Storage & organisation Furniture Textiles Kitchenware & tableware Kitchens Lighting Decoration Rugs, mats & flooring Beds & mattresses Baby & children Smart home Bathroom products Laundry & cleaning Plants & plant pots Home electronics Home improvement Outdoor living Food & beverages Christmas Shop Shop by room In the meantime I must give you some account of a startling eye-opener which our beloved Marie received in administering a decoction from the Blue Bag for a toiling moiling East End audience. The blue bag was also used for treating insect bites as well as stings, as we learn from this letter to the editor of the [Perth, West Australia] Western Mail (December 17, 1915): They built up a major international brand, with various lesser rivals, notably Mrs. Stewart's liquid bluing

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Why use Traditional Indigo as Laundry Bluing

Seeker" wants a remedy for bung eyes. I have tried different remedies, but the best is the blue bag (washing blue) as soon as the eye is stung. Wet the blue bag and apply to where the eye is stung. I don't think it hurts the eyesight. I have three children, and if a fly stings them, they come in at once for the blue bag. It stops the swelling at once, and it seems to take all the pain away.

Many well remember that some of the smart ditties that our Marie warbled ere more or less tinged with squeezes from what the dear girl herself called " the blue bag." Performers in the music-hall era seem to have viewed the "blue bag" not as a receptacle to pull naughty innuendo about naked bunnies out of, but as the familiar nineteenth- and early twentieth-century laundry aid—a cake of bluing tied in a cloth bag and immersed briefly in cold rinse water to help make white clothes look less yellow or dingy, or applied to an insect sting to make it less painful.Many washerwomen—charring-women, notably—have an immense fondness for blue, for they can hide for the tome being, by its aid, any carelessness they have been guilty of as regards washing thoroughly. Blue covers up the yellow hue consequent upon this. Very blue clothes, too, look bad, but a slight colouring of it adds to the beauty of well-washed garments. There came a time at last, however, when even at the "Pav.," where such "shadiness" of song and jest seemed to be encouraged in those days, Marie was "warned" by the management, but not until that management had been "warned" by others, including your humble memoriser. Bluing, laundry blue, dolly blue or washing blue is a household product used to improve the appearance of textiles, especially white fabrics. Used during laundering, it adds a trace of blue dye (often synthetic ultramarine, sometimes Prussian blue) to the fabric.

One of the traditional ways of rousing laughter in illegitimate drama is by innuendo. The technique is not by any means new nor is it confined to illegitimate drama—it is to be found in Elizabethan plays of four hundred years ago. In the music hall, precisely what is assumed is left to the imagination of each member of the audience, but the implication is invariably of a kind delightfully described by Chance Newton as "cerulean," or "a touch of the blue bag." It was a favorite comic device of Max Miller's. By means of stressed rhymes he would lead an audience to expect a blue joke, but would so time what he said that he could rely on being interrupted by the loud laughter of the audience before he reached the significant word. He would then feel free to upbraid the audience vigorously for having dirty minds and giving him a bad name—and this technique was far from peculiar to Max Miller. But their humour was really of a very quaint and infectious kind, and they were always welcome, especially when they used less of the "Blue Bag."Further examination of a number of old Ngram hits ca 1840 suggests that this refers to some sort of satchel typically used by barristers. But then "green bag" appears to be used in a similar context. or recorded but may not be considered appropriate today. These views are not necessarily the views of Victorian Collections. Unfortunately, this stilbene group of chemicals is harmful to aquatic life with long lasting effects. It is also harmful to humans. It is connected to respiratory difficulties and skin troubles and harms people with pre-existing eye conditions. I have noticed that my water board monitors this chemical in our drinking water, but as far as I know they do not remove it and it has long term aquatic toxicity… What did people use to whiten their white laundry in the past?

There was a well known intellectual property dispute between two manufactures of this type of product. The legal action arising from this is still cited in English law disputes. (Ironically, the two companies later merged with each other!) Find sources: "Bluing"fabric– news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR ( August 2012) ( Learn how and when to remove this template message)In additional to laundry, I use soapnuts everyday – for natural rubber-glove-free washing up, surface cleaning, the loos, glass and shiny things. True Indigo In this reference the term "blue bag" is apparently used to mean a small flannel bag in which you place a ball of "bluing". This is then added to a load of laundry "whites" to help neutralize yellowing. City of Moorabbin Historical Society (Operating the Box Cottage Museum) Book, Carroll, Brian, Early Melbourne sketchbook, 1977