On whitsters and bleachers – or how white should my linens be?

Introduction

Clean, white looking, linen has long been a sign of respectability. Households at all levels of society washed linens. The great households had permanent staff to do this, gentry and the middling sort might employ occasional staff, or send items out to be washed. In 1612 Slingby was paying 5d for each shirt washed, 2d for a band, 1d each for boothose and cap linings. (1 p. 270) Gabriel Metsu’s painting shows such a washerwoman at her tub. [Figure 1] The whiteness of linen was obtained by bleaching, and sometimes by the addition of a small amount of blue, usually in the form of powdered smalt. 

Figure 1: 

Gabriel Metsu (1629–1667) The washerwoman. Muzeum Narodowe, Warsaw

Bleaching

Bleaching was part of both the manufacturing and laundering processes for linens. As the Trinity Homilies of c.1200 puts it “Sume bereð sole cloð to þe watere forto wasshen it clene. … Sume bereð clene cloð to watere to blechen him ….” (Some bring soiled clothes to the water to wash them clean … Some bring clean clothes to the water to bleach them). (2 p. 57) Ruisdael’s View of the Bleaching Grounds of Haarlem, c.1665, shows large quantities of fabric laid out in the sun to bleach. [Figure 2] The subject is one Ruisdael came back to more than once, he shows a small bleaching ground by a cottage in a painting in the National Gallery. 

Figure 2: 

Jacob van Ruisdael, View of Haarlem with Bleaching Grounds c1665. Kunsthaus Zürich

While bleaching was part of the production process for linen, it was also part of the cleaning process for household linens; sheets, tablecloths, shirts, smocks, etc. Gervase Markham in his English Housewife states that; “Now … hus-wifes scoure and white their cloath with water and branne, and bucke it with lie and greene hemlocks.” (3) In London this bleaching was sometimes done around Moorfields, Massinger wrote “Some Chandlers daughters Bleaching linnen in Moor-fields.” (4) A Dialogue attributed to Sir William Davenant (1606-68) has a man saying, “I shall desire you to banish the laundresses  and bleachers, whose acres of old linen make a shew like the fields of Carthagena, when the five months' shifts of the whole fleet are washed and spread.” (5 p. 571) Teniers painting of a bleaching ground shows a more domestic bleaching than in Ruisdael’s bleaching grounds. In Teniers there are obviously shirt and smock shaped garments. [Figure 3] 

Figure 3: 

David Teniers II, The Bleaching Ground, c.1643-6. The Henry Barber Trust, The Barber Institute of Fine Arts, University of Birmingham

 Whitsters

Whitsters were laundresses who whitened linens. Shakespeare in the Merry Wives of Windsor has whitsters at Datchet, a village on the Thames, close to Windsor Castle. He wrote “take this basket on your shoulders; that done trudge with it in all hast, and carry it among the Whitsters in Dotchet Mead.” A buck-basket would contain cloth to be bucked, that is soaked or washed in a bucking tub containing a lye of wood ashes. In the eighteenth century Chambers Cyclopedia described this thus, the “Bucking of cloth is the first step or degree of whitening it." (6) There is a full description of the bucking of garments in households in Susan North’s book. (7 pp. 219-22)

Pepys mentions his wife and maids going over the River Thames to the South Bank to get laundry whitened. “My wife and maids being gone over the water to the Whitsters with their clothes, this being the first time of her trying this way of washing her linen.” The following day he wrote “my wife being again at the whitster’s,” and the day after, “At noon, my wife being gone to the whitster’s again to her clothes.” (8 pp. 12, 13 & 14 Aug 1667) From this it would appear to have been a protracted process, she was back there again on the 26^th August, “and my wife being gone abroad with Mrs. Turner to her washing at the whitster’s.”

 

Figure 4: Pieter de Hooch. Woman and a child at a bleaching ground. c.1657. Rothschild Collection (Waddesdon)

 

After the washing the textiles and garments could then be laid out of the ground, as mentioned in the bleaching grounds, or on a hedge to bleach. Shakespeare has, “The white sheete bleaching on the hedge” (9) Pieter de Hooch shows a woman taking garments from a basket to lay them on the ground. [Figure 4]

Blue

Powdered smalt is often referred to in accounts as powder blue. The Earl of Sussex’s accounts for his house at Gorambury for the period 1637-8 show quarterly purchases of over £1 on soap, plus 6 shillings for 12 pound of white starch and 2 shillings for one pound of powder blue. (10 pp. 104,114, 115, 120) When the Countess of Bath has laundry done in 1650 as well as “10lb of soap to wash the linen 5s,” she also pays for “blue starch to rench the cloth withal 4d” (11 p. 154) To rench is to rinse the cloth.

 References

1. Slingsby, Henry. The Diary of Sir Henry Slingsby. London : Longman, 1836.

2. Morris, R. Old English homilies of the twelfth century : from the unique ms. B. 14. 52. in the library of Trinity College, Cambridge. London : Early English Text Society, 1873.

3. Markham, Gervase. The English Huswife. London : J. Beale for R. Jackson, 1615.

4. Massinger, Philip. The City Madam. London : Andrew Pennycuicke, 1659.

5. Cunningham, Peter. Handbook for London. London : John Murray, 1849.

6. Chambers, Ephraim. Cyclopaedia . London : D'Midwinter et al, 1741.

7. North, Susan. Sweet and clean?: bodies and clothes in Early Modern England. Oxford : O.U.P., 2020.

8. Pepys, Samuel. Diary. [Online] https://www.pepysdiary.com/diary.

9. Shakespeare, William. A Winter's Tale, Act 4, Scene 3. 1623.

10. Munby, Lionel M. Early Stuart Household Accounts. Ware : Hertfordshire Record Society, 1986.

11. Gray, Todd. Devon Household Accounts 1627-59. Part 2 . Exeter : Devon and Cornwall Record Society, new series, vol. 39, 1996.

12. Robertson, S. The expense Book of James Master 1646-1676 [Part 1, 1646-1655], transcribed by Mrs Dallison. Archaeologia Cantiana. 1883, Vol. 15, 152-216, pp. 152-216.

13. Kent Archaeological Society. Kentish Documents, c.1530-1810 - A Transcription Project. . [Online] 2015. [Cited: June 30, 2025.] https://www.kentarchaeology.org.uk/13/01/30.pdf.