A laundry lesson at St Rollox School in Garngad (now Royston) Road, 1916. Note the washing basins, mangles for squeezing water from wet clothes, and the linen items drying on the pulleys. The lessons are supervised by women in starched pinafores.
The Education (Scotland) Act of 1872 made schooling compulsory for all children aged 5 to 13 years (the leaving age was raised to 14 in 1901). Lessons in household skills such as cooking, ironing and sewing were considered a vital part of a girl's education, preparing her for the challenges of managing and maintaining a home once she married and had children.
The original St Rollox School was built by Charles Tennant on Castle Street, for the children of his employees at the St Rollox Chemical Works. The Castle Street school had outgrown its capacity of 470 by 1858 so a larger schoool was built on Garngad Road. The Glasgow School Board bought the second school and later demolished it, replacing it in 1906 with the building in which this photograph was taken. In 2003 it houses Royston Primary School.
Reference: D-ED 5/11/7
Reproduced with the permission of Glasgow City Council, Libraries Information and Learning
Keywords:
domestic science, education, Education (Scotland) Act, 1872, girls, Glasgow School Board, housework, ironing, laundry lessons, mangles, pinafores, primary schools, pulleys, Royston Primary School, school children, St Rollox Chemical Works, St Rollox School, teachers, washing, women
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