Reckitt's Crown Blue (Blueing tablet) - Pack of 10

Product Information

Bluing, laundry blue, dolly blue or washing blue is a household product used to improve the appearance of textiles, especially white fabrics. Used during laundering, it adds a trace of blue dye (often synthetic ultramarine, sometimes Prussian blue) to the fabric.

Henry Chance Newton, mentioned in the preceding excerpt, uses the phrase several times in Idols of the "Halls": Being My Music Hall Memories (1928): And earlier still, from Albert Chevalier, Before I Forget: The Autobiography of a Chevalier D'industrie (1901): In additional to laundry, I use soapnuts everyday – for natural rubber-glove-free washing up, surface cleaning, the loos, glass and shiny things. True Indigo Context suggests that what Maugham means is off-color or bawdy jokes. Note that Mrs. Hudson's use of the blue bag is contrasted with her ‘propriety’:In the meantime I must give you some account of a startling eye-opener which our beloved Marie received in administering a decoction from the Blue Bag for a toiling moiling East End audience. City of Moorabbin Historical Society (Operating the Box Cottage Museum) Book, Carroll, Brian, Early Melbourne sketchbook, 1977 Some material may contain terms that reflect authors’ views, or those of the period in which the item was written Bluing is usually sold in liquid form, but it may also be a solid. Solid bluing is sometimes used by hoodoo doctors to provide the blue color needed for " mojo hands" without having to use the toxic compound copper(II) sulfate. Bluing was also used by some Native American tribes to mark their arrows showing tribe ownership. [ citation needed] See also [ edit ]

THE USE OF BLUE, AND THE ABUSE. Much blue is very objectionable. Dip the blue-bag into the [clean, cold rinsing] water until it is just perceivable that it has been in. One of the most common issues when using eco laundry products such as soapnuts or soapwort, is getting whites looking really white. After a few natural washes white clothing and bedding can become more grey and yellow, even when they are clean. It is more pronounced with hard water. The yellowy-grey is the actual colour of the fabric and up to now soapnuts users have resigned themselves to having off-whites. However we do now have the number one eco solution to make your whites dazzling even when using natural laundry products and thought that you’d like to know. We can now get our whites looking like new with our traditional totally natural blue indigo laundry bluing! City of Moorabbin Historical Society (Operating the Box Cottage Museum) Education kit, Department of Veterans Affairs, Schooling, service and the Great War, 2014The blue bag was also used for treating insect bites as well as stings, as we learn from this letter to the editor of the [Perth, West Australia] Western Mail (December 17, 1915): Maugham was a very successful playwright and very familiar with the theatre; and “blue bag” was certainly used in this sense among theatre people during WW II, not that long after Cakes and Ale was published. Here’s actress Naomi Jacob (b. 1884, so about ten years younger than Maugham) writing about her work with E.N.S.A. productions for the troops:

Many washerwomen—charring-women, notably—have an immense fondness for blue, for they can hide for the tome being, by its aid, any carelessness they have been guilty of as regards washing thoroughly. Blue covers up the yellow hue consequent upon this. Very blue clothes, too, look bad, but a slight colouring of it adds to the beauty of well-washed garments. But their humour was really of a very quaint and infectious kind, and they were always welcome, especially when they used less of the "Blue Bag." Storage & organisation Furniture Textiles Kitchenware & tableware Kitchens Lighting Decoration Rugs, mats & flooring Beds & mattresses Baby & children Smart home Bathroom products Laundry & cleaning Plants & plant pots Home electronics Home improvement Outdoor living Food & beverages Christmas Shop Shop by room Bluette - There used to be information online saying that this was "sold in the detergent or bleach aisle of most supermarkets and many smaller grocery Further examination of a number of old Ngram hits ca 1840 suggests that this refers to some sort of satchel typically used by barristers. But then "green bag" appears to be used in a similar context.or recorded but may not be considered appropriate today. These views are not necessarily the views of Victorian Collections. I searched a number of slang dictionaries and didn't find any slang use of "blue bag," aside from Eric Partridge's note in A Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English, fifth edition (1961) that Sidneyites had, since circa 1910, used "the Blue Bags" as a slang term for "Newtown footballers." Many well remember that some of the smart ditties that our Marie warbled ere more or less tinged with squeezes from what the dear girl herself called " the blue bag."

Find sources: "Bluing"fabric– news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR ( August 2012) ( Learn how and when to remove this template message) Unfortunately, this stilbene group of chemicals is harmful to aquatic life with long lasting effects. It is also harmful to humans. It is connected to respiratory difficulties and skin troubles and harms people with pre-existing eye conditions. I have noticed that my water board monitors this chemical in our drinking water, but as far as I know they do not remove it and it has long term aquatic toxicity… What did people use to whiten their white laundry in the past? Sting of Bees.—Although the poison a bee emits when it inserts its sting, is proved to be a highly concentrated acid, the application of all alkalies will not neutralize the acid. The more gentle alkalies—chalk, or the "blue bag," are much more likely to effect a cure, and cannot injure[.] I imagine this is show-biz slang, borrowing the name of the familiar domestic article and humorously parsing it in the sense of “blue” jokes. They built up a major international brand, with various lesser rivals, notably Mrs. Stewart's liquid bluingIn this reference the term "blue bag" is apparently used to mean a small flannel bag in which you place a ball of "bluing". This is then added to a load of laundry "whites" to help neutralize yellowing. Laundry bluing is made of a colloid of ferric ferrocyanide (blue iron salt, also referred to as "Prussian blue") in water. As others have noted, "blue-bag" has been used in connection with laundry bluing since at least the 1860s. From " Purple Dyeing, Ancient and Modern," translated from a German article in Aus der Natur (not later than 1864) and printed in Annual Report of the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution, Showing the Operations, Expenditures, and Condition of the Institution for the Year 1863 (1872):