Perhaps a vessel used to wash clothes in 1868 ?

[Rena]

I didn't think of that, Rena.  I remember that my grandparents had a bath in the kitchen!!!!

Was it covered with a "table" that was covered in old fashioned oil cloth table cloth?  My paternal grandmother and one of her sons lived next door to each other.  One had a tin bath hung up on a nail outside and the other had an oil cloth on a wooden worktop covering the bath.   We were posh, we had a cast iron bath (very cold on your derrier in winter)

[Rena]

I’m sure I have seen these for sale for a pretty penny in antique/reclamation yards.
A good sized zinc barrel with a ridged inside now being repurposed for trendy garden planters !

I'm not surprised and I bet they're sold for a pretty penny.

When my mother and we children were sent out of Hull ( due to bombing)
we went to live with my mother's aunt and cousins in Brierfield, Lancashire.   Bath time for us children was standing in the zinc dolly tub in front of the coal fire, which was half filled with warm water. 

[youngtug]

Panstore, if they forgot to cross the  "t"

[Viktoria]

The zinc washtubs had vertical corrugated sides and one side was higher so the washerwoman could rub the washing against the  corrugations ( horizontal in that place ) which helped to get the washing clean.
Men thought if everything for women to labour with didn’t they.!
Viktoria.