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

There was a well known intellectual property dispute between two manufactures of this type of product. The legal action arising from this is still cited in English law disputes. (Ironically, the two companies later merged with each other!) Find sources: "Bluing"fabric– news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR ( August 2012) ( Learn how and when to remove this template message)And from The Economical Housewife: A Complete Practical Guide to Domestic Management for the Use of Both Mistress and Maid (1880): 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. City of Moorabbin Historical Society (Operating the Box Cottage Museum) Education kit, Department of Veterans Affairs, Schooling, service and the Great War, 2014 There came a time at last, however, when even at the "Pav.," where such "shadiness" of song and jest seemed to be encouraged in those days, Marie was "warned" by the management, but not until that management had been "warned" by others, including your humble memoriser. We celebrate the history and contemporary creativity of the world’s oldest living culture and pay respect to Elders — past, present and future.

One of the traditional ways of rousing laughter in illegitimate drama is by innuendo. The technique is not by any means new nor is it confined to illegitimate drama—it is to be found in Elizabethan plays of four hundred years ago. In the music hall, precisely what is assumed is left to the imagination of each member of the audience, but the implication is invariably of a kind delightfully described by Chance Newton as "cerulean," or "a touch of the blue bag." It was a favorite comic device of Max Miller's. By means of stressed rhymes he would lead an audience to expect a blue joke, but would so time what he said that he could rely on being interrupted by the loud laughter of the audience before he reached the significant word. He would then feel free to upbraid the audience vigorously for having dirty minds and giving him a bad name—and this technique was far from peculiar to Max Miller. 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’: 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:

Why use Traditional Indigo as Laundry Bluing

Laundry bluing is made of a colloid of ferric ferrocyanide (blue iron salt, also referred to as "Prussian blue") in water. This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed.

Taken from An Original Letter from the Prince of Wales Laundress and used in many advertisement if the time! In 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. 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. 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. 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 roomBluing, 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): 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

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." 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. This Ngram find references "blue bag" multiple times, using it in a way that makes me suspect it's a term for some specific type of luggage. The little blue bag was stirred around in the final rinse water on washday. It disguised any hint of yellow and helped the household linen look whiter than white. The main ingredients were synthetic ultramarine and baking soda, and the original "squares" weighed an ounce and cost 1 penny. E.N.S.A. shows are blue!” So are many of the shows given in music-halls in England. No E.N.S.A. show is blue at its final rehearsal at Drury Lane, that I can swear. Each show is vetted and vetted most carefully. Manuscripts have to be submitted, and the blue pencil is not spared when objectionable matter is found. If, after the show has gone out, either at home or overseas, the “blue bag” is used too freely that is the fault of the party manager, or going further, the fault of any E.N.S.A. officer who sees the show and hears “smut” and does not prohibit it. Dirt is not wished for, it is not permitted and if everyone concerned did their duty as they should do it it would all be eliminated. Remember there will always be “comics” who like to push in a dirty gag and get a cheap laugh . . .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." 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?