Tag: 18th century

Mopping Up Action

On By kittycalashIn Events, History, Living History, Museums, Reenacting4 Comments
Photo by Asher Lurie
Photo by Asher Lurie

This past weekend, I took my show on the road down 95 to Trenton’s Old Barracks Museum, where once again, soldiers’ rooms needed cleaning. Hannah Glasse exhorts servants (housemaids and housekeepers) to clean household rooms daily, and I can tell you this: if you’re cleaning 18th century spaces using period techniques, daily is the way to go.

Unpaved streets and sidewalks meant people tracked significantly more mud and grit indoors, and soldiers would have brought the parade ground indoors every time they crossed a threshold. Not a pretty thing– and then there’s the straw mattresses (to be changed monthly at a minimum), wool uniforms, skin, hair, and vermin that could accumulate as well. Filth: a major contribution to ill health if not managed properly.

DSC_0348
Brandy-new broom sweeps clean. Photo by Drunk Tailor

Being possessed of a particularly detail-oriented mind, I went in search of a more 18th-century correct broom at an affordable price and found a broom enthusiast on Etsy who agreed to make and priority mail custom brooms just in time for the trip to New Jersey. On the whole, I’m very pleased with these. They make a satisfying sound as they move across the floor, and draw a fair quantity of dirt. Turns out that strewing wet sand on the floor before you sweep is remarkably effective and absolutely the way to go. The damp sand keeps the dust down and is swept out the door with the filth without harming the floor.

Mop making: surprisingly contemplative.
Mop making: surprisingly contemplative. Photo by Drunk Tailor

After sweeping, mopping. Once again, I used the lavender-infused vinegar in the mop water (though I forgot to strain the solution this time). The mixture has a unique but not unpleasant smell, and as the floors dry, the room retains the odor, a sure indication of cleanliness.

This weekend was also the first run for a new wool scrap mop, which was proven the best mop yet. Many thanks to my secret source for the contribution to the effort. It’s clear that mops could easily have been made by binding rag strips to pole handles, and whether made by poor house inmates or soldiers, mop making is cheap, low-tech busy work.

Flopsy Mopsy

On By kittycalashIn Events, History, Living History, making things, Reenacting, Research8 Comments
Mop sellers, red chalk on paper, Paul Sandy, 1759. Museum of London 65.59/5#sthash.EaUTT9dg.dpuf
Mop sellers, red chalk on paper, Paul Sandy, 1759. Museum of London 65.59/5

They’re pretty consistent: mops appear to be made of fibers attached to a handle. These look like they’re simple string mops. A stick and string? A stick and rags strips? Something along those lines. But what kind of string? What kind of fiber? How was it attached?

I’ll confess that I have been too lazy to search collection for extant mops– no, seriously, if someone offered me an 18th century mop my first reaction after “Absolutely!” would be, “Wait a second…how can there be anything left of an 18th century mop? My own mops don’t last all that long….” so I assumed no such critter exists in captivity (feel free to prove me wrong, I could use an assist here). Instead, I went ahead with the daft notion of replicating what I saw in images.

Sandby helpfully supplies us with mop sellers who carry fuzziness on a stick. Most likely wool, since sheep were plentiful and cotton expensive in this period. But maybe not. In any case, a simple business.

Supplies assembled
Supplies assembled

After work on Saturday, I went mop-top-shopping. It was not one stop. An internal rant developed about how companies can call anything “wool” that is less than 100% wool, but I managed to contain myself and with enough hunting turned up hero cord, 100% wool yarn and 100% cotton yarn as well as dowels. Sadly, I could not find wool roving in any color but grey. So, making a mop from craft and hardware store supplies is a pretty easy thing, especially when you don’t have many tools to complicate the business.

IMG_6275

This is not my first rodeo where string is concerned, so I wrapped the yarn around a cutting board just the way you’d make a pom pom. How else will you get it all the same length (more or less)? The result: a somewhat sad hank in search of purpose, tied off in the more-or-less middle of the strands.

Temporarily secured
Tied off with hemp cord

Secured temporarily with a rubber band, I tied the hank to the dowel with hemp cord. Then I turned the wool (and later cotton) back over itself, and tied it off again. I pulled as tight as I could manage, much to the chagrin of my now-blistered pinky finger. Small price to pay, though, for two new entrants in the experimental archaeology of cleaning. As I looked at the images in Sandby’s drawing and in the prints, I was pretty confident the mops are not tied off again in this second way, but one band didn’t seem secure enough. So, yet another compromise, but one that I hope will result in less hilarity from losing mop heads in the midst of washing floors.

Wool…
…and cotton

Now, if I would but turn my attention to the lint, string, and yarn scattered about my floor at home…

Mopping Up

On By kittycalashIn Living History, making things, Research, Uncategorized4 Comments
A City Shower. Oil on canvas by Edward Penny, 1764. Museum of London
A City Shower. Oil on canvas by Edward Penny, 1764. Museum of London

Springtime sadness is best remedied by scouring[1], so in the best Scandinavian fashion, I have been looking into 18th century cleaning. Dem barracks, right?

First of all, were you wondering about what exactly they “smoked and cleansed” smallpox victims’ rooms with? Brimstone and frankincense.[2] Now you know what Edward Langford would wake up smelling when the house next door was free of smallpox.

But what about those floors? They need to be cleaned. Swept, yes, and scrubbed with sand. But also mopped, and the doorstep mopped.

Tit for Tat. stipple etching, London, Printed for R. Sayer Map, Chart & Printseller N° 53 Fleet Street, as the Act directs Novr 24. 1786. British Museum 1861,0518.958
Tit for Tat. stipple etching, London, Printed for R. Sayer Map, Chart & Printseller N° 53 Fleet Street, as the Act directs Novr 24. 1786. British Museum 1861,0518.958

I have a broom and a whisk broom, and can substitute a kettle for my sad bucket[3] but I lack a suitable mop. Lack never deterred me, whether of skills, knowledge, or supplies, so off to the interwebs and library I went.

I started with Foul Bodies, the 2009 monograph by Kathleen M. Brown. Nothing on floors, sadly.

I remembered the 10th Massachusetts Orderly book from 1782, that was more helpful.

Some part of the Camp and about the long Barracks in particular is relaxing into nastiness. Regimental QuarterMasters have been ordered to have them Clean and keep them so. An Officer of each Company has been ordered to visit the Barracks every day and to Confine & Report those who throw bones of meat Pot Liquor or filth of any kind near the Barracks. Yet all this has been done and no report has been made. it is hatefull to General Howe to Reitterate orders as it ought to be shamefull those who make it necessary.

The Unfortunate Beau, etching, Publish'd as the Act directs 12th Sept 1772, by S.Hooper, No.25 Ludgate Hill. British Museum 1991,1214.20
The Unfortunate Beau, etching, Publish’d as the Act directs 12th Sept 1772, by S.Hooper, No.25 Ludgate Hill. British Museum 1991,1214.20

Nastiness. Those barracks sound noisome, don’t they? We can’t have that.

So let’s cast out the bones, sweep the floors of the branches and dirt and grit the men have brought in, and mop them, too, now that it’s spring.

Mop, you say?

What did mops look like the in 18th century?
And how on earth will we acquire one?

Tune in next time for another exciting installment of “historical cleaning instead of cleaning my own house.”

 

 

[1] Dude, I have scrubbed baseboards with a toothbrush. Not one of my finer moments, but a memorable one.

[2] Kathleen Brown, Foul Bodies: Cleanliness in Early America. (New Haven: 2009) p. 129

[3] Really really: I meant it when I said keep the bucket wet.

Peddling a Myth

On By kittycalashIn Events, Fail, History, Living History, Reenacting13 Comments
Paul Sandby RA, 1731–1809, British, London Cries: Last Dying Speech and Confession, ca. 1759, Watercolor over graphite on medium, cream, slightly textured wove paper, Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection
Paul Sandby RA, 1731–1809, British, London Cries: Last Dying Speech and Confession, ca. 1759, Watercolor over graphite on medium, cream, slightly textured wove paper, Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection

Every now and then, I reach the dammit! point of my research, where I am forced to realize that Everything I Assumed Was Wrong. I try to make those moments a cause for celebration, even though they’re often deeply frustrating. Do not pass GO, Do not collect $200, Go directly to the Library.

What now?

Well… Boston ain’t London. And the North American colonies ain’t Great Britain. The business structure, the size of the cities, is different. Distribution of goods is different, thanks to tariffs and non-import/export laws. Which means?

Peddling. It’s not a thing. Or it’s a very difficult thing to document.
Which means that all the things I’d thought about doing for the Massacre (day or night) are probably wrong. (Remember, this is when we celebrate!)

Hey, I’m not the only one rethinking my approach.

But there it is: I’ve looked in the Boston Selectmen’s Minutes for 1768-1771, and while there is plenty of small pox (yay!) and many lemons being imported (yay! punch!) and there are licenses being granted for selling strong drink in inns and houses, there are no peddlers licenses. There are no licenses for street vendors of any kind. Hmmmm….

I’ve also read the Dublin Seminar publications Itinerancy in New England and New York (1984) and Life on the Streets and Commons, 1600 to the Present (2005). Not looking good here for street vendors and hawkers pre-1800.

While I never particularly trust early 20th century monographs and articles without footnotes, the somewhat entertaining Hawkers & walkers in early America : strolling peddlers, preachers, lawyers, doctors, players, and others, from the beginning to the Civil War informed me that street vending was not common in North American British Colonies, and in fact, was not commonly seen until after 1800.

What the ever-loving heckers?

I found peddlers’ licenses in Philadelphia for 1770: all men. But so far, nothing in Providence, Boston, or Newport (or Connecticut). The theory is that itinerant sales people didn’t pay taxes the way merchants did, and that merchants therefore lobbied against them. In Providence, the earliest mention I’ve found thus far is a lobster and fish man at the Great Bridge in 1818.

Just as the watch of Boston differed from the watch in London, so too, it seems, did the petty retailers. I still can’t quite believe there were no street peddlers and hawkers in colonial cities, but I’ll need a new way to approach this question.