Democratic Sentinel, Volume 17, Number 51, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 5 January 1894 — The Origin of Starching. [ARTICLE]

The Origin of Starching.

The course of history carries us back no further than the year 1654 for the origin of starching in London. It wai in that year that Mistress Van der Plasse came with her husband from Flanders to the English metropolis “for their greater safety,” and there professed herself a starcber. The best housewives of the time were not long in discovering the excellent whiteness of the “Dutch linen,” as it was called, and Mistress Plasse soon had plenty of good paying clients. Some of these began to send her ruffs of lawn to starch, which she did so excellently well that it became a saying that if anyone sent her a ruff made of a spider’s web she would be able to starch it. So greatly did her reputation grow that fashionable dames went to her to learn the art and mystery of starching, for which they gladly paid a premium of £4 to £5, and for the secret of seething starch they paid gladly a further sum of twenty shillings.