The story of the ‘Seven Sisterly Sunlighters’

For Women’s History Month, we uncover a glimpse of the varied – and perhaps surprising – role female employees played at Lever Brothers’ Port Sunlight factory in the early 20th century.

In August 1924, Port Sunlight News reported on the emigration of ‘a clever band of girl operatives’ from Port Sunlight to Fredrikstad, Norway, to train the workers of a newly-opened Lever Brothers factory in stamping and soap packing.

The group was made up of Florence May Carpenter, Eliza McAllister, Nellie Burrows, Nora Croshaw, Dorothy May Horstman, Jeanie Quail, and Forewoman Jessie Philips.

When they arrived in Norway, they sent a cablegram home, assuring they were ‘feeling fit and full of determination to uphold our Sunlight traditions’.

Later in the year, Port Sunlight News updated its readers on the group’s work and published additional photographs. ‘The girls had a happy time’, it wrote, ‘and were well received by their sisters in Norway — and brothers, too, we should imagine’.

Laden with evangelical language, describing the women as ‘missionaries of soap-wrapping’ and their new environment as an ‘Adamless Eden’, the piece invokes Port Sunlight’s colonial legacies just as much as it details the history of its female workforce.

Discover more stories from the village built on soap here or search #PortSunlightStories on social media for more fascinating snippets of history.