Is the humble bar of soap over-complicating our lives?

Throughout the decades, we’ve all used soap to keep ourselves clean, and during the pandemic, we panic-bought it by the bucket-load as a way of limiting the spread of germs.

In truth, the reason I felt inspired to put this humble cleaning product in the spotlight is that my cousin Suzanne recently told me she’d been searching for a particular soap for her dad, who is in his late 80s. It had to be a bar, not liquid, and the brand he wanted was Imperial Leather. 

First made in 1938 by manufacturer Cussons, Imperial Leather is certainly a brand that has stood the test of time. The ‘scent’ for the soap was initially commissioned in 1768 by a Russian nobleman as a type of perfume, hence the name.

Suzanne said: “Imperial Leather soap always seemed so luxurious as a kid in the 70s, with its regal shape and little gold paper label on the bar. I bet we kids were not supposed to use it!”

The opulent image of the soap was heightened by the TV ads, featuring a vx#wealthy family enjoying a luxury bath – with Imperial Leather of course – on a private plane.

It’s comforting to know that many of the soap bar brands we had as children are still being made today, including one that my mum remembers from her childhood in the 1940s.

As a child, Emma remembers receiving Bronnley Lemon Soap, in the shape of a lemon, which she usually stowed away in a drawer to keep her clothing smelling nice (Image: Jim Keenan)

She said: “Us kids only had a bath once a week as it was such a palava, and we all used the same water. I can remember we had Palmolive soap (which dates back to 1898). They were always tarring the road somewhere and we’d come home with tar all over our knees, so it took a lot of soap to scrub us clean!” 

My mum bought another heritage brand for us when we were kids – Pears Glycerin soap, which was first produced in 1807 by Andrew Pears at a factory off London’s Oxford Street. It was billed as being gentle and kind on the skin, and had a translucent quality – much like your skin was supposed to look after using it.

The product had celebrity endorsement from characters such as socialite/actress Lily Langtree, and the company’s advertising posters featured ‘beauties’ of the day. 

The firm even ran an annual ‘Miss Pears’ competition from 1958 to 1997, where young girls vied to become the face of the brand for a year. Due to the fact I had a pale, delicate skin, my dear aunt always tried to convince my mum to enter me in the Miss Pears challenge.

I wasn’t really your typical cutesy feminine child, but being an outdoorsy sort, I was usually covered in mud or leaf matter, so certainly needed soap. As a shy child, however, I made it clear in no uncertain terms that should I by some fluke win the competition, I would in no way be up for having my face on anything that would appear in public. 

The fanciest soap I got in the 1970s was some Bronnley Lemon, made in the shape of lemons and with a zesty lemony scent. I had a box of three for Christmas once. They were so realistic, I didn’t want to use them for fear of spoiling the shape of the lemons. In truth, we were always getting soap for presents, and most of it was just stowed away in a drawer to make our clothes smell nice.

In these days of conservation awareness, people now handmake soap with exotic odours, fancy ingredients and environmentally sound credentials. You can get it embedded with herbs – you don’t know whether to wash with it or eat it. Some of them look so tempting I almost made the mistake of buying a bar at a craft fair recently, thinking it was fudge.

Soap, like everything else, has become a complicated matter. If you go into most people’s bathrooms, you are likely to find liquid soap in a plastic bottle with an infuriating pump-action mechanism that does, or doesn’t work depending on how the bottle is angled.

It’s supposed to be more hygienic than all-in-sundry grabbing the same bar of soap, I guess. But it does seem a little excessive, especially as it’s so much more expensive than a bar and is nigh on impossible to get the liquid out of the bottom of the bottle.

I’ve tried decanting liquid soap into reusable dispensers but have ended up with leaks, dripping spouts and a sticky, soapy mess all around the sink. 

Talking of dispensers, our friends’ dad worked for a company that wholesaled cleaning products in the 1970s, so they went one step further than liquid soap. They had a ‘Swarfega’ dispenser on their bathroom wall!

Many of the soap brands Emma and her family remember from childhood are still being produced today (Image: Jim Keenan)

The only other time I’d come across this acrid, gelatinous green goo was when dad was trying to remove the grease from his hands after reassembling the lawnmower for the umpteenth time, so to use it after spending a penny seemed like overkill.

Granted, it got rid of the dirt, but it also took a layer or two of skin off with it, if you weren’t careful! I might add that these friends also had to suffer Izal toilet paper (usually found in public toilets and not unlike greaseproof paper).

It reeked of antiseptic and scratched your bottom. If I ever needed the toilet for anything serious, I would hang on for grim death until I got home to avoid the double whammy of torture by Izal and Swarfega! 

Nowadays, it’s common to find a mind-boggling array of anti-bacterial extras in our liquid soaps, which you need a degree in chemistry or microbiology to unravel.

These are designed to prevent new and terrifying superbugs from breaching our defences via any available orifice. In truth, we used to play in the dirt. We made mud pies, we patted the dog, picked up snails and had all manner or detritus under our fingernails.

We then all mauled the same bar of soap which was blacker than our hands by the time we’d finished with it. Then we ate our sandwiches with the same hands and we all lived to tell the tale.

Reader feedback panel:
Readers have been reliving their school cookery classes, following my recent column. Maureen Andrews, who has fond memories, said: “In 1955, aged 14, I travelled with my housecraft teacher to take part in a housecraft competition. I remember having to make toast, a souffle omelette followed by baked Alaska. I came third in all of London having lost points for not cutting the crusts of the toast (waste not want not)! Still at the age of 84, I cook from scratch most days but do cheat occasionally and have a ‘ding’ meal.”

Alison Barlow’s mother was a cookery teacher between 1960 and 1976.  Alison said: “The family took with enthusiasm to lessons about nutrition and identifying carbohydrates, first class (animal) and second class (vegetable) protein, so that a cooked caterpillar found in the cabbage from my father's allotment was held up with ‘look, first class protein here too!’ It's a great pity that ‘domestic science’ fell away around the time the National Curriculum was introduced. There is no need to know how to produce a perfect Victoria Sandwich cake, but a knowledge of how to cook a dozen cheap tasty, nutritious meals from scratch would benefit everyone.”
Ruth Harrison recalls her first school cookery lessons at high school in 1952. She said: “We didn’t start by cooking – first we learnt how to scrub the wooden kitchen table. Next lesson was making an apron, and it wasn’t until that was finished that we started on short-crust pastry!”

Readers have been reliving their school cookery classes, following my recent column. Maureen Andrews, who has fond memories, said: “In 1955, aged 14, I travelled with my housecraft teacher to take part in a housecraft competition.

"I remember having to make toast, a souffle omelette followed by baked Alaska. I came third in all of London having lost points for not cutting the crusts of the toast (waste not want not)! Still at the age of 84, I cook from scratch most days but do cheat occasionally and have a ‘ding’ meal."

When Emma’s mum and her uncle Roger were children, they had their knees ‘scrubbed clean’ with good old-fashioned soap. Roger still favours Imperial Leather soap today (Image: Jim Keenan)

Alison Barlow’s mother was a cookery teacher between 1960 and 1976.  Alison said: “The family took with enthusiasm to lessons about nutrition and identifying carbohydrates, first class (animal) and second class (vegetable) protein, so that a cooked caterpillar found in the cabbage from my father's allotment was held up with ‘look, first class protein here too!’ It's a great pity that ‘domestic science’ fell away around the time the National Curriculum was introduced.

"There is no need to know how to produce a perfect Victoria Sandwich cake, but a knowledge of how to cook a dozen cheap tasty, nutritious meals from scratch would benefit everyone.”
Ruth Harrison recalls her first school cookery lessons at high school in 1952.

She said: “We didn’t start by cooking – first we learnt how to scrub the wooden kitchen table. Next lesson was making an apron, and it wasn’t until that was finished that we started on short-crust pastry!”