The laundries — a trade with no heading

1881 – documented to 1921

The missing heading:The evidence stands in advertisements and directory listings of the years around the missing heading, and the trade is carried at that size.

The firms: The Illustrated History of St. Joseph's Church of 1901 carries the trade's advertisements. The St. Jo. Steam Laundry, at 112 East Jefferson Street, telephone 321, advertised itself "ESTABLISHED 1881" — the founding date the missing heading failed to record. The Davies Laundry Co. advertised at the foot of Washington Street, and Polk's directory of 1921 still carries Davies' Laundry, with telephones Main 597 and 598. Slick's laundry advertised in the same 1901 volume, and the South Bend Steam Dye Works, at 123 Colfax Avenue, carried the allied cleaning trade. By 12 November 1913 the South Bend News-Times's want advertisements show the Purity Dry Cleaning Co. hiring — the dry-cleaning successor trade present in the city by that year. No employment or volume figure for the trade survives in the records reached; the laundries stand as the directory age's invisible trade, documented everywhere except in the directory.

Sources:

1. An Illustrated History of St. Joseph's Church (1901), the advertisements — the St. Jo. Steam Laundry's "ESTABLISHED 1881" and Jefferson Street address; the Davies Laundry Co.; Slick's laundry; and the South Bend Steam Dye Works on Colfax Avenue.
2. Polk's South Bend directory (1921) — Davies' Laundry and its telephone numbers.
3. South Bend News-Times, 12 November 1913, want advertisements — the Purity Dry Cleaning Co. hiring.
4. Farr's South Bend City Directory for 1883, Classified Business Directory, pp. 241–256, read in full — the absence of a Laundries heading.