City of Moorabbin Historical Society (Operating the Box Cottage Museum) Education kit, Department of Veterans Affairs, Schooling, service and the Great War, 2014 Henry Chance Newton, mentioned in the preceding excerpt, uses the phrase several times in Idols of the "Halls": Being My Music Hall Memories (1928):

or recorded but may not be considered appropriate today. These views are not necessarily the views of Victorian Collections.

What did people use to whiten their white laundry in the past?

They built up a major international brand, with various lesser rivals, notably Mrs. Stewart's liquid bluing City of Moorabbin Historical Society (Operating the Box Cottage Museum) Book, Carroll, Brian, Early Melbourne sketchbook, 1977 Find sources: "Bluing"fabric– news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR ( August 2012) ( Learn how and when to remove this template message)

But their humour was really of a very quaint and infectious kind, and they were always welcome, especially when they used less of the "Blue Bag." 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!) 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. It is impossible for art, with the tiniest "a," to thrive very long in our music-halls under existing conditions. It may occasionally come as a surprise, and for that reason even please for a time ; but it cannot and will not find a home there until the "Blue Bag" yields to the "Blue Pencil." I am not narrow-minded. If certain blasé individuals with jaded palates want spice, give it to them—let them wallow in it ; but see that it is in a place set apart, not in a hall where each programme contains a dead-letter footnote, requesting the audience to report to the management anything objectionable in the entertainment. Let the prurient-minded have a hall to themselves. Call it the Obscenity, but for the sake of the majority—the lovers of clean, wholesome amusement—make it an offense, punishable at law, for anyone to encroach on the prerogative of those engaged in pandering to the tastes of the Dirty and Depraved. 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.

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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.

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. Bluing, 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. 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.Ultramarine is used not only to produce a blue, but also a white. Every housewife well knows that blue of some kind must be used to counteract that yellowish tinge which linen and cotton goods acquire when washed. This use of the blue color is familiarly called using the blue-bag, but using the whitening bag would, in truth, be the more appropriate phrase. As a general thing, the blue-bag is used far too freely. The effect should not be, as it generally is, to leave a blue tinge, but only to neutralize that yellow tinge with which we unavoidably associate the idea of imperfect cleansing. 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." Bluing is usually sold in liquid form, but it may also be a solid. Solid bluing is sometimes used by hoodoo doctors to provide the blue color needed for " mojo hands" without having to use the toxic compound copper(II) sulfate. Bluing was also used by some Native American tribes to mark their arrows showing tribe ownership. [ citation needed] See also [ edit ] And earlier still, from Albert Chevalier, Before I Forget: The Autobiography of a Chevalier D'industrie (1901):

We celebrate the history and contemporary creativity of the world’s oldest living culture and pay respect to Elders — past, present and future. 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. 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. Sting of Bees.—Although the poison a bee emits when it inserts its sting, is proved to be a highly concentrated acid, the application of all alkalies will not neutralize the acid. The more gentle alkalies—chalk, or the "blue bag," are much more likely to effect a cure, and cannot injure[.]And from The Economical Housewife: A Complete Practical Guide to Domestic Management for the Use of Both Mistress and Maid (1880):