I think before electric gadgets and mains power all women's lives were difficult. Monday was wash day, nearly all done by hand with a gas boiler for the whites, my job was helping with the hand mangle. In winter the house was full of steaming clothing in front of the open fire, but we had a modern fangled back boiler, that used to bump when the water boiled. The washing machine would be hand filled with hot water with buckets, no change of water so by the time it got to the overalls the water was almost sludge.Before hankering after a bygone age in farming, ask Grandmother, Great Grandmother, or better still ask Great Great Grandmother or the women Bondagers in Berwickshire, what they thought of it.
Up to about 70 years ago, women in farming had an exceptionally difficult life.
In the seventies I knew two women who cooked on the old fashioned range, there was a tank for boiling water, the only hot water in the house. The oven beside it, we used to have chips baked in beef dripping in the oven as a special treat. They had no mains sewage to it was just the outdoor lav, with the wash boiler next door.
Most women didn't drive an the 'housekeeper' for the old boys on the farm would be driven once a week to do the shopping. Everything in the house had a film of soot on it, but as there was no mains electric, just one bulb that dangled from a wire in the ceiling connected to battery you didn't really notice it.
The irony of this farm was it was just across the way IH, who of course had electric, and was only about a two mile from town. The farm of course is no longer there, it's a nature reserve and a generic pub.
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