Sunlight Soap

• Moveable advertising card
• Late Victorian/Edwardian
• 89 x 140mm (3½ x 5½in)
•  

The copy on the reverse of the card gives an insight into home life of the period where the makers proclaim:
Woman stood for hours over the steaming odours of poisonous materials and inhaled bad health. Sunlight Soap altered all that. It did away with the toil which shattered the life of the housewife. Its use entails no boiling, no toiling. Rub it well on the clothes, let them soak awhile, rinse in clean water and the washing is done.

Manufactured by Lever Brothers, a company formed by William Hesketh Lever and his brother in the 1880s, the Sunlight Soap brand became one of the major factors in its success enabling it to grow into a commercial enterprise with worldwide interests.

A major innovation with Sunlight was unlike other soaps, which had to be cut up at the point of purchase and sold by weight, it could be bought already cut into small, manageable tablets which were individually wrapped.

The household soap's popularity grew fostered by skilful advertising and marketing by suggesting life would be more comfortable for the hard-pressed working-class housewives by taking the drudgery out of their daily life.