Sunlight Soap Works, Port Sunlight, Bebington, Merseyside

Photograph taken Apr 1897 © Reproduced by permission of Historic England Archive ref: BL14041_017

An office within the Sunlight Soap works, with women packaging books and promotional posters for Lever Brothers' products, and processing correspondences or invoices. This photograph was commissioned by William Hesketh Lever and James Darcy Lever, of Lever Brothers soap works.

Location

Merseyside Port Sunlight

Period

Victorian (1837 - 1901)

Themes

The Comptometer room at the Stratford Co-operative Society, showing girls and boys working on model 'E' comptometers. The comptometer, invented in 1887 by American, Dor Felt, was the first successful manual calculating machine. Many of the boys and girls look very young to be at work. The school leaving age was only raised to 14 in the Education Act of 1918 so they could well have been younger than that.

Sunlight Soap Works, Port Sunlight, Bebington, Merseyside

Location

Period

Themes

Tags