Wash-house at the Brixton Prison

Book illustration of the wash-house at Brixton Prison from page 192 of 'The criminal prisons of London and scenes of prison life' by Henry Mayhew and John Binny. The authors describe how the women, dressed in light-blue checked over-dresses, are found working in the laundry "standing on wooden gratings, washing away at the wooden troughs ranged round the spacious wash-house which forms the lower part of the building. Here some, with their bare red arms, are working the soddened flannels against a wooden grooved board that is used to save the rubbing of the clothes, while the tops of the troughs are white and iridescent with the clouds of suds within them. Two women in the centre are turning the handles of the wringing machine that, as the box in which the wet clothes are placed spins round and round, drains the newly-washed linen of its moisture by the mere action of centrifugal force. In one part is a large wooden boiler heated by steam, and scattered about the place are tubs full of brown wet sheets, large baskets of blankets, and piles of tripey-looking flannels; whilst a dense white mist of steam pervades the entire atmosphere, and the floors are as wet and sloppy as the streets of a Dutch town on a Friday."