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‘Se Mantiene de Lavar’: The Laundry Business in Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Mexico City

In: Female Entrepreneurs in the Long Nineteenth Century

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  • Marie Francois

    (California State University Channel Islands)

Abstract

Francois draws on archival and contemporary published sources to investigate the women who worked as lavanderas, or laundresses, in Mexico City in the late Spanish colonial period and early national period. This chapter casts laundresses as entrepreneurs with diverse backgrounds who managed risk, investment and client relations in a capital city with a scarcity of water, a steady demand for clean clothes and linens, and secrets that only laundresses knew. Laundry was unregulated but similar in its business and skilled labour characteristics to sectors regulated in guilds. The laundering workplace was diffuse, spread across the city in public washhouses, private patios and rooftops, and institutions such as schools. Francois demonstrates that rather than being live-in servants, laundresses were independent businesswomen.

Suggested Citation

  • Marie Francois, 2020. "‘Se Mantiene de Lavar’: The Laundry Business in Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Mexico City," Palgrave Studies in Economic History, in: Jennifer Aston & Catherine Bishop (ed.), Female Entrepreneurs in the Long Nineteenth Century, edition 1, chapter 0, pages 33-55, Palgrave Macmillan.
    • Handle: RePEc:pal:palscp:978-3-030-33412-3_2
    DOI: 10.1007/978-3-030-33412-3_2
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