In 1955 Dorothy Goodman, a postgraduate student in London, wanted to install central heating in the home she was setting up with her husband, Ray. As an American, she asked friends what the British equivalent was of the US non-profit organisation Consumer Reports. When she found that there was none, she took what to her was the obvious route of remedying the situation.
Dorry, who has died aged 97, met a group of friends to start looking at products and how to evaluate them. Initial efforts were a long way from the expert testing that Which? undertakes today. Her daughter Harriet remembers Dorry telling how she and Ray would measure out washing powder in their back garden, where sudden gusts of wind would send it flying around. “It was fun and an amateur effort in the old sense of the word – we loved what we were doing.”
