Dirty Linen

Clapham

The London School Board was instrumental in helping create a number of teaching centres for Domestic Economy in large urban areas in the 1890s. Each centre served a number of schools in the area and was generally erected in the grounds of girls' schools. At the end of the 19th century there were more than 89 cookery centres and 18 laundry centres throughout the country as well as houses specially adapted as housewifery centres. This image is of one of these centres, the Tennyson Street Laundry Centre in Clapham, around the turn of the century.

Image copyright The Women's Library, London Metropolitan University.

Dirty Linen