Daily AncestorBleacher
A bleacher whitened cloth or yarn, at first by spreading it in the sun on bleaching fields, later with chlorine bleach in a works indoors.
Linen and cotton came off the loom grayish and had to be whitened. Before chemical bleaching, cloth was spread on open ground called a bleachfield or bleaching green and left for the sun to do the work, a common sight around British mill towns.
Once Charles Tennant developed a chlorine bleaching powder, the work moved indoors and could go on all year, though many works kept the old name of bleachfield.
As seen in a recordOccupation column of the 1850 to 1910 census
Robt. Muir, 34, Bleacher, Scotland
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Daily Ancestor. "Bleacher." Dictionary of Old Record Words. https://dailyancestor.com/dictionary/occupations/bleacher. Last checked 2026-10-10.