Before the industrial revolution, household laundry was undertaken once a month or less. Everything changed with railways, conurbation expansion and increased number of chimneys belching out smoke. Cities and towns were smothered by a pall of black smog. Indoors, homes were smoky from fires, cigarettes, pipes, candles and gas lamps. Increasing the housewife’s burden, everything now required washing more frequently but, for anyone with money, there was always someone who, for a few pence, did the laundry.
Neither the occupation of char or washerwoman/laundress was a pursuit of choice but a last resort for widows and/or unskilled women on the brink of penury and many charwomen, laundresses and washerwomen ended her days in the workhouse and pauper’s grave.
Also known as a mop, the charwoman (char/chore/cherre; old English for ‘turn of work’) worked in other people’s houses on unskilled jobs; scrubbing floors, helping with the weekly wash, cleaning boots and silver (chars had a dishonest reputation so count your spoons afterwards!) and generally doing jobs servants were too busy to fulfil. For a household without servants, a char helped with menial jobsmonth. It was low-status graft.
