Text 1: More than a load of washing, by Imogen Vale
An original contemporary magazine feature.
Before visiting the Turntable Laundry, I had already arranged the article in my head. There would be a bleak room, several exhausted people and a heroic volunteer rescuing them. I would write solemnly about a “lifeline”. Everyone would be grateful. It would be exactly the sort of article that allows the reader to feel sad for three minutes and generous for five.
Instead, I open the door of a former railway ticket office and walk into an argument about socks.
“Grey basket,” says Marta, who is sorting clothes.
“That basket is blue,” says Leon, looking offended.
Around them, eight washing machines turn steadily. The walls are bright with notices written by members: EMPTY POCKETS; CLEAN THE FILTER; TEA IS NOT A SUBSTITUTE FOR LUNCH. Marta is a care worker whose landlord has not repaired her washing machine. Leon is studying engineering. At the folding table, a retired surveyor called Stan is pressing a shirt with the concentration of a surgeon.
The laundry was started by residents after the last self-service laundrette in the area closed. Members pay what they can, help with one shift a month and vote on how the place is run. Nobody is asked to prove that they are poor.
“People hear ‘community laundry’ and imagine helpless people being handed clean clothes,” says its coordinator, Rina Shah. “Most members are doing the handing, the fixing and the organising. Sometimes the person who needs help this week is repairing someone else’s machine next week.”
She refuses my request to photograph her beside a row of washing machines. “They aren’t mine,” she says. “Ask the members.”
I speak to Hana, who washes her work uniforms here. She tells me that using the laundry costs less than travelling across town to the nearest alternative, but economy is not her only reason for coming. When her husband was in hospital, the other members took over her shifts. “They didn’t save me,” she says. “They noticed I was missing.”
By lunchtime, my planned article has become unusable. The laundry is not a room divided neatly into helpers and helped. Even I have been put to work, matching a mountain of pillowcases while Stan rejects my folding technique.
Yet it would be too easy to turn this place into a cheerful answer to every problem. Volunteers cannot make low wages rise or force landlords to repair broken appliances. Rina is wary when officials praise the project as proof that communities can look after themselves. “We can look after one another,” she says. “That is not the same thing.”
I leave without my photograph of a hero. In my notebook, I cross out the word “lifeline”. The Turntable is something less dramatic and, perhaps, more important: a place where needing help does not prevent anyone from being useful.
Text 2: A visit to the public wash-house, by A Correspondent
An original newspaper report written in a nineteenth-century voice; a period simulation, not an archival document.
This report was written in 1854 about a public wash-house, where people could pay a small charge to wash and dry clothes.
Having heard much complaint about the new public wash-house in Bell Yard, I went there on Monday expecting noise, idleness and disorder. Certain ratepayers have declared that such places reward dirty habits, and I confess that I was not wholly free from the same suspicion.
The truth met me before I had removed my hat. Forty women were at work in a long, whitewashed room, and no factory could have shown greater industry. Water boiled in the coppers; sheets passed through the wringers; damp clothes rose towards the drying racks overhead. There was talk, certainly, and now and then laughter, but every hand was occupied.
Mrs Bell, the matron, showed me her ledger. During the previous week, 112 families had used the wash-house. Each person paid a small charge for a place at a tub, with hot water included. “We give them the means,” she said, “and they do the work.”
One woman, a widow named Mrs Price, told me that she formerly washed clothes in the single room where her family ate and slept. On wet days, shirts hung above the children’s bed for two nights. At Bell Yard, she could wash and dry everything in an afternoon. She asked for no pity and returned to scrubbing before I had finished writing her words.
It has been suggested that these poor creatures ought to manage without assistance, as respectable families have always done. But what is the wash-house except a means by which they may manage? No servant carries the basket. No official rubs the linen. The women pay their charge and labour for themselves.
I observed, too, the habits of order encouraged by the place. Each user cleaned her tub. Each waited her turn at the wringer. A girl who dropped a stocking was called back by three voices before the matron had time to speak. Those who predicted chaos should visit Bell Yard and discover how little their predictions resemble the truth.
I entered believing that the wash-house might encourage dependence. I departed persuaded that it rewards effort. Let the doubtful ratepayer stand for one hour in the steam, watch the bent backs and reddened hands, and then call these women idle if he can. The public wash-house does not wash a single garment for them. It gives honest labour a fair chance.
Both texts describe shared wash-houses intended to help people who cannot easily wash clothes at home.
Compare:
You must use the text to support your comments and make it clear which text you are referring to.
110 exam-style questions on Eduqas GCSE English Language 2.4 Comparing texts, covering 2.4.1 Critical comparison of two or more texts. Each one has a worked solution and a mark scheme showing where the marks go.