Did people ever make lists of their laundry? If so, when and why? If not, why do we call long lists “laundry lists?”
Glad you asked.
Back in the old days, when there weren’t washing machines, if you didn’t have servants you sent your clothes to a laundry. You had to list them before you sent them, or the laundry would list them as they collected them, so you got back everything that was yours.
These lists were very long, but they were simple, often using a printed outline from the laundry:[ul][li]shirts, mens 2[/li][li]shirts, boys 3[/li][li]socks 6 pair[/li][li]vests 4[/li][/ul] Because all the laundry went into one big boiler (the clothes were usually practically boiled with soap - it worked) your clothes would need a laundry mark added, in permanent black Indian Ink. Each laundry would have it’s own mark, often a number such as RB206, which was written in an unobtrusive place, inside a collar, or on a shirt-tail or such.
Imagine doing that all day! - sorting through other people’s dirty clothes checking for your laundry mark? Erk.
When the clothes came out of the final rinse, they went through a set of rollers called a mangle which squeezed all possible water out of the garment (hence the expression, which has come to mean mixed up as much as squeezed under pressure).
Then the clothes were hung on a line to dry in the open air. To prevent sheets or tablecloths from trailing on the ground, a clothes prop was used. It propped up your line, hence another expression.
Shirts were starched in their final rinse to add a smooth surface and slight stiffness to the finish. Starched shirts made relaxation or bending difficult (hence the expression). Also there were constant admonitions from the customer which became jokes (“Don’t starch my pajamas!”). When finished, the clothes were checked against the list, bundled up, and wrapped in brown paper, with the list on the outside.
Because the work was pretty unpleasant it was often taken on by the group with least prestige. Till the early twenties this was often chinese migrants - all over the world it seems . The shop front might be very small, terribly crowded and confusing to non-chinese. So a chinese laundry came to symbolise a confused and seemingly haphazard environment. Hence the title of Joseph von Sternerg’s Hollywood memoir “Fun In A Chinese Laundry”. The man behind the counter there might say, in imperfect english, when you wanted to collect laundry, but had lost the ticket “No Tickee, no laundry”. Hence the expression.
When you got home you checked the list to ensure all the clothes were there. Somewhere Groucho refers to the laundry having lost his socks or something - the other problem could be that buttons were torn off in the laundry process.
This enterprise probably still exists in a few places, but laundromats kicked a big hole in the business .
Your old Uncle Redboss
PS knock knock mate - just think, one day you will be writing similar pieces to this on “what was a car key?” or “please explain shoe laces”. hehehehe
Just adding to Redboss’ excellent summary of the origin of laundry lists…
Early washing machines still required a lot of physical input from the housewife. Anything was better than having to bend over the washtub all day, of course, but pulling a week’s worth of wet clothes and linens out of the tub and running them through a manually-cranked mangle before dragging them out to hang them on the washline was still not a fun way to spend your Mondays. Even families that had a washing machine might send some of their washing to a professional laundry if they could afford it, particularly large items like sheets. Men’s business shirts, which were difficult to iron, might also be sent out.
These days professional laundries for the masses are pretty well extinct. Some dry cleaners still wash and press shirts and blouses, though. (I know of one that still offers a general laundry service; they have a short list of customers, mostly elderly people in small apartments who don’t have space for their own machines and don’t trust laundromats. I doubt they make much money on it.)
However, you might still come across the phenomenon of the laundry list if you stay at a hotel that offers laundry service for its guests - hotels that cater to business people in particular often put a laundry list right there with the room service menu and the pay-per-view movie schedule.
That is perhaps the most thorough and exact answer I have seen on this board in a long time.
Kudos to Red
Here in New York there are still a very few old-fashioned Chinese laundries (or at least there were as of 5-6 years ago). One was on 7th in Park Slope, Brooklyn, the other on Waverly at Charles in the W. Vill. They still actually wrapped your laundry in brown paper, which was kind of a treat.
Glad to know why they did that, I hadn’t thought of the changes in technology. Most laundromats in the City now offer “wash, dry and fold” services, but since they use the same individual machines the customers use there’s no need to mark the clothing or make lists.
But they still lose my socks.
I’ve been really swamped with work lately and made that resolution not to post. As you do. “Just read and NO posting!”
But yesterday I had a really unpleasant work meeting, with the insane Board member, who wants to fire all the management team, and the management team she wants to fire.
When I came out I needed a little relaxation, and logged on to cruise around. The question above touched something off, and I wrote and wrote and got more and more into it, and it felt so good, and I went home lighter in spirit, and had a relaxed dinner, and a good night’s sleep.
And my friends don’t understand why I have to keep coming here…
Forgive the hijack
Redboss
Reading this thread, I was suddenly reminded that when I had my first apartment I occasionally took my clothes to a nearby dry cleaners/laundry. There were no washing machines in my apartment building; I don’t drive, so doing laundry consisted of loading everything into a shopping cart, hauling it half a mile to the nearest laundromat and spending several hours reading while I waited for everything to cycle through. I soon found out that I could drop off a bag of laundry at the dry cleaners a block from my building and pick it up, sorted and folded a day or two later; it cost a little more, but the convenience was worth it.
I usually did this when I was running out of some vital items (underwear, sheets, etc) and didn’t have time to do them myself. I don’t remember ever seeing a laundry list or laundry marks, but I did have to buy a large cloth laundry bag and write my last name on it for them to use.
Redboss Great Story.
I think that “laundry list” is rather a more recent term than you suggest
Can you give any time frame as to when laundries gave back a list with your laundry?
And I think that mangle predates your Chinese laundry by a few centuries, in the sense of rollers flattening out things or in the sense of “mixed up.”
Prop .certainly predates your clothesline.
Can you give a cite for the inclusion of starch to shirts? Can you give a cite for when a term “starched shirt” came to mean a person who acted in a “stiff” manner?
Cite? Any time frame for this?
The usage of mangle to mean a device to press laundry dates to 1775. The use of mangle to mean maim or something similar predates that by about 300 years.
From www.m-w.com:
I have seen form (pre-printed) laundry lists is many hotels with the price per item:
shirt, $3500:
pants: $4500
etc.
Given the prices I wash by hand or buy new clothes.
Great googly moogly!:eek:
I’m working at a hotel as we speak, and looking at our “laundry list”
Shirt 1.95
Pants 3.95
Top Coat (dry clean) $10.00 (the most expensive)
Are you sure about that, sailor?
The numbers in my post was not meant to be taken literally although when I am staying in hotels it is usually in countries where you can buy a cratefull of local currency for a few US$. But I did recently spend a couple of hours in China with some American (it seems they all go there to adopt children) shopping for clothes because the place he was staying in charged so much for doing laundry. I have learnt the routine: when I travel I always carry some laundry detergent. I wash the clothes after the room has been done and hang them to drip in the shower. After a few hours, the next morning at the latest, they no longer drip and can be hung in the closed until they are totally dry. This avoids problems in hotels where they do not like you doing your own laundry as they never get to see it hanging in the bathroom.
I menat they can be hung in the closet, of course.
Redboss, I think you are mixing up the expression “stuffed shirt” and the phrase “starched shirt”.
“Starched shirt” isn’t really an expression. It means exactly what it says. A shirt with starch on it.
True, “stuffed shirt” is IMHO the more usual phrase. But don’t forget the general adjective, starchy, which I suspect originates in starched laundry:
Cites? cites? facts? evidence?
You guys are getting me all confused and combobulated. I’m just this shallow wise-cracking MPSIMS-inhabiting person who occasionally wanders into GQ and lets fly with a series of shallow impressions.
Yes mangle and prop are much earlier than last century - I just mentioned them to show off.
Starched/stiff shirts - I suspect there’s a folk assimilation of two phrases that share a few phonemes, and yes, a distinction can be made.
As to cites and time frame for the concept of chinese laundry as a scene of disorder, I can offer none - it was just something I grew up with.
Perhaps you could see me more as the naive informant, rather then the incompetent researcher?
Well, I’ll just sit here on the porch in my rocker, fanning myself, drinking homemade lemonade,and thinking about the good old days, when nobody asked us for no cites. Cites? We couldn’t afford cites! My daddy once saved up to buy my mama a cite, but they wouldn’t let him take it on the trolley car.
He asked a man to watch over it while he went and borrowed a hand truck, but when he got back the man was gone and the cite was gone. He sat in the gutter and cried. A lady came over and asked what was the matter, and when he told her she gave him twenty dollars, insisted that he take it, and said if he was a christian man he’d let her give him the money, and one day when he could afford it, he could pass the favour on to someone else.
Well, he ummed and he ahhed, and he ummed and he aahhed, but in the end he took the money and he bought my mamma a fur tippet. She’s wearing it in that picture of her and me when I was a baby, taken outside the chinese laundry there.
Oh, those chinese laundries. I could tell you some stories…
Redboss