I asked for information about a long-gone Huddersfield washing machine company and found myself mulling over the changes in society, attitudes and women’s right that have happened over the last 130 years.

The washing machine that prompted my interest was the Torpedo.

Reader John Hartley spotted one in the Howtown Hotel by Ullswater in the Lake District.

Chris Marsden, chairman of the Huddersfield Civic Society, responded to my appeal, and sent me news items and advertisements from the 1880s when the machine was first made and marketed.

The Torpedo Washing Machine Company was in Viaduct Street in 1881 and Lord Street by 1887.

Adverts claimed it was “the servant’s friend and a boon to householders” and was capable of washing 16 shirts, seven linen bed sheets or four woollen blankets in eight minutes.

It was exhibited at the Yorkshire Jubilee Exhibition at Saltaire, the Yorkshire Agricultural Show at Longley Park, Huddersfield, in 1887, and the Great Yorkshire Show in 1888.”

Suitable for cottage and mansion,” said the adverts, although at £6 6s, it’s doubtful if many cottage dwellers could have afforded one.

In 1891 a second-hand machine was for sale “half price at £3 3s” at the Little Dust Pan shop in Fossgate, York.”

“The new washing machine dispenses with steaming, dollying, steeping, tearing and destruction of clothes.

“It will wash the heaviest quilts as well as the finest lace or muslin,” the makers claimed.

“Parties desirous of seeing the machine work may do so between the hours of 10am and 3pm at the company’s depot.

The company will be pleased to wash the clothes of intending purchasers if sent between the above hours.”

An item in the Huddersfield Chronicle when it was first launched had the headline: An Important Invention for the Domestic Laundry.

“One of the most important questions that is occupying the attention of ladies at the present time is how to reduce the cost and minimise the labour of Washing Day.”

Oo-er. So that was one of the important questions of the day?

This in an era when women were very much second class citizens, the suffragette movement was gaining strength, and they were fighting to break barriers to be allowed into universities and accepted into the medical, teaching and legal professions.

When women miners marched from Lancashire to London for the right to work, when London matchstick girls went on strike for better pay, and when Jack the Ripper was prowling the streets of Whitechapel murdering female victims.

It was an arrogant statement of its age and yet reflected an attitude that persisted for decades.

Even in the Swinging 60s, adverts frequently portrayed women in subservient domestic roles.

A classic from that period was the ketchup top that was so easy to remove even a women could do it.

The Victorians would have thought it amusing. Come to think of it, so would a fair percentage of today’s men.

Have times changed that much?