but I think it’s a wringer washer. Not sure…it stays in the basement. I bet she uses it…she’s cheap 
My mother had a washer with that kind of wringer in London in the early 60s. She hated it.
Same with my family. And getting rid of contraptions like that was one of everyone’s priorities when they hit middle-class.
Yes, my mother and my Great Aunt Kate both had and used powered mangles for washing.
One family legend retells the time my Great Aunt Kate managed to get one of her breasts in the mangle. She was a very endowed lady who had suffered greatly at the hand of gravity, and wasn’t being as careful as she might one day when the event occurred.
Apparently it was true, as she never denied the tale…she just would laugh and turn very red in the face.
I knew someone would mention that! Thanks. A great early short story of his.
My mom had a mangle in our basement when I was growing up. She used it for linens like tablecloths and napkins from time to time. I haven’t thought about it in years.
My aunt had one. I thought it was soooo cool.
Actually, my mother and my other aunts thought so, too. Ironed sheets!
We all loved ironed sheets, but nobody actually wanted to iron them–the mangle took care of that.
Apparently if you folded a shirt absolutely perfectly, it would iron that, too. However, it seemed to me (and apparently also to my aunt) much easier just to iron the shirt, rather than do all that fancy folding.
Our laundry room burned down in something like 1961. My mother managed to replace the old wringer washer with another wringer washer. In 1961. A brand new wringer washer. In 1961. I don’t know what she was thinking. If it was the insurance, I positively guarantee my mother could have kicked in a bit for an automatic if she’d wanted one.
We had a wringer washer up to about 1979.
It was freaky scary, and frankly didn’t do a particularly good job. Not only was a modern washing machine safer, it was more efficient, faster, and worked un-supervised. It was a revelation.
I had a washer like that when I lived in New Zealand in the early 80s. But then living in EnZed was a bit like living in a time warp. It was also the only place I had seen non-electric toasters, the metal kind you use with a gas stove.
