My maternal gran had a brick "copper" with a metal inner and you lit a fire under it to boil the water for washing. My paternal gran ran a laundry in her back yard, employing several local women. The cheapest wash was a bag-wash where all the items were in an old pillow case and just washed as a lump. If you couldn't afford to have your sheets ironed, for a small sum you could ask to have them put through a huge mangle called "the rock" when they were dry, which took out the worst of the creases.( This mangle had a huge drum which was filled with stones.)The posh houses with maids sent her their caps and aprons and Gran was trained in the use of a goffering iron for the frills.
My Mum had a Bendix automatic washing machine in about the late 40s/early50s, the first one in the street. One day, she hid her savings in the drum because she was going out for the day, forgot they were there and did a load of washing, then wondered why the clothes were covered with bits of paper. Amazingly, the bank told her to collect the metal strips as proof, and refunded nearly all of the money!
When I was first married, I took the big stuff to the communal wash house in Tottenham and did the rest in the sink in our little flat. When the first baby arrived I had a Burco boiler, then a little Hoover with an agitator in the side and a mangle on the top (second-hand of course).My Dad then bought us an automatic-- I think it was a Hoover, turquoise and white with a sloping front. It ripped the washing to shreds and all the nappies had fringes round the edges. That was followed by a twin-tub then a Hotpoint top-loader, the best machine I ever had and you could pop things in part way if you'd forgotten them. Gosh--memories, memories.