Valerie Hunter Gordon dies aged 94: inventor of the disposable nappy

Valerie Hunter Gordon died on 16th October 2016 at her home near Inverness, aged 94.  She is survived by six children, 19 grandchildren and 17 great-grandchildren, with another due in a few months.

Valerie was the mother of six children.  She got fed up with washing nappies and so in 1947 she invented the ‘Paddi’.  She sewed hundreds of the two part nappies which she made out of old nylon parachutes, tissue wadding and cotton wool.

Speaking to the BBC in 2015, Mrs Hunter Gordon said “I thought you must be able to buy them – but you couldn’t, not anywhere.  It seemed extraordinary that it hadn’t been done before. I thought, it’s easy, I’ll make them. But it wasn’t easy. It was quite tricky.  Everybody who saw them said, Valerie, please would you make one for me? And so I ended up by making about over 600 of them.  I spent my time sitting at my mother’s sewing machine, making these wretched things.”

Valerie applied for a patent in 1948 and Robinsons agreed to make ‘Paddis’ in 1949.  The company went into decline in the 1960s as the American company Pampers started making nappies.

“Everybody wanted to stop washing nappies. Nowadays they seem to want to wash them again – good luck to them,” said Valerie last year.

Source:  http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-highlands-islands-37706756

Image credit – http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/real-life/meet-scots-woman-who-started-5700772