"Are you old enough to remember the old wringers that were used to squeeze out all the water from mum's mid-week wash? Many's the time I nearly had my little fingers caught between the rollers? I still recall the pain that my younger brother, Peter, experienced when his older brother, Patrick, put his arm through the ringer to test his pain threshold.
While I recall that my mother's wringer had a metal base instead of the wooden one shown here, the wrung clothes were guided into an old tin tub by a small helper before being hung out to dry.
In these early post-war days, the vast majority of poorer folk lived in old terraced houses. This was the time before new council estates were being socially constructed for the labouring masses. For the poorer folk, whose soot-covered terraced houses in their parallel street-maze of alleyways and narrow ginnels separating one row from another, there was no such luxury as having a back garden in which to hang out the family wash in private. Their recreational space amounted to a six-feet by six-feet backyard that incorporated a coal bunker and outside toilet (known then as privi) that was often a shared facility with one's neighbours. Washing lines were hung across the street in the hope that the soot, dust and smoke from the chimneys of nearby mills, mines and factories didn't decide to descend on your piece of homeland.
This drying method put the family clothesline on public view, so, only the best of garments tended to be hung out during daytime hours. Some private clothing that might have been publicly displayed for the neighbour's delectation included men's undergarments, but never women's drawers and frillies. These personal female items of clothing were all dried in-house whenever no concealed back garden was available, but if this didn't prove possible, they may be hung on the street washing line after the hours of darkness had arrived and be unpegged and brought back indoors before the neighbours awoke the next morning.
So even back then folks, the poor male's underpants became the underdog of the public washing line. When I once asked my mother why this was so, she simply replied, 'No decent woman shows her knickers off in public to every old Tom, Dick and Harry, son!' This is where the phrase, 'You shouldn't wash your dirty linen in public' originated.
How have different times produced radically different behaviour between one neighbour and the next? Today, many people on social media are not averse to washing their dirty linen in public and the old meaning of 'private' has lost all relevant purpose. Some disgruntled courting couples whose relationships have ended in bitter quarrel are known to continue their row in the full public gaze of Facebook or Twitter; a few of them even resorting to displaying sexually graphical images of their ex-partner which were taken in strictly private circumstances!
Just as I wouldn't have wanted to see someones dirty washing hung out in public during the 1940s and 50s, I have less inclination to view a stranger's private parts today!"
Love and peace Bill xxx