Sad Irons: 10-Pound Tools of Domestic Oppression
My dad found a rusty-as-shit antique sad iron while cleaning out the basement of a foreclosure he was remodeling, and he excitedly brought it to me. Umm. Thanks?
So I read up on it, and seriously, if ironing was this dangerous, women were even more disposable than I realized. Was a pair of wrinkle-free pants more important than a burned / disfigured / dead wife or daughter?
Let’s find out…
WTF Is a Sad Iron?
Quick History: A sad iron is an old-timey household iron made of cast iron (“iron” has lost all meaning). One often weighed between five and nine pounds. They were invented in ancient China (what wasn’t?) and gained popularity in Europe and America from the 17th through the 19th centuries. In some parts of the U.S., they persisted well into the early 20th century.
“Sad” meant “solid” in Middle English, and early sad irons were, well, solid. (I assume the Great Vowel Shift is to blame, but that’s a topic for another time.) Sometimes they were also called flat irons, because it’s nice to have pet names for the thing that might one day kill you.
Here’s where shit gets grim. Hot, heavy and dangerous, sad irons tell a story of just how undervalued women’s safety was. And it wasn’t just women. Young girls were regularly endangered as well. Yay for equality.
Why Sad Irons Sucked
You heated a sad iron by shoving it directly into a crackling fire. But the handle was also cast iron. Yes, the part you held was burning hot. Ladies of the day used rags or makeshift mitts to protect themselves, but those regularly slipped, burned through or straight-up caught fire. I accidentally grazed the cast iron pan that my cookie sundae was served in last night, and that shit throbbed for hours.
Since the irons were heavy, they were also difficult to move, particularly around buttons or collars. They also had to be kept immaculate and regularly greased. Oh, and after they scorched your hand skin off, they then cooled incredibly fast, becoming useless. Wealthy families owned multiple irons, but poor ones often had only one, meaning those poor women faced long hours tangling with a single, alternately cooling-then-scalding tool.
So yeah, domestic labor for women in this time period was pretty grim.
Fun sidebar: The women who could afford it rotated multiple irons to keep the work going without pause. This is where the expression “too many irons in the fire” comes from.
Enter Mary Potts, Bad-Ass
Mary Potts’ style sad iron
The danger of hot irons didn’t go unnoticed forever. In 1866, John Alexander invented the first iron with a removable handle. Unfortunately, his design was still flawed, because he was a dude who never actually used an iron himself. The placement of the handle (stuck on smack in the center) combined with the basic rules of physics made moving his iron across fabric nearly impossible.
Enter Mary Potts, a bad-ass who, in 1870, improved on the design by inventing a curved wooden handle that was attached at each end, solving the center-pressure problem. She also filled her iron with plaster to distribute heat more evenly while also reducing weight.
But Potts' design wasn’t the last stop on this journey.
From Charcoal to Gasoline (a.k.a., Just Worse)
At some point, someone added asbestos to the irons to keep the handles cool. Nothing says “safe” like adding a carcinogen to a burning hot object. Next came charcoal irons; a.k.a., box irons, a.k.a., hunka hunka burnin’ death. These irons were hollow and filled with hot coal. Some models released smoke via a funnel; (chimney irons). Charcoal was yet another attempt at keeping the iron’s handle from becoming weaponized.
But as you may know, charcoal can be tough to keep lit. This design required the user to shake the iron regularly to get the coals going again. Yup, let’s force a bunch of old-timey women (or girls) to fling around a scalding, heavy metal iron filled with burning coals.
Not deadly enough for you? Let’s check out gasoline irons. These required the use of a gas tank placed directly on the iron handle itself. In a shocking twist, the tanks sometimes leaked highly flammable gasoline onto the woman or child using it. This led the marketplace to trial some kerosene options instead. Because everyone knows kerosene isn’t flammable.
It’s Electricity, Boogie Woogie (And Slightly Less Lethal)
The first electric iron arrived in 1882. Early models had no way to control temperature, and since homes at the time only had electricity for lighting, women had to unplug their lights to use their iron, plunging them into darkness while they worked.
This meant that electric ironing was best performed in the daytime when there was natural light available. But until 1910, most utilities didn’t deliver power to homes during the day due to low demand. Le sigh.
1926 saw the introduction of the electric steam iron, which we still use today. Ironing got less deadly, but there were still large parts of rural America that didn’t have electricity for years. Government programs got the majority of Europe and Canada electrified by the 1920s, but Americans resisted this “communism.” So, rural women didn't get power and the safety it brought to ironing until after WWII.
Holy shit. I guess I should stop complaining about having to do laundry.
I now have several of these bad boys, including one of Mary Potts’ designs. Did your grandmother (or great-aunt, or ghost aunt) own one of these? Post a comment or send a photo.
Want to learn more about sad irons? The Antiques Freaks podcast has a good episode.
An earlier version of this article can be found here: https://medium.com/history-detective/hunka-hunka-burnin-death-how-sad-irons-got-so-sad-f7cd3e8a16e2
