No Love Lost on Laundry

Before I came to work today I threw a load of laundry into the washing machine.  It took me all of 2 minutes to put the clothes in, throw on some detergent, and press the start button.  When I walked into the museum, once of the first things I noticed was an old wooden, hand crank washing machine that probably dates from the mid to late 1800s. 

It’s made of wood and metal with two wooden wringers held in place by wooden dowels.  

You can see on one side where the washer can be attached to a pole or something sturdy to hold the washer still while cranking the clothes through the wringers.

There are metal springs on each side with a handle on one side to turn the wringers.  Often this was a 2 person job with one woman turning the crank and the other feeding the clothes through the wringers.  

You can also see in this picture where there is a metal screw in the wood that connects the two legs, and on the bottom is a wood peg.

The wooden peg connects the two legs on each side, just below the metal spring. 

There is no date on this washer, but on the bottom in black print letters is the following:

A1 Washer

J.A. Whelpley

Greenwich, NB

Patent Applied For

This is likely the same James Alfred Whelpley who was born in 1839 in Westfield, New Brunswick, Canada and invented the “Long Reach” ice skates. 

The rollers aren’t smooth – they are grooved to help remove more water from the clothes.  Many of the hand wringing washers have smooth rollers so this one is definitely different from most others.  I was unable to find any record that the inventor's patent was granted.

I can’t even begin to imagine the work that washing clothes with this machine would have involved!  Hauling water, heating water on a stove, wringing the clothes through this hand crank…it would not have been a 2 minute job.  I know we often yearn for what we think are the gentler times of yesteryear, however, especially on days like today where it’s around -15° I’m reminded once again of how lucky we are to live in the 21^st century. (1970.105)  

Forget Me Not

This post is going to take us a little bit away from our normal description of artifacts and talk about something else - dungeons!  Usually when we think of dungeons we think of some dark, sinister place underground far beneath a castle.  But did you know that dungeons also existed in many early jails?  Our own Kings Co. Jail at the Kings Co. Museum had a dungeon!

The picture you see below is the hatch in the floor where prisoners were put when they were being a little too much trouble.  It is just a dark hole - not even room to stand, no light, no fresh air, a prisoner could barely turn around.  Most visitors to the jail don't even notice the hatch until you point it out to them.  The thought of putting a living person in there is, well, very creepy.  The purpose was to inflict maximum psychological damage on a prisoner.  Fortunately this type of punishment was eventually outlawed and remains part of our hidden histories.

Selective Hearing

            At first glance object 2014.002.154 resembles some sort of pipe, but upon further inspection you realize that it just can’t be a pipe. So what is the oddly shaped thing? It is one of the first versions of the fancy little pieces people now place in their ears in order to improve their hearing – a hearing aid!

Sometimes referred to as an ear trumpet, this artifact was most likely used in the 1800s and perhaps into the 1900s. The earliest record for the making and use of a similar aid is in the 1600s, with serious manufacturing beginning in the early 1800s. One man, Johann Nepomuk Mälzel, was designing ear trumpets for Beethoven around 1810. Similar to modern, electronic hearing aids that magnify sound waves for an individual, the ear trumpet would funnel the waves into its tube and allow for the sound to be louder – who knows how well these devices actually worked, especially for the severely hearing impaired!

  If there ever was a situation that the phrase ‘selective hearing’ applied to it would have had to have been when this hearing aid was in use. Unlike modern hearing aids that sit inside an individual’s ear and can typically be turned “on” or “off”, as well as have the volume changed, this aid would rely solely on someone holding it beside their head and placing the small tip into their outer ear. The excuse was surely used that someone hadn’t heard something because they hadn’t used the hearing aid, as it was too awkward or tiring to hold up to their head for a whole conversation. I probably would have opted to miss some conversations for the sake of not having to use this thing! 

          

            It is hard to imagine someone using one of these devices now, but that just goes to show another way in which our world has advanced. For everyone’s sake, it is probably good that these are no longer in use, as the improvements in technology, size and shape suggest these may not have worked the best.

http://www.hearingaidmuseum.com/gallery/Non-Electric/EarTrumpets/Long%20Trumpets/info/foldedmetal2.htm https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ear_trumpet