Window Cleaners In Days Of Yore

Having a trade usually meant you had served a full seven year apprenticeship and were accepted by the associated trade association as being skilled. In industry skilled fitters and turners were tradesmen, the unskilled were labourers. A tradesman owned his own tools, in the Middle Ages he carried these in a 'sack' (actually a kind of cloth bag with rope handles). If an employer was not happy with the man's work he would be 'given the sack', that is told to take his tools and leave. If he did a really bad job his Guild would be called in and if they felt the job was not up to their standards they might require the tools to be burnt, which was called being 'fired'. As the guild controlled who could work in an industry this effectively disbarred the man from working in his trade, reducing him to being a labourer. Tradesmen were the core of the original 'middle classes', along with 'merchants' who buy and sell goods and services, the former generally had higher social status as many distrusted merchants.

New York Times,
September 1st,
1919.
Click to enlarge.

Most tradespeople wore the standard working clothing of the day, from the time the railways arrived until the 1940s that would mean for a man a suit consisting of jacket, waistcoat and trousers with leather boots and a hat. The long trousers appeared about the time the railways arrived and rapidly replaced the below-the-knee breeches and stockings worn before that time, the drawback was that long trousers tended to pull on the knees when bending so working men often had a leather strap or piece of twine fastened just below the knee to hitch up the trouser and give a degree of freedom to the knee. The jacket might be taken off in hot weather, but the waistcoat tended to remain on, even if un buttoned. Working men tended to wear blue shirts, skilled men and more senior staff favoured white shirts but most working men did not wear a collar and tie. The collar was a separate item, attached with a collar stud at the back, the blue collar was of no practical value and the white collar was a stiff thing that chafed the neck and served no useful purpose (although they were favoured by merchants). Many tradesmen and labourers wore a coloured handkerchief round their neck, useful for mopping up sweat and in cold weather the muffler (a woolen scarf tucked into the front of the jacket) was a much more practical option. The hats worn by men up to the 1860s were a mixed bag, the two common types seem to have been a wide brimmed hat, made either of soft felt or woven straw, and the cloth cap with a peak (resembling a uniform cap). In the 1860s the flat cap appeared, originally a hat for the sporting gentry but rapidly adopted as a practical bit of kit by working men. Also at this time the bowler hat appeared and became almost a badge of office for foremen and skilled tradesmen.

Skilled men always owned their own set of tools, even when working for a company, and each trade had some fairly distinctive variations. Good tools were expensive so most tradesmen would therefore have a lockable took box, in many cases they would incorporate a lockable compartment in their vehicle, be it a hand cart, a traders tricycle or horse drawn van or wagon. Labourers and most factory workers were dependent on their employer for tools, although generally these amounted to little more than a wheelbarrow and spade and hence did not carry a tool box.

Window cleaners have been operating for many years dealing with commercial buildings, by the 1930s they were doing some domestic cleaning as well (although this was not common until the later 1940s). The scale of the British industry can be judged by the formation of a professional body, National Federation of Master Window Cleaners (now called The Federation of Window Cleaners) in 1947. There are however no restrictions and anyone can set up as a window cleaner, which means there are quite a few accidents involving unskilled people.

They had to carry buckets and ladders and usually operated in pairs, one with the extending ladder for the upstairs rooms, the other with a short 'A' shaped ladder for the downstairs windows. The photographs from the early 20th century often show window cleaners wearing a lightweight jacket, often buttoned only at the neck to allow freedom of movement. Rubber 'wellington boots' reaching nearly to the knee seem to have been common in this trade after their introduction in about 1910 up to the mid 1930s. In towns the staff of larger firms were issued with a long uniform overcoat worn over a bib-and-braces set of overalls, the coat appears to be light weight (probably a waterproof light oilskin). By the 1950s my local suburban window cleaners wore long sleeveless brown jerkins with oilskin pockets to carry their wet chamois leathers.

In towns a hand cart was often used to carry the ladders and equipment, window cleaning companies often sent out teams of four or five with such a cart to handle the shop fronts in a town. This cart would (typically) not have the usual handles fitted as the ladders served for this. They usually had high sides bearing the company name and contact details, when on the move the buckets (one per man) would ride sitting between the rungs of the ladder. In the sketch below the chap on the right (based on a photo dating from around the time of the First World War) would serve for any period from about 1910 to the mid 1930s, the chap on the right would serve from the mid 1930s through to the 1950s.

For the working the suburbs some cleaners used hand carts but many favoured bicycles up to the 1960's, giving them a wider radius of operation. Some began using motorcycle combinations, with the ladders carried on the side car, from the 1940s but in the 1960s there was a distinct shift toward using vans with roof racks for the ladders. On bikes they carried their ladder on one shoulder and the galvanised metal bucket was slung on the handlebars often with a chamois hanging over the side. The picture above is based on my memory of the two chaps operating in my local area in the 1950s and 60s (by which time they wore denim jackets with big oilskin-lined pockets).

Up to the 1960s domestic window cleaners favoured the plain chamois leather, the T shaped 'squeegee' cleaning tool spread from the industrial side of the business in the later 60s. The modern squeegee was invented in 1936 by a Mr Ettore, an Italian living in America. There was something similar on the market, widely used for cleaning skyscraper windows, but it was heavy and not very effective. Mr Ettore approached the largest manufacturer of professional window cleaning products with his design but they were not interested. He contacted the managing director and bet the cost of a new hat that by the end of the month they would be interested. The man took the bet and Mr Ettore then distributed some of his tools to window cleaners, asking only that they evaluate them, when the men asked where they could get one he gave them the manufacturers address and by the end of the month he had won his bet.

The war effort saw women taking the place of conscription male window cleaners as they were sent to war.