Lily White washer
Lily White washing machines, early 20th century
The Lily White washing machine was created and manufactured in Maitland in the early twentieth century by Richard Francis Marsh.
Richard Francis Marsh (18? – 1914)
Richard Francis Marsh migrated from England to the New Zealand goldfields as a youth and became an engineering apprentice in Dunedin. In 1882 he came to Newcastle to gain experience in the Great Northern Railway workshops. He later took charge of the hydraulic and steam cranes at the Carrington Dyke. Being of an innovative disposition, he invented a trigger bar to empty coal hopper wagons, a steam turbine, a hydraulic wool and hay press, and the Lily White washing machine.
The washing machine
In 1904, Marsh applied to the Patents Office ‘for provisional protection for an improved washing machine’. It was described as a stoutly built barrel with round-ended pegs at intervals on the inside, and made to revolve by means of a handle attached to cog gearing.
Marsh established the Washington Machine and Supply Co in East Maitland to build and distribute the machines. By mid-1906, over 1000 Lily White washing machines were manufactured there and sold throughout NSW. There were orders from interstate and New Zealand.
Sydney Mail, 19 and 20 September 1906
In January 1908, an article in the Maitland Daily Mercury announced the formation of a new company:
[The] Washington Machine and Supply Company of Australasia Limited, with a capital of £3000 in £1 shares. The objects . . . . are to acquire the business of RF Marsh, and of the Washington Machine and Supply Company, of East Maitland. To carry on the business of manufacturers of the Lily White Washer, etc. The signatures to the registration are: RF Marsh, R Clark, FJ Humphrey, Mary Marsh, Mary M Marsh, DJ Ryan and EA Pryke. [1]
Business was doing well and advertisements for the machine appeared in newspapers and journals throughout the country. Clothes pegging competitions were run in various towns with first prize of ‘a Lily White washing machine, kindly donated by Mr Marsh’. The cost of the machine was £5/10/- (five pounds ten shillings).
Marsh’s manufactory was established near the railway in East Maitland, but the site was resumed by the Railway Commissioners when it was decided to duplicate the line. The factory works then moved into Noad’s Mill, Newcastle St, East Maitland.
Tragedy
The business prospered but all was not well in family affairs. Tragedy struck. By January 1914 Mrs Marsh was living in Sydney after the marriage had soured. She returned to East Maitland to confront her husband on Friday, 16 January 1914. Mr Marsh had been drinking heavily and, after an argument, he threatened her with a revolver. She dared him and he shot her in the forehead, killing her instantly. Marsh then turned the revolver on himself. Marsh was still alive, with a wound to his temple, when help arrived soon after. He was taken to Maitland Hospital, where he died half an hour later. He was aged 63 and his wife 40.
The couple’s bodies were interred in the Church of England cemetery at Campbell's Hill. They were survived by three sons and three daughters.
Endnote
[1] Maitland Daily Mercury, 30 January 1908, p2.
References
Henderson, Lawrie, ‘Our past: the Lily White washer (Maitland’s own washing machine)’, Maitland Mercury, 19 February 2021.
Hunter, Cynthia, Out of the Ordinary: Maitland’s Surprising History, Maitland City Heritage Group, Maitland, 2017, pp. 30-31.
‘Terrible double tragedy’, Maitland Daily Mercury, 17 January 1914, p5.
