So who is Kitty Wilkinson?
Kitty Wilkinson was an Irish immigrant to the United Kingdom. She was a domestic servant and the only one in her neighborhood that had a boiler. When a cholera epidemic struck, she became known as the Saint of the Slums. The reason is that she invited her neighbors to use her house and her yard for her neighbors to wash their clothes. The hot water that she could provide killed the cholera bacteria, thus reducing its spread. She even showed her neighbors how to use chloride of lime (bleach). And she only charged a penny a week.
Was Kitty’s yard the first laundromat? It would seem so.
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