Cook's "lightning" soap / Edward Cook & Co., Ltd.

Chromolitho leaflet, possibly from the 1880s, advertising "Cook's Lightning Soap". It depicts images and a poem that would now be considered racially inappropriate: a full-figured woman in a red dress and white apron bathing a young black child in a wooden tub. Essentially a visual pun, the "Lightning Soap" has 'lightened' the child's skin colour to that of a white child.