091322 140 year history - A4 landscape v1 digital - Flipbook - Page 44
ca. 1888
Laundry, back
view Prince Alfred
Hospital, Sydney.
1907
Laundry
The laundry block was modern and
mechanised but even so the laundresses
worked hard. First, they had to sort
through the laundry baskets and take
foul linen to a wash room where it was
disinfected and washed separately before
going in with the general linen wash.
Then they operated the various pieces
of apparatus – washing and wringing
machines, a centrifugal hydro-extractor,
a mangle and the sparging table where
clean sheets were sprinkled with water
before being ironed. In the picture
laundresses are feeding sheets into an
ironing machine. The boiler house outside
the building provided steam for heating
the water and powering the steam engine
that ran the machinery.
RPA Museum Image Collection
44