Imagine yourself in 1940s Britain, when it was more than likely you would be sharing an outside toilet with other houses in the street, or sharing one on the landing of your block of flats. The kitchen sink might have doubled up as a bath for the little ones in the family, and the luxury of an electric washing machine was yet to arrive in most homes.

Monday was washday for most people. And the popular choice for the weekly laundry was to tackle it by hand – using the kitchen sink or a copper pot and a wooden scrubbing board to scrub the clothes. Steam clogged up the windows and red-faced housewives used all their energy to tug at the clothes with wooden tongs, trying – sometimes in vain – to keep their hands out of the boiling hot water! It was really back-breaking work. Then it was a…