Work Text:
Well, and haven’t I become an expert on laundry.
Of course the actual washing for 221 is done by the slaveys, but I teach the girls how to deal with stains in the gentlemen’s clothing that rarely pop up in other lodging-houses or at their homes.
The girls know the usual remedies for dirty laundry from having done their own families’ washing – chalk and lemon and salt and rosin-soap – but the needs of our work are a wee bit different. Instead of a never-ending load of soiled nappies and muddy shirts, it’s Thames sludge and creosote and blood imbuing fine linen and good cotton. (I order a good deal of buttermilk just to treat the Doctor’s ink-stains.) My fig-gin poultice is a sterling remedy for removing city smudges from expensive black silk top-hats too.
I do all the mending myself, and a full-time job that is too. Mr. Holmes and Dr. Watson get into scuffles and scrapes that outdo those of 10-year-old boys, and those clothes need to be soaked overnight in lye-soap to get the dirt and blood out before I can fix them.
I’ve only once thrown out a nearly-new item of clothing for being damaged beyond repair, and that was at Mr. Holmes’ personal request. That was the Doctor’s trousers, torn end to end and soaked in blood.