No, never heard of such a thing. Kind of wish I’d had one in Peace Corps, though.
We had the wringer on the washer in the basement when I was a kid. Mom used it for the laundry, but we sometimes played with it, running socks and things through it, usually while she was doing laundry anyway. It was fun to watch the water run out and the sock come through totally flattened.
We also had an electric ironing mangle. It had a padded drum that turned and a handle to lower the metal, heated cover onto the drum. Mom did pillow cases on it, and handkerchiefs, and I don’t really remember much else, but she told me that at one time she did all the shirts on it. When my parents were first married and had a couple of Dad’s sons (my half-brothers) living with them, Mom was ironing something like 42 shirts a week.
It’s another one of those things I’m amazed we used as young as we did, and I probably wouldn’t have let my kids do it. Sure, let your six-year-old play with the heavy hot steel plate that could smash her fingers.
I used to mangle shirts in the Waschsalon (laundromat) I used as a student, and they looked well mangled afterwards. My mother also used a smaller one about thirty years ago.
My mother had a manually operated mangle. We still used it in the early '60s, and occasionally thereafter if the twin-tub washing machine broke down. It went to the dump in the late '70s, shortly before I could have done with one at college.
There was one fixed to the end of my grandparents’ bathtub until my grandfather died in 2005. I don’t think it was used in earnest during my lifetime, but it was a cool thing to play with when I was a kid (that and the calabashes my grandmother had for washing her hair). It’s now in my sister’s back garden, rusting away.
I can remember my mother doing laundry on the back porch using the mangle then hanging the laundry to dry on the line. She did that for about 2 years I think. In the winter she did it in the back room and my dad took it to the laundromat to dry it.
I’m 25.
And lest you think I grew up in some sort of backwoods, I lived in a average home in a suburb of Toronto. My mom used the mangle and washer because that’s what she had. My grandmother had brought it here with her from Newfoundland, where they were a little more common. Then after they’d saved up they bought a new washer when I was 10. It was recently replaced this year after 15 years of faithful service. People still goggle at me when I tell them that story. I can’t tell what they’re more amazed by, the mangle or the idea of someone saving up for something.
It’s good you didn’t; you probably would’ve released the mangle demon unto us all!