The Laundresses of Fort Alcatraz: The Women Who Kept the Army Clean

Visitors to Alcatraz often ask whether women were ever there. No women were ever imprisoned on "The Rock," but women contributed to the island in many ways — and one of its first uses, as a military fort, depended on an essential group of them: the laundresses.

Alcatraz around 1863: a cluster of buildings on the slope facing San Francisco, one of them the laundresses' quarters. That part of the island has since been dug out and reshaped. California State Library.

A well-paid job

Laundresses, or washerwomen, were among the few women the military employed, washing clothes for companies of soldiers. They received rations, housing, medical care and pay — and on Alcatraz they earned more than many soldiers: as much as $40.00 a month, against about $16.00 for the average soldier. Even officers' wives, of higher social standing, lacked the laundresses' privileges.

The work was hard and important: laundry kept up standards of order and cleanliness. During the Civil War (1861–1865), Army regulations allowed four laundresses for every company of one hundred men, so each washed for at least 25 men — a job of days. They sorted the laundry, treated stains and mended; soaked the clothes, sometimes for days; scrubbed, wrung, boiled, rinsed and wrung them again; and hung them to dry. Officers' clothes might also be blued, starched and pressed.

No pictures of Alcatraz's laundresses survive, but this staged patriotic photograph from 1862 shows pieces of a laundress's life: an enlisted man, his laundress wife with a basket of linen, and three children. Library of Congress.

Who they were

The census lists the laundresses by name:

Most had children and probably helped each other with childcare. Irish immigrant women, moving from east to west, were the backbone of domestic work on Alcatraz.

Census pages for Fort Alcatraz: 1860 (left), listing the three laundresses, and 1870 (right), with Bridget Madden and the four others. National Archives.

Bridget Madden

Bridget Madden's story is typical. Most laundresses were married to enlisted men, and Bridget's husband was probably John Madden, 36, from Ireland, listed as a soldier in 1870. Army regulations encouraged matching the number of soldiers' wives allowed to join a company with the number of laundresses it needed — a way for women to stay with their husbands while contributing to the Army and bringing in good money. Bridget almost certainly earned more than John. As an Army manual of 1864 put it:

"Four laundresses are allowed to each company, and soldiers' wives may be, and generally are, mustered in that capacity. They are then entitled to the same quarters, fuel, and rations as a soldier, and the established pay for the washing they may do for soldiers and officers." — General A. V. Kautz, Customs of Service, 1864

Keeping the family together was probably a priority. In 1870 Bridget had four children with her: Mary Jane (13), born about 1857 in New York, perhaps where John's artillery company was stationed; Michael (6), born about 1864 in Virginia, probably late in the Civil War; and Fergus (4) and Thomas (2), born about 1866 and 1868 in California, after the company moved to San Francisco. Having crossed the ocean to America, the family then moved all over the country.

Life on the island

The island looked very different then, dominated by cannon fortifications and a three-story brick citadel. The citadel's plans included laundresses' quarters, but an 1867 map shows the laundresses living in a frame building on the southwestern slope, facing San Francisco. Whether their husbands lived with them or in the barracks is unclear. The wind there was probably constant, and the salt air may have stiffened the laundry on the lines.

Detail of an 1867 map of Alcatraz by the U.S. Engineers, showing the laundress quarters among other housing and work areas, the batteries at the island's edge and the lighthouse at the top. National Archives and Records Administration.

After the laundresses

Records do not show how long these women stayed, but by 1883 the Army had stopped giving laundresses rations, in effect ending the job. Alcatraz became a military prison in 1907, and by November 1911 the soldiers imprisoned there were doing the laundry themselves, in a concrete building at the north end of the island. Often forgotten, the laundresses helped make possible the island's long years guarding San Francisco Bay.

Sources

• National Park Service, Alcatraz Island, "Women on Fort Alcatraz." https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/women-on-fort-alcatraz.htm
• A. V. Kautz, Customs of Service, 1864, paragraph 11, as quoted in Virginia Mescher, Tubs and Suds.