Patent box mangles

Box mangles, Baker's mangle, 19th century improvements in mangling

Simple box mangles were in use in the 18th century, but they needed two people to push and pull the heavy box back and forth with leather straps or wooden handles. The weight of a box filled with stones, or sand, was used to press household linens and clothes wound on rollers below, or sometimes the linen was spread flat under the rollers. A specially-woven mangle cloth matching the width of the box might be used to cover the freshly-laundered things and keep them clean.

The early 19th century saw a variety of "patent mangles", all invented to lighten the work to some extent. Systems of gears, wheels, and handles were intended to make it a less tedious and tiring job.

The box mangle was itself a development from the much older custom of pressing with hand-held mangle boards: boards with a variety of names in English: bittle, batler, beetle and battledore among them. (Some of these names were also used for the washing bats used to pound dirty laundry.)

In the following description from 1838, it was clearly for smoothing (or "ironing") cloth, even though in the UK mangle later came to mean a wringer for squeezing out water.

MANGLE. A domestic machine of great utility, employed in smoothening linen, as a substitute for the heated irons extensively used for the same purpose. In the common mangle, as most of our readers well know, the linen or other articles to be mangled, are wrapped round wooden rollers, which are upon a solid level bed or floor, and upon the rollers is placed a large oblong box which is filled with stones, or other heavy substances, in order that they may press with great force upon the rollers, while the box is moved backwards and forwards upon them, by means of a handle attached to an upper roller or windlass, to which straps from each end of the moving box are attached. By this machine, the operation of mangling is very well done, but the labour is excessive on account of the necessity of frequently arresting and changing the motion of the heavy box.
The Engineer's and Mechanic's Encyclopaedia, London 1838

Baker's patent mangle (left) was one of the earliest and best-known machines invented to make mangling less laborious. The writer of the Encylopaedia quoted above said "An important improvement in the construction of the common mangle ... was effected about thirty years ago by Mr. Baker, of Fore Street, London, by which the otherwise unwieldy heavy box was moved with great facility backwards and forwards, by a continuous motion of the handle in one direction; and by the addition of a fly wheel to equalize the motion, a great amount muscular exertion is saved to the individual working the machine."

By 1823 someone in England had patented a design for a upright mangle to meet the obvious objection to the "common horizontal mangle": "namely, the great space they occupy". Soon the distinction between mangling as smoothing, and mangling as wringing, became blurred, since very similar machines were suitable for both purposes. Barnard and Joy's "patent self-rolling mangle" from the 1830s was still intended for "ironing"; the bottom roller has an attached mangle cloth which would help keep the newly-pressed fabric clean and smooth. The Mechanics' Magazine of 1838 explained that the "weighted rollers" replaced the "cumbrous travelling bed" of the familiar box mangles. Patent mangle became the British name for all sorts of Victorian mechanical mangles.

US patents from the 1870s show some later innovations in mangles. On the right is Stephen Williams' "top view of my improved machine ... which shall be simple in construction and effective in operation, applying the same pressure steadily to clothes whatever may be their thickness".

On the left is William and James Coutie's drawing of an "Improvement in ironing-machines" with a gas-heated central roller.

More on mangling history on the mangle boards page, and the history of ironing page.
Also see English box mangle photo

For more on laundry history and old washing methods go to
>>>> History of laundry and
>>>> Laundry from 1800

8 August 2007  

 

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