Reckitt's Crown Blue (Blueing tablet) - Pack of 10

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Some material may contain terms that reflect authors’ views, or those of the period in which the item was written Bluette - There used to be information online saying that this was "sold in the detergent or bleach aisle of most supermarkets and many smaller grocery

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.

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. 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. Henry Chance Newton, mentioned in the preceding excerpt, uses the phrase several times in Idols of the "Halls": Being My Music Hall Memories (1928): And from The Economical Housewife: A Complete Practical Guide to Domestic Management for the Use of Both Mistress and Maid (1880): As others have noted, "blue-bag" has been used in connection with laundry bluing since at least the 1860s. From " Purple Dyeing, Ancient and Modern," translated from a German article in Aus der Natur (not later than 1864) and printed in Annual Report of the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution, Showing the Operations, Expenditures, and Condition of the Institution for the Year 1863 (1872):

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." 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. Context suggests that what Maugham means is off-color or bawdy jokes. Note that Mrs. Hudson's use of the blue bag is contrasted with her ‘propriety’:This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. They built up a major international brand, with various lesser rivals, notably Mrs. Stewart's liquid bluing Seeker" wants a remedy for bung eyes. I have tried different remedies, but the best is the blue bag (washing blue) as soon as the eye is stung. Wet the blue bag and apply to where the eye is stung. I don't think it hurts the eyesight. I have three children, and if a fly stings them, they come in at once for the blue bag. It stops the swelling at once, and it seems to take all the pain away. 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!) In the meantime I must give you some account of a startling eye-opener which our beloved Marie received in administering a decoction from the Blue Bag for a toiling moiling East End audience.

City of Moorabbin Historical Society (Operating the Box Cottage Museum) Education kit, Department of Veterans Affairs, Schooling, service and the Great War, 2014 Maugham was a very successful playwright and very familiar with the theatre; and “blue bag” was certainly used in this sense among theatre people during WW II, not that long after Cakes and Ale was published. Here’s actress Naomi Jacob (b. 1884, so about ten years younger than Maugham) writing about her work with E.N.S.A. productions for the troops:The blue bag was also used for treating insect bites as well as stings, as we learn from this letter to the editor of the [Perth, West Australia] Western Mail (December 17, 1915): I searched a number of slang dictionaries and didn't find any slang use of "blue bag," aside from Eric Partridge's note in A Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English, fifth edition (1961) that Sidneyites had, since circa 1910, used "the Blue Bags" as a slang term for "Newtown footballers." In additional to laundry, I use soapnuts everyday – for natural rubber-glove-free washing up, surface cleaning, the loos, glass and shiny things. True Indigo