Photo Reveals Tale of Wash Day Blues

Most of us have them - old family photographs showing distant relatives in an unknown location.

Such a picture was discovered by Margaret Main of Whitchurch in Bucking­hamshire. It shows her grandmother Kate Mitchell, aged 4, standing with her baby brother Fred in the doorway of a house in Colmer Road, Norbury.

The photograph intrigued Margaret and she embarked on a quest to find out more about her family, which revealed a fascinating story of the life of her great grandparents and their seven children.

Charles and Ann Mitchell moved into No 2 (now No 5) Colmer Road in the 1860s, shortly after the first terrace of six houses in the street had been built. At that time Colmer Road provided cheap accommodation for the poor, working classes.

The Mitchells had previously lived in Lower Tooting, where Charles was a grocer before he joined the Post Office as a "letter carrier", or postman, around 1867.

Life was not easy for the family and by the early 1870s they had taken in a lodger, a young police constable called John Moore, whose rent helped eke out the family budget.

Charles' circumstances changed in the 1880s when he lost his job at the post office and became a Bath Chair attendant, hiring out the equivalent of today's wheelchairs, in which he transported the infirm.

By this time the family had moved further down Colmer Road to No 5 (later No 11) where his wife Ann ran a laundry from the small scullery at the rear of their home. Here Anne would take in washing from the more affluent residents of the neighbourhood. When the bath  chair business was slack, Charles would assist his wife process the huge piles of laundry that came to their house.

These were the days before washing machines and the job of a laundress was hard, physical work.

Life became even harder for the Mitchells in 1885 when Charles died, aged 54. Ann's only means of income was now her laundry work and on heavy wash days her daughters were expected to lend a hand with the washing and the boys were kept busy collecting and delivering laundry as the family struggled to make ends meet.

As the family's financial situation worsened, Ann decided to relocate to cheaper lodgings and moved a few doors further down Colmer Road to No 49 where she shared the house with James West, a bricklayer from Dorking, and his wife Sarah.

As Ann's children grew up and moved away, Elizabeth Hamlin and her daughter Fanny, living in nearby Danbrook Road, helped out in the laundry.

In 1899, Ann's youngest daughter Kate married Elizabeth Hamlin's son Peter, a young police constable, and the newlyweds moved to Battersea where Peter was stationed.

At the birth of the 20th century, Ann, despite being 66, continued to take in washing. However, a lifetime of scrubbing clothes and wringing sheets eventually took its toll and in 1901 Charles Barrett took over the laundry.

Ann moved to smaller lodgings across the road at 66 Colmer Road where she stayed until at least 1912.

She later went to Peckham to live with her daughter Naomi Thornton, and it was there that she died in 1917, aged 83.

Last modified: 14th January 2013 - Copyright Canning and Clyde Residents Association

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