Monkey Brand soap was introduced in the 1880s in cake/bar form in the United States and United Kingdom as a household scouring and polishing soap.
History
Initially, Benjamin Brooke & Co Ltd, a firm owned by Sidney and Henry Gross, had produced the soap in
Philadelphia
Philadelphia, often called Philly, is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the sixth-largest city in the U.S., the second-largest city in both the Northeast megalopolis and Mid-Atlantic regions after New York City. Sinc ...
. The soap's highly abrasive agent was probably pumice.
Lever Brothers
Lever Brothers was a British manufacturing company founded in 1885 by two brothers: William Hesketh Lever, 1st Viscount Leverhulme (1851–1925), and James Darcy Lever (1854–1916). They invested in and successfully promoted a new soap-making p ...
bought the company in January 1899 and transferred the production of Monkey Brand soap to
Port Sunlight
Port Sunlight is a model village and suburb in the Metropolitan Borough of Wirral, Merseyside. It is located between Lower Bebington and New Ferry, on the Wirral Peninsula. Port Sunlight was built by Lever Brothers to accommodate workers in it ...
near
Liverpool
Liverpool is a city and metropolitan borough in Merseyside, England. With a population of in 2019, it is the 10th largest English district by population and its metropolitan area is the fifth largest in the United Kingdom, with a popul ...
. The name ‘Benjamin Brooke’ (hence Brooke's Monkey Brand) was retained to promote the Monkey Brand soap on both sides of the Atlantic.
In
George Bernard Shaw
George Bernard Shaw (26 July 1856 – 2 November 1950), known at his insistence simply as Bernard Shaw, was an Irish playwright, critic, polemicist and political activist. His influence on Western theatre, culture and politics extended from ...
's ''
Pygmalion
Pygmalion or Pigmalion may refer to:
Mythology
* Pygmalion (mythology), a sculptor who fell in love with his statue
Stage
* ''Pigmalion'' (opera), a 1745 opera by Jean-Philippe Rameau
* ''Pygmalion'' (Rousseau), a 1762 melodrama by Jean-Jacques ...
'' and the musical based on it (''
My Fair Lady
''My Fair Lady'' is a musical based on George Bernard Shaw's 1913 play ''Pygmalion'', with a book and lyrics by Alan Jay Lerner and music by Frederick Loewe. The story concerns Eliza Doolittle, a Cockney flower girl who takes speech lessons f ...
''), Henry Higgins tells his housekeeper to take
Eliza Doolittle
Eliza Doolittle is a fictional character and the protagonist in George Bernard Shaw's play ''Pygmalion'' (1913) and its 1956 musical adaptation, ''My Fair Lady''.
Eliza (from Lisson Grove, London) is a Cockney flower woman, who comes to Profe ...
upstairs and clean her up, and to use "...Monkey Brand, if it won't come off any other way" (Act II). In the movie version, the line is changed to "...sandpaper, if it won't come off any other way." In
Beatrix Potter
Helen Beatrix Potter (, 28 July 186622 December 1943) was an English writer, illustrator, natural scientist, and conservationist. She is best known for her children's books featuring animals, such as ''The Tale of Peter Rabbit'', which was he ...
's 1912 novel ''
The Tale of Mr Tod
''The'' () is a grammatical Article (grammar), article in English language, English, denoting persons or things already mentioned, under discussion, implied or otherwise presumed familiar to listeners, readers, or speakers. It is the definite ...
'', Mr Tod mentioned Monkey Soap as one of the soaps needed for cleaning his bedding.
The advertising campaign for Monkey Brand soap was used by cultural historians for analyzing Victorian values and social attitudes at the intersection of race, gender and class.
McClintock, Anne
Anne McClintock (born 1954) is a Zimbabwean-South African writer, feminist scholar and public intellectual who has published widely on issues of sexuality, race, imperialism, and nationalism; popular and visual culture, photography, advertising a ...
and George Robertson
Soft-soaping empire: Commodity racism and imperial advertising
I
''Travellers' Tales: Narratives of Home and Displacement''
(1994) edited by Jon Bird, Barry Curtis, Melinda Mash, Tim Putnam, George Robertson, and Lisa Tickner. London: Routledge.
See also
*
List of cleaning products
This is a list of cleaning products and agents. Cleaning agents are substances (usually liquids, powders, sprays, or granules) used to remove dirt, including dust, stains, bad smells, and clutter on surfaces. Purposes of cleaning agents include hea ...
References
Further reading
*
*
*
External links
*
Advert For Brooke's Monkey Brand Soap ''The British Library''
History of Benjamin Brooke & Company* Phil Beard
May 22, 2008
Cleaning products
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