Coming clean on the city’s past
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Staff at the Brant County Museum and Archives want you to air your dirty laundry.
The new squeaky clean exhibit at the Charlotte Street site tells the history of Brantford’s soap and washing machine industries.
Clotheslines hung with bloomers and other early unmentionables are draped in the exhibit area where three examples of early washers, two made by the Brantford Washing Machine Company and one by Schultz Bros. Co. Ltd., are the centrepieces.
And since there’s no washing without suds, the exhibit also includes some history about the city’s A. Watts and Co. Soap Works, which dates back to the 1830s.
“Airing your dirty laundry means talking about things you don’t normally talk about in public,” said Nathan Etherington, administrator at the museum. “Washing machines aren’t something you normally think too much about.”
A recent donation from a Guelph resident of two Brantford Washing Machine Co. models, called the Locomotive 40 and Locomotive 60, helped inspire Etherington, who recently took an exhibit design course, put together the Dirty Laundry show.
The museum already had in its collection a Knoll Washer, manufactured at the Schultz Bros. plant between Pearl and Albion streets.
George C. Schultz started the company and a couple of years later was joined by his brothers, William D. and Henry.
They obtained the rights to a patent by Jonas L. Knoll in 1888 for a washing machine that used “vibrating slatted rubber and slatted end racks pivoted to the interior of the suds-box “¦ to facilitate the removal of dirt therefrom.”
Schultz Bros. also produced crokinole boards with a distinctive heart-shaped design – one of which is part of the exhibit – which they gave away as marketing tools.
In 1893, the Knoll Washer was displayed at the World’s Fair in Chicago where it received first prize.
In 1919, Arthur Calder Lyons was granted a Dominion Charter for the Brantford Washing Machine Company.
The company’s goal was for a “product they were going to make, full of optimism and faith in the British Empire, in Canada and their home city” and began to manufacture the Locomotive Electric Washer.
Arthur C. Lyons also founded another company that went hand-in-hand with his newly found washing machine company, the Brantford Wringer Company.
A patent for his Brantford Safety Wringer – which save a lot of fingers, hair and clothing from getting caught in the rollers – was granted in 1928.
Lyons took a keen interest in electronics and also had a third company, the Lyons Electric Co. Early in the company’s history, Lyon focused extensively on design and constantly thought about improvements to his electric washing machine.
“This stuff was really innovative,” said Michael St. Amant, president of the Brant Historical Society board of directors. “It was mass produced and sold all over the British Empire. One of the first electric machines came out of Brantford Washing Machine Co.
“It all fits into Brantford being a manufacturing powerhouse. It was the third largest producer of gross domestic product in Canada in the early 1900s.”
Charles Watts set up a wholesale grocer in the 1830s near the Iron Bridge, where the Lorne Bridge would later be constructed. He soon became known for his soap and candle products.
Charles’s son, Alfred, started taking over the soap business in the late 1860s. The products of the company, located on Spring Street, right behind Brantford Collegiate Institute, were known throughout the Dominion, from the Maritimes to British Columbia and even to the Northwest Territories.
“There were lots of soap companies at the time,” said St. Amant. “But Watts knew how to market.”
Some of his creative soap ads and posters are on display in the exhibit.
St. Amant said that by the late 1950s, the washing machine industry was moving to larger centres. Today, only parts are made in Canada, with China being the leading producer of machines.
“It’s an industry that’s disappeared.”
Keen to making Airing Our Dirty Laundry an interactive experience, Etherington wants museum visitors to get a good look at the guts of the old washing machines to see how they worked. He is also inviting them to fill out comment cards that will be hung on a line – and to play a game of crokinole.
Also on display are historic documents including patents, receipts and instruction manuals.
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