Laundresses' Row

Laundresses' Row. . "The enlisted stratum included the noncommissioned officers [sergeants] and their red-armed wives who were the post’s laundresses, and the broods of unkempt urchins who raced round the big black laundry kettles that bubbled over woodfires in the backyards of Suds Row shanties." , Oliver Knight, Life and Manners in the Frontier Army, 1978, Following British Army practice, the U.S. Army made provision for laundresses in 1802. The Army allowed them space for quarters, rations for food, straw for bedding and medical care. Four laundresses were allowed for each hundred men. Later this was expanded to one laundress for every 19½ men. The captain of each company appointed them. Many laundresses were Irish immigrants. Soldiers paid them through deductions from their pay while officers paid the laundresses directly. An industrious laundress could make several times the pay of a thirteen-dollars-a-month private. Some also worked as tailors, part-time cooks or midwives. Many married non-commissioned officers (sergeants) or soldiers and raised children on the post despite an Army regulation forbidding married men, or men with children, from enlisting., In 1878, the Army banned the enrollment of laundresses with the provision that those already at work could remain. Rations stopped being issued to laundresses in 1883. The laundress' wooden cabins at the Presidio were demolished in the mid-1890s for the construction of the Montgomery Street barracks. Not much is known about the individual histories of these working women., There was a second cluster of laundresses' quarters near Fort Point and a third near what are now the stables. A post-shaped, rose-colored granite grave marker in today's pet cemetery is inscribed:, "+ In Memory of Margaret O’Brien a native of county Donegal, Ireland, died February 25, 1889, aged 52 years. May her soul rest in peace, amen.", This tombstone predates the pet cemetery begun in 1952 and probably marks the grave of an otherwise unrecorded Presidio laundress., Captions , Left: Margaret O'Brien's grave marker. , Top right: In spring of 1862, the Army began building board-and-batten quarters each of which housed 4 laundresses. Each unit had two rooms and a fireplace. Vivian Young , Bottom right: Map of the post in 1871 with Laundresses' Row highlighted. U.S. Army Military History Institute