Life for a Bradford mill-owner’s wife was a whirlwind of afternoon visitors, dinner parties, and all manner of modern contraptions.

She managed her home and domestic staff with military precision, often while running a business too.

To avoid being ostracised from society, she lived by a strict code of social rules covering all aspects of life, from laying a tablecloth to buying underwear.

Unless her husband allowed her to wear the new style of tailored suits, she could take an hour to dress; pulling on layers of clothing including underwear with a minimum of 40 buttons, a liberty bodice like a coat of mail, and a starched lace blouse prickling like a ring of thorns around her neck.

If she ended up feeling a little melancholy, she could try Bile Beans… This was ‘la Belle Epoch’, the period of Edward VII’s reign from 1901 to 1910 associated with long summers and country house parties.

JB Priestley called it “the lost golden age…all the more radiant because it is on the other side of the huge black pit of war.”

With the new century came a new monarch, and Victorian stuffiness gave way to a progressive era influenced by Edward, socialite and keen traveller.

It was a time of sweeping social, political and economic change, with the Suffragette movement battling for women’s votes and the introduction of child welfare legislation.

The motor car was gaining momentum and electricity was widespread in homes. Edwardian wealth was reflected in home furnishings and entertaining – the average dinner party used 50 pieces of cutlery!

Etiquette was crucial; inappropriate behaviour or dress meant the stigma of social inferiority, a fate worse than death for social-climbing Edwardians.

With Bradford’s booming textile industry came a rise in the middle-classes.

Rowena Davison, 42, lives with husband Charles, a Bradford mill-owner, and their twins in a ‘new-build’ house in Heaton. She combines running a home with her dressmaking business, Davison’s, in Manningham, Bradford. In An Edwardian Housewife’s Companion, Rowena dispenses advice on entertaining, household management, food and drink, healthcare, fashion, beauty and childcare. She includes recipes kept from newspapers, and adverts promoting cure-all therapies of the day.

Described as “a guide for the perfect home”, the guide to Edwardian society is a fascinating insight into daily life in the early 20th century, seen through Rowena’s eyes.

It’s no coincidence that she shares the same surname as Reuben Davison, who has researched and written this charming book.

As a boy Reuben landed a Saturday job in a Bradford bookshop and went on to work in publishing. After 25 years in the industry, he launched The Write Choice publishing consultancy last year.

“Rowena is an alter ego,” says Reuben. “She’s a fairly typical woman of her class from that period. She reads newspapers and has knowledge of current affairs and, like a lot of women in business at that time, she resents the idea of paying tax to a government which doesn’t allow women the vote.

“The idea was to create a character who could shed some light on Edwardian life. It was a time of great change, particularly for women.

"I set the book in Bradford because it’s where I’m from. It was a time of industrial success and affluence for Bradford; there would certainly have been women like Rowena in the city, moving out to newly-established suburbs.

“I learned a lot from researching the book,” he adds. “Some older members of my family worked for families like Rowena’s.

"Class was so entrenched in that period. In the book there are photographs of children playing in the street with no shoes on, contrasted with adverts depicting children in sailor suits on seaside holidays.”

The book draws on newspaper archive material, including adverts and photographs. Reuben says it adopts the style of guides of the period, “helping women with the logistical nightmare of maintaining their place in an incredibly competitive, class-ridden society.”

Rowena has three domestic staff, although aspires to have a larger fleet of servants. Her guidelines on dealing with servants include re-naming some of them, making it easier to remember who they are! “Common names for footmen are James and John, while Emma is popular for housemaids,” she writes.

Rowena has persuaded her husband to purchase new labour-saving inventions, such as a vacuum cleaner, kettle, even a ‘crumb-scraper machine’ to remove crumbs from the table between courses.

While she combines running a business and a busy household, Rowena adheres to Edwardian wifely duties, attending to her husband’s needs, “particularly after he has had a long and arduous day’s work.”

“Beware of bickering,” she adds. “Your husband returns from his labours with his mind absorbed in business.

"With his employees he is used to being obeyed and may forget this difference between work and home. Make home so charming that he will gladly yield all management of it to you.”

Food and entertaining played a prominent role in Edwardian daily life. Rowena offers advice on receiving visitors – “arrivals and departures are by written invitation, indicating times guests are expected to arrive and depart” – and mealtime etiquette, influenced by the Royal table.

“Dinner parties are important occasions if one’s reputation is to be upheld, and everything must be approached with the utmost care and attention to detail, since one slip might be held against you for many years.”

For the first time, credit was being used by all families, not just the poor, to buy furniture. Rowena is keen to furnish her new home.

“Wolfe & Hollander’s offers payment by instalments,” she writes. “My husband felt it somewhat beneath us to be requesting credit. However, if we are going to maintain our standing I felt it necessary to investigate this opportunity. More and more stores are beginning to offer this facility.”

Using credit was one of the sweeping changes in that ten-year period. New fashions, with lighter fabrics such as silk and muslin replaced heavy flannels and dark colours, the legacy of Victoria’s mourning period.

The bustle was replaced by a slim silhouette look.

As a dressmaker, Rowena is well placed to advise Bradford clients on the latest trends and copy couture for them.

“So much has changed in what we women wear since our beloved Queen Victoria died. We have been able to lighten our dress and take on interesting designs from Paris,” she writes.

“King Edward has brought back influences from his travels, although I am none too sure of his fancy to wear a black tie with a dinner suit.” The Edwardians were keen on lotions, potions and cure-alls. Rowena recommends Bile Beans for everything from constipation to ‘women’s dark days.’ She draws the line, however, at the trend for using Belladonna – a poison – as a beauty treatment to enlarge the iris.

It seems some things haven’t changed; Edwardian women were as obsessed with their weight, and beauty and anti-ageing products, as they are today.

Rowena recommends a bottle of Antipon tonic for weight loss and, for a smooth complexion, freckle-bleaching lotion, applied with a camelhair brush!

‘Ailing Mothers!’ cries an advert for Page Woodcock’s Pills, said to relieve ‘depression, nervous weakness and digestive troubles.’ Advertising of the period targeted women, much as it does today, and the book also includes old newspaper photographs of early ‘glamour competitions’.

Edwardian children were ‘seen and not heard’ and Rowena’s rules of childcare involve discipline and control. For boys she recommends the “newly-formed Scouting movement”.

She offers advice on everything from haircare –- “the ideal hair colour is considered brown or possibly chestnut.

Blonde is not a good colour and it is an unfortunate woman who has this colouring” – to new styles of underclothes, or lingerie as it was starting to be called.

Rowena creates a vivid picture of life in Edwardian Bradford, reflecting on leisure pursuits, from tea and cakes at Collinson’s Café to dinner at the Midland Hotel. She and Charles are fond of the theatre – “music hall is not really for the likes of us” – and frequent the Theatre Royal in Manningham, where, in October 1903, they witnessed actor Sir Henry Irving collapse on stage, shortly before dying at the Midland Hotel.

he writes of attending the Cartwright Hall opening ceremony, led by the Prince and Princess of Wales, and the Buffalo Bill Wild West travelling show in Bradford.

Despite being “positively discouraged by menfolk from troubling ourselves with thoughts of high intellect and matters which do not concern us”, Rowena takes an interest in the problem of Bradford’s pollution from its mills and factories.

“But I assure you it is at the forefront of healthy living for schoolchildren,” she adds. “My husband and I make a number of charitable donations to the (Thackley) Open Air School.”

She admires the Suffragettes, although finds the methods of Emmeline Pankhurst and her followers “disturbing.”

“But what else are they to do? We are allowed to enter business but we are not allowed to vote,” she muses.

“If there is one topic that can bring disharmony into the house it is the discussion of votes for women. As I have pointed out on many occasions to Charles, I run a small business and employ people.

On top of all that I run our home where I employ the staff and make all the decisions on running our household.

“Putting these women (Suffragettes) into prison has led to many of them refusing to eat. I overheard a close friend say: ‘Tea parties weren’t going to do the trick but perhaps publicity and martyrdom just might’.”

An Edwardian Housewife’s Companion is published by Haynes, priced £14.99.