SOTW BLOG AUGUST 2014
Pioneer Soap
In one of my Wildings stories titled "When Loves Comes Knocking" which is now included in the boxed set of Wildings stories, THE WILDINGS: A Family Saga, Penelope Thoroughgood takes in
laundry from the Iron Slipper Saloon and Bordello as well as from the bachelors
in the town of Hazard, Wyoming. This is the only way for her to eek out a
living after her husband was shot dead cheating at cards. Washing laundry in
1912 was a far cry from the convenience we have today.
I remember my grandmother washing clothes and linens
on the back porch of her Victorian farm house in Pennsylvania. She had an old
wringer washing machine. At least she had electricity. She talked about the lye
soap she used and how it made her hands raw. Having never used lye soap myself,
I had no idea what the soap was made of or why it made her hands raw, so I dug
into some research about the history of soap.
I found some very complicated chemical analysis of how
soap works that made my eyes cross and my brain numb. Suffice it to say, it
basically lifts the dirt and oils away from the fibers in the cloth, emulsifies
the fat (makes it water soluble), and allows the whole mess to be rinsed away. Soap
has been around a very long time in its various forms. The earliest on record
is around 2800 BC in ancient Babylon. A formula for soap consisting of water,
alkali, and cassia oil was written on a Babylonian clay tablet around 2200 BC.
The Ebers papyrus (Egypt, 1550 BC) indicates the
ancient Egyptians bathed regularly and combined animal and vegetable oils with
alkaline salts to create a soap-like substance.
In the reign of Nabonidus (556–539 BC), a recipe for
soap consisted of ashes, cypress oil and sesame seed oil.
The ancient Romans used oils messaged into their body
which they then scraped off along with the dirt with a special instrument
called a strigil. In Pliny the Elder's Historia
Naturalis, he mentions the manufacture of soap from tallow and ashes, but
he only sites its use as a pomade for hair. Aretaeus of Cappadocia, in the
first century AD, noted that among Celts, men called Gauls, used alkaline
substances that are made into balls called “soap.”
Galen describes soap-making using lye and prescribed
washing with it to carry away impurities from the body and clothes. According
to Galen, the best soaps were Germanic, and soaps from Gaul were second best.
In the Middle East, a 12th-century Islamic document
describes the process of soap production. It mentions the key ingredient,
alkali, which later becomes crucial to modern chemistry, derived from al-qaly
or “ashes.”
In Medieval Europe, soap-makers in
Naples were members of a guild in the late sixth century. By the eighth
century, soap-making was well known in Italy and Spain. The royal will of
Charlemagne, mentions soap as one of the products the stewards of royal estates
were to keep an account of. Can you imagine being given soap via a will?
By the second half of the 15th century, France began the
semi-industrialized, professional manufacture of soap concentrated in a few
centers of Provence— Toulon, Hyères, and Marseille which supplied the rest of
France. By 1525, in Marseilles, production was concentrated in at least two
factories, and soap production at Marseille tended to produce more than the
other Provençal centers. English manufacture of soap was concentrated in
London.
Finer soaps were later produced in Europe from the
16th century, using vegetable oils (such as olive oil) as opposed to animal
fats. Many of these soaps are still produced, both industrially and by
small-scale artisans. Castile soap is a popular example of the vegetable-only
soaps derived from the oldest “white soap” of Italy.
Until the Industrial Revolution, soap-making was
conducted on a small scale and the product was rough. Andrew Pears started
making a high-quality, transparent soap in 1807 in London. His son-in-law,
Thomas J. Barratt, opened a factory in Isleworth in 1862.
Robert Spear Hudson began manufacturing a soap powder
in 1837, initially by grinding the soap with a mortar and pestle. American
manufacturer Benjamin T. Babbitt introduced marketing innovations that included
sale of bar soap and distribution of product samples. William Hesketh Lever and
his brother, James, bought a small soap works in Warrington in 1886 and founded
what is still one of the largest soap businesses, formerly called Lever
Brothers and now called Unilever. These soap businesses were among the first to
employ large-scale advertising campaigns.
Liquid soap was not invented until 1865, when William
Shepphard patented a liquid version of soap. In 1898, B.J. Johnson developed a
soap made of palm and olive oils. His company, the B.J. Johnson Soap Company,
introduced "Palmolive" brand soap. This new kind of soap became
popular to such a degree that B.J. Johnson Soap Company changed its name to
Palmolive. At the turn of the Twentieth century, Palmolive was the world's
best-selling soap.
But, of course, pioneer women had little access to all
these wonderful manufactured soap products. They had to make soap themselves
and it was a difficult and nasty process. Twice a year, in spring and late
fall, probably for the good weather since soap was generally made outside in a
huge cauldron.
Making soap was one of the hardest and nastiest of
chores, but also one of the most important. Soap was made from ashes, water,
and fat. Early spring and late fall were the most popular times for making
soap. People saved table scraps and lard all winter for use in spring
soap-making. Soap-making required skill in judging correct proportions and
temperatures and the process was not always successful. First, water was poured
through wood ashes to produce lye. According to the domestic manual, one made
soft soap by boiling the lye until it was strong enough to "eat off the
soft part of a feather." The grease and lye were then boiled together to
produce soap thick enough to form cakes at the bottom of a cup of cold water.
This produced a soft, dark yellow paste for washing clothes. To make hard cakes
of soap, the lye had to be strong enough "to float an egg." Grease
was added to the lye and the mixture boiled until thick, when salt was added.
The mixture hardened for a day, then was melted down again before forming hard
cakes of soap for bathing. 6 bushels of ashes plus 50 pounds of grease yielded
1 tub of soap.
Of course, modern soap is made with different
ingredients such as palm oil and olive oil and the alkali is obtained from a
more refined, sodium hydroxide. Essential oils or herbs are added for a
delicious scent to make it perfect for a luxurious bath.
If you want to learn how to make soap, here is more
information:
http://candleandsoap.about.com/od/soapmakingbasics/a/How-To-Make-Soap.htm
Resources:
Wikipedia
Wood Ridge Homestead
Country living in the northern Shenandoah Valley in
Virginia
http://woodridgehomestead.com/2010/09/09/pioneer-soap-making/
All photographs are free domain from Wikipedia and
Amazon.com
Sarah J. McNeal
Author
of Heartwarming Stories
I'm old enough to have grown up with electric mangles, and so many people, my mother included simply refused to get rid of their washboards for years, saying there was nothing like them to work out stains on. I am so glad, as you say, that I have an automatic washing machine, and modern products. Lovely post. I so love the details of the mundane side of life from the past. These things undercut all the huge stories to root us in the reality of life in the past.
ReplyDeleteChristine, my grandmother had the same old wringer washing machine all the years I knew her. She kept in on the back porch when she lived on her farm, and in the basement of her last house. She hung up those clothes on a line and was so proud of her white linens. I am grateful for modern machines, but I'm certain I would survive without them because I at least learned those skills from my grandmother and my mother.
DeleteThank you so very much for your comment.
Wow, Sarah, fabulous, detailed research. I bet it was fun finding all this info. I vaguely remember my grandmother (possibly) making soap because I knew ashes were saved and fat and lye was involved, but that's all I knew, so I found your research very interesting. We didn't have electricity when we first came to my step-father's farm, so it was a washboard. Later, my mom got a wringer washing machine and I helped but was fearful of the wringer. In the rinse tub I think Mom put in some bluing for the white clothes/sheets. I still remember the smell of the sheets when brought in from the clothesline....and my fingers freezing in the winter. Thanks for a wonderful, informative blog, Sarah.
ReplyDeleteElizabeth, m mom did get her hand caught in my grandmother's wringer when she was a young girl. Boy, I'll bet that hurt.
DeleteI always wanted to try to make soap myself, but it looks too much like a chemistry project for me to handle. Years ago I watched the women on "Alaska, The Last Frontier" make soap and it seemed pretty precise how it was done. I'm thankful we can just buy soap already made and I love the fragrances o some soap.
My grandfather McNeal did have electricity, but he pumped water by hand from a well and had an outhouse.
I loved the smell of clothes and sheets that had dried in the sun, too. I imagine we got to absorb all that sunshine and up our vitamin D.
It's always good to hear from you8. Thank you for your lovely comment.
What an interesting well-informed blog post about soap. I enjoyed learning about the process to make soap so long ago. Makes me thankful for the soap I can just pick up from the market. lol Never really thought about Palmolive and how they got their name. Interesting, too. Thanks for sharing.
ReplyDeleteYes, Karen, I was surprised to learn about Palmolive, too. Research is such a fun thing; you gather all this information, learn some new things, and then have to decide what part to use in the article. Sometimes I want to blather on and on to use ALL that information, but nobody has time to read that much.
DeleteI really appreciate you coming and leaving a comment.
Cool article. Lots of stuff I didn't know.
ReplyDeleteThank you.
Deletewhat a great blog!!! There are a lot of things I set out to do when I started writing. I wanted hands on knowledge of what they used to do it. Soap making was one of the tasks, I tackled. I was amazing but how much fun it was to take simply waste items and make soap!
ReplyDeleteWell, Deborah, you got further along than me. I didn't get to the part where I made the soap even though I really wanted to try it. I hope yours turned out well. I was shocked by the ingredients used in making soap. Ashes had many uses back in those days, including in the garden. I should have known you had succeeded at making soap and that you found it to be fun.
DeleteThank you so much for taking the time to read my blog and leave a comment. That's very kind of you.
We learned to make it two ways. Quickie method was to buy a tub of lard (yes, stores do still sell it) and buy a can of lye (pure lye crystals -- BE VERY CAREFUL using it as it's a caustic and eats through wood and just about anything--including flesh!). You melt a about a pound of lard, then then once it's melted and warm add in the lye, stirring. This is NOT for the timid! It will come out once, cooled and set like a bar of Ivory soap.
DeleteThe other method was create your own lye by using wood ash. This one we did outside in a big metal cauldron. I felt like one of the Three Witches crackling over the pot.
The soaps are very clean smelling, but you can add in scents.
That's so interesting, Deborah. I've never made soap myself, but you make it seem simple to do. Lard has got to be disgusting. You wouldn't think lard and lye would smell "clean." The fun part would be adding different scents.
DeleteThanks so much for this blog, Sarah! Really interesting and useful.
ReplyDeleteLindsay, I'm certain you must know about soap making and many other useful skills because your Medieval stories have a great deal of detail about herbs and the "old ways" written into them.
DeleteI appreciate you coming and commenting on my log. That's very sweet of you.
Very interesting blog. We tried making soap in elementary school when the class was reading the Laura Ingalls Wilder books. It was one of the projects the teacher used to teach us about pioneer ways.
ReplyDeleteWhat a wonderful teacher you had, Ann, to teach about the Laura Ingalls Wilder books and get the class involved in pioneer life by making soap. I never heard of the Wilder books until Little House on the Prairie series was on TV.
ReplyDeleteThank you for your comment.