Story: Washing, cleaning and personal hygiene

More links and websites

• Hot water over time – the New Zealand experience

  A 2007 conference paper by Nigel Isaacs, Michael Camilleri and Lisa French, about hot-water provision in New Zealand homes (PDF, 423 KB).

• Laundry equipment

  From the Heritage New Zealand website, information about historic irons at Highwic in Auckland.

• Technology: the domestic ideal

  This section of the Caversham Project website includes pages about Blue Monday, vacuum cleaning and ironing in Caversham, Dunedin, from 1890 to 1940.

More suggestions and sources

• Coney, Sandra. Standing in the sunshine: a history of New Zealand women since they won the vote. Auckland: Viking, 1993.

• Daley, Caroline. Girls & women, men & boys: gender in Taradale, 1886–1930. Auckland: Auckland University Press, 1999.

• O’Donnell, Jean-Marie. ‘”Electric servants” and the science of housework: changing patterns of domestic work, 1935–1956.’ In Women in history 2: essays on women in New Zealand, edited by Barbara Brookes, Charlotte Macdonald and Margaret Tennant, 168–183. Wellington: Bridget Williams Books, 1992.

• Salmond, Jeremy. Old New Zealand houses, 1800–1940. Auckland: Reed Methuen, 1986.

• Tennant, Margaret. ‘”Missionaries of Health”: the School Medical Service during the inter-war period.’ In A healthy country: essays on the social history of medicine in New Zealand, edited by Linda Bryder, 128–148. Wellington: Bridget Williams Books, 1991.