Linen Mangle

Where did a mangle woman work in Victorian times?

Does anyone know, did a mangle woman work at home? Why did you have stones for the mangle, and was the linen you mangled real linen or does it mean like bedlinen or table linen?

The kind of mangle that had stones in is called a box mangle. It was a heavy box filled with stones, used for pressing and smoothing fabric over rollers, and was not a wringer-type mangle.

A mangle woman could be someone working at home doing other people’s mangling for pennies or a worker in a laundry.

In Victorian times, washing your linen could mean any household linen and white washing. In England a lot of it was linen, but some was cotton.

Cold mangling