Harper Twelvetrees

In 1849 he published The Science of Washing,[3] an eight-page booklet which gave his formula for making a paste from soap, soda and quicklime.

[1] His name even appeared in an Australian sea shanty On board of the Kangaroo,)[4] with the immortal lines Farewell to dreams of married life!

In the 1870s-90s his most famous machine was the “Villa” which Mrs Beeton praised in her Book of Household Management as being "excellent for family use...very easy to work without being cumbersome... strong and very durable".

His philanthropy was lauded by the Stratford Times in 1861,[5] and Julia Lafferty notes that Twelvetrees “deserves to be recorded alongside Leverhulme, Rowntree and Cadbury as a man of humanity and principle, whose efforts to improve working conditions made a huge impact upon the lives of the ordinary people of east London”.

He was celebrated as a “Merchant and Philanthropist, and [for] his laborious efforts on behalf of the moral, social, intellectual and religious welfare of the working classes”.

[6] Harper Twelvetrees was strongly averse to slavery, and was particularly involved in the case of John Anderson, an African-American who escaped to Canada to avoid capture by bounty hunters, but who killed a farmer, Seneca Diggs, while on the run.

At the end of his speaking tour, Anderson spent a year in Corby furthering his education, with financial support from Twelvetrees.

Julia Lafferty summarises Twelvetrees’ life thus: “Having set up his business with a combination of philanthropy and humanity, he was able to change radically the social and economic conditions in an impoverished part of east London, and through his campaigning against the pernicious system of slavery that operated in the southern states of America, played a key role in influencing British public opinion during the American Civil War”.