Gypsy Creams

Hoover Makes Things Better

Woman's Weekly / 9th May 1969

I have to say, this gives an alarming insight into how appalling the washday experience used to be. According to this, automatic washing machines used to not spin dry particularly well, could only fill with either hot or cold water at any particular time, and some customers used to prefer to take their machine to the sink rather than have it drain, for, er, reasons that escape me. We may scoff nowadays, of course, but my mother didn’t have her first automatic washing machine until 8 years after this ad!

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9 Comments

Kif on 23 January 2011 @ 7pm

The machine had to be taken to the sink as the smallness of many kitchens then made plumbing the machine in impossible for many housewives and cost of extra plumbing was a factor that might put the machine out of reach financially. So most washing machines were on castors and wheeled into place. Rubber hoses were attached to the tap(s) for water in and an outlet hose hooked over into the sink for water out. Hot or ciold choice depended on what taps you had. People had to have mixer taps taken out for the purpose and separate taps put back. An odd step backwards at a time when mixer taps were thought rather new & swish. These arrangements apertained in the houses of all my mothers friends as well as ours, in the 1960s. The machine was often kept in another room and wheeled in every Monday. Always Monday. Washday. One grew up knowing that. Like FRiday night was universally for a fish meal. (we were not religious and this was not a religious thing. It was a housewife & planning thing. You could fill some models with hot or cold according to the tap, not what the machine needed..


Tanya Jones on 23 January 2011 @ 8pm

I’m glad I know you, Kif!


Martin Fenton on 24 January 2011 @ 1pm

We didn’t get our first automatic until 1985. My mother had at least two different twin-tub machines between this advert and then. Aside from the very practical reasons Kif highlights above, we should also consider the thinking of the time: that an automatic apparently wouldn’t get your clothes as clean as a twin-tub. There were also scare stories that somebody knew somebody who knew somebody whose kitchen was flooded by an automatic as the water supply to it was permanently switched on. It took a relative buying a Servis automatic to change my mother’s mind.

My mother: two children, towelling nappies, twin-tub washer. My equivalent of her talking about watching her own mother mauling with a dolly-peg and mangle every Monday. It helps illustrate how much we’ve progressed with each 30 years that pass.


Tanya Jones on 24 January 2011 @ 9pm

Amen to that, brother. My parents, in their first post-marriage flat, got into trouble when my mother dared to do her washing on a day other than Monday! I like a lot of things about the past, but I’m grateful for an awful lot of modern-day technology, too.


Louis Barfe on 29 January 2011 @ 4am

My mum didn’t give up on twin tub machines until the turn of the millennium. She just preferred them.


Tanya Jones on 30 January 2011 @ 11pm

Presumably your mum could no longer find any suitable twin tubs in this century, then? I certainly never see them around any more. My nan used to have one in the 80s, and I remember her spin machine as well. I don’t think she actually went automatic, because I don’t recall a place to plumb it in. If I’d only remembered that when I posted the article, Kif wouldn’t have had to tell me ;)


Fionnuala on 12 April 2011 @ 11pm

This post prompted me to have quite a long discussion with my own mum, Tanya, about twin tubs and domestic appliances of yore (she regaled me with horrible stories of cloth nappies in her own twin tub of the 70s, for a start).

Recently I came across this video, which made me think of you, T: http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/hans_rosling_and_the_magic_washing_machine.html


Tim HJ on 25 July 2011 @ 8pm

I stumbled across this website today and it’s full of great, nostalgic stuff!

Our family had a twin-tub machine until the mid-1970s, when my dad was seduced by the Hoover Keymatic – an automatic machine with an absurd programming mechanism that required the user to plug a knobbly, square plastic ‘key plate’ into the machine depending on what programme was required. As I recall, the machine was painted a bizarre combination of beige and aquamarine and had a sort of slopey front quite unlike anything one sees today.

Of course, top-loading machines still dominate the US market, despite only having about 10% market share anywhere else in the world.

Thanks for the site – I shall enjoy reading all the other posts!


ChesterMikeUK on 16 February 2012 @ 3pm

Classic advert for a line of great washing machines, who would have thought that our Grans where using copper washboilers, and that we now have all these innovative laundry appliances. Tim, here is a link to a video of the machine you describe, we are a group of repairers, salesmen and collectors who restore and preserve these great machines for posterity.

http://www.youtube.com/user/chestermikeuk


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