Whoa! I'd never heard of this. According to the Wikipedia article, the last laundry was shut down in 1996! (But 1972 is still pretty damned late!) It also says that these laundries were not unique to Ireland, nor were they all run by the Catholic Church. One interesting quote from the article: "Possibly the advent of the washing machine has been as instrumental in closing these laundries as have changing attitudes." I'm even more thankful for washing machines now than I was last night looking at two large hampers of clothes that needed to be washed.
Whoa! I'd never heard of this. According to the Wikipedia article, the last laundry was shut down in 1996! (But 1972 is still pretty damned late!) It also says that these laundries were not unique to Ireland, nor were they all run by the Catholic Church. One interesting quote from the article:
ReplyDelete"Possibly the advent of the washing machine has been as instrumental in closing these laundries as have changing attitudes."
I'm even more thankful for washing machines now than I was last night looking at two large hampers of clothes that needed to be washed.