Smear Campaign: the Dead Drunk Doctor

Vicious rumors about him were being spread, intentionally or not, by the doctor himself.

Dr. Galen E. Bishop, advertising trade card with an albument print (in the style of a carte de visite), ca.1865-1866. Rapoza collection.

DEAR READER: For over 40 years now, I have been reading, researching, and collecting items about the common person’s pursuit of health during past centuries. I’ve seen enough to know when something is really different from just about everything else and the trade card of Dr. Galen E. Bishop is one of those choice pieces – he was definitely marching to the beat of his own drum. I think he’s got a great story to tell. I hope you’ll enjoy it.

Is this post-Civil War photo showing another young Harvard Medical School graduate?

Not even close.

This is a small trade card that turns the story of 19th century medical advertising inside out. Throughout the century, advertisements in newspapers, promotional booklets, broadsides, handbills, and trade cards all acknowledged that quackery was rampant, but pointed the accusing finger at the products and promises of their competitors. It was part of the strategy of almost every medical practitioner and medicine maker to elevate the stature of their own services and goods above the rest by claiming their competitors were all money-grubbing quacks pitching worthless medicines. Everyone was a worthless fraud except the advertiser who, of course, alone possessed the secret cure.

But Galen Bishop’s trade card was far different – he wasn’t throwing stones from a lofty perch of medical magnificence like the rest. Instead, he openly admitted he was being victimized by his competitors’ tricks and attacks. He was being assaulted by a swarm of medical locusts who were chewing up and spitting out his reputation. While the competition promoted themselves with humor, hyperbole, and outright lies, Galen Bishop was a straight-shooter; there was no slick spin to his card text. He didn’t mention the medicines he made or the cures he had performed like all the others consistently did; he chose instead to have his card read like a scandal sheet of epic proportions – and the target of all the mudslinging was himself. It was pure genius. No surprise.

DEAD SET

Galen Elliott Bishop had been thinking outside the box since he was a young boy. If he was ever coaxed as a kid to go to a square dance, he was more likely to just walk across the barn floor in a straight line.

From his youngest days, he was precociously single-minded and self-motivated about the path in life he wanted to follow.

Being born in rural Somerset, Kentucky, in 1824 meant his future success in the Appalachian foothills would be limited. He and his brothers were given the names of famous men – Galen, Erasmus, Henry Clay, and Andrew Jackson – almost as if each was being gifted a guiding star in their lives. Growing up in an era when young boys were still learning their livelihood through apprenticeship, Galen was groomed in the hot and hard work of his father Jacob, a blacksmith, but stirring the embers under red-hot horseshoes did nothing to stir his soul. A paternal uncle who lived close by his family was a saloonkeeper, but that certainly wasn’t an environment to train a young boy to become a man. Young Galen’s maternal uncle and namesake, Galen Elliott, was a physician who history says inspired him towards the field of medicine. That uncle died when Galen was only 12, and medical apprenticeship under his uncle had never been an option anyway, since his father wanted him to learn blacksmithing, but the seed of inspiration proved to be all that was needed.

The boy who was fascinated by medicine seemed foreordained to the career since his infancy when he was christened with the name of the ancient Greek physician – perhaps his occupation had been in the stars after all. From the time of his uncle Galen’s passing, “any spare moment was devoted to his favorite study” – medicine. In 1843, Jacob Bishop moved his family to Platte County in northwestern Missouri, another lightly populated area dominated by farms. It was perfect for a blacksmith to be surrounded by his customers – horses and oxen – but the smell of manure in the morning did nothing for Galen. Sounding very much like a child prodigy, every moment he could get away from his father’s blacksmith shop he spent reading medical books, preparing himself to become a doctor:

Nights, Sundays, holidays, at odd times, … never losing a moment from his books, spending every dollar and dime he could get hold of to procure them, he made such progress that he was ready for the practice of his profession before he had attained his full growth, or become of age. During all these years … he never had a preceptor, never read an hour under any one’s instructions, and just claims the high honor of being a self-made physician.

In his future, when he had his own “Academy of Medicine” built, he made one of its rooms a large library filled with his extensive collection of medical books, along with works on law, theology, physical science, and general literature. He was a voracious reader.

His relentless, unwavering determination to teach himself to become a physician brought both admiration and discomfort to those around him. He was found to be “a plain, practical, intelligent man,” but multiple descriptions noted his peculiarities: “we had heard much of his eccentricities.”; “Doctor Bishop was noted for his eccentricities.”

He had a youthful appearance and “rather good looks,” was small in stature, wore a long, braided pigtail that had fallen out of fashion for men a few decades earlier, and he was single – a marital status that didn’t change for 30 more years. He was definitely the guy who hovered near the punchbowl at the square dance, awkward in his eccentricities or peccadillos, out of step with the music and uncomfortable with inviting the pretty girl to dance.

The feature that stood out most frequently and prominently in descriptions about him was his native intelligence – certainly a peculiarity in its own right that may have been the source of his eccentricities:

He is said to be a medical genius, possessed of much talent, and can execute almost any kind of work. He ought certainly to succeed in business.

In the spring of 1846, when Galen was 21 (the age of majority in Missouri), he started practicing as a physician, introducing himself as Dr. Galen E. Bishop for the first time. He set up his office in the Platte County village of New Market where his family lived among the farms that separated Kansas City to the southeast from St. Joseph to the north. With just one grocery, two stores, a few manual labor businesses like Jacob Bishop’s blacksmith shop, and Solomon Bishop’s small rooming house, the little hamlet of about 150 people on Bee Creek barely merited a dot on the map.

As small as it was, Dr. Bishop had to compete with seven other doctors in the region round about, including a female doctor and a botanic physician. But the fledgling physician in New Market was undaunted. He had thoroughly investigated the nation’s grab bag of medical systems, which included the botanic, hydropathic, magnetic, and homeopathic methods, but he chose to start his own practice as an allopathic physician, which meant bleeding, blistering, and administering mercury to cause sweating and puking to balance the body’s humors – just like his ancient namesake had taught 1,700 years earlier.

DEAD END

Few across the young nation were better prepared than Galen Bishop to become a doctor – even those who had the benefits of years of medical apprenticeship under a preceptor and a full course of study at one of the country’s few well-established medical schools. What he lacked in classroom education he more than amply made up for in his drive, discipline, and insatiable reading habits sustained over the previous nine years.

Cover of Dr. Galen E. Bishop's Popular Journal of Medicine and Collateral Sciences, November 1853 issue. (Courtesy of Fondren Library, Rice University)

In 1847, the year after Galen’s professional debut, the American Medical Association was formed, gathering together allopathic physicians – bleeders and pukers, just like him. The young physician from New Market, Missouri, may have seemed to be an ideal candidate to those who knew him, but on paper, he just didn’t qualify. He didn’t have the required apprenticeship or schooling. What he knew meant nothing to the admissions committee – how he came to know it was the measure that kept him out of the AMA clubhouse. Three years later, in 1850, the Missouri State Medical Association was formed with the same admission requirements. With his father’s passing in 1851, Galen had lost his link to the past and for a lesser man, exclusion from the medical societies could have meant the loss of his future in the career he cherished.

Galen Bishop just doubled down.

He abandoned his allopathic inclinations and decided to continue the practice of medicine the same way he had learned to become a doctor: he would do it on his own, without the assistance of anyone or devoting himself to any one type of medical thought, and he would never, no never, bow to any medical school graduates as his superiors.  

A true man never acquires after college rules, and we find our curiosity [aroused] concerning the modes of living and thinking of that man whose mind has not been subdued by the drill of school education. [from one of his advertisements, 1868]

… [Dr. Galen E. Bishop’s] practice is not hampered by the restrictive dogmas of any particular system. But he believes that some good and some foundation of truth exists in all systems, of which every physician should avail himself in his practice. [from a biography about him,1881]

In 1853, decades before the state or national medical associations started publishing their members-only professional journals, Dr. Galen E. Bishop was publishing his own. A newspaper reporter visiting New Market in November of that year stopped by its little printshop and watched in awe as Dr. Bishop operated as a one-man publishing staff, producing the newest issue of his own medical and scientific journal, The Popular Journal of Medicine and Collateral Sciences:

In the intervals [between] visiting his patients, he writes, sets type and prints, a rare combination of talents, for a new country. His Journal is printed monthly and contains 32 pages. He is said to be a medical genius, possessed of much talent, and can execute almost any kind of work.

The November issue turned out to be a ponderous tome of 96 pages containing three companion articles: “The Imponderable Substances”; “Electricity”; and “Atmosphere.” Cover to cover, it was filled with Dr. Bishop’s effusions on those heady scientific concepts. This particular issue contained no illustrations, advertisements, or medical content, and no contributions by anyone other than Dr. Bishop; he was smart to a fault and candidly, the issue bored the socks off of this 21st century researcher, but there’s no question the doctor was one very smart guy. Not surprisingly, there were no more issues after those of 1853, allegedly because he found it took too much time from his practice. For 19 years after his start in 1846, Dr. Galen E. Bishop practiced medicine and surgery among the rolling hills and fertile valleys of Platte County; then blood and gun smoke covered the land.

DEAD BODIES

The American Civil War shook Southern homelands with battles, raids, and skirmishes. The hostile acts of an angry nation even reached up into the northwestern corner of Missouri, a Union state. New Market and Platte County were surrounded by pro-Southern sentiment; while 2,000 men from the county north of where Galen Bishop lived had signed up for the Union Army, roughly the same number joined the Confederates. Southern bushwhackers like the infamous “Quantrill’s Raiders”  engaged in guerilla warfare in rural areas, ambushing their enemies and raiding the homes and businesses of Union sympathizers.

Even Dr. Bishop’s quiet Platte County experienced its own share of violence and destruction with fighting, ransacking, and burning. A cluster of rumors reached a newspaper in July 1864 that  bushwhackers were swarming about in great numbers: “For the last three days, facts and rumors have come to us so thick and fast as almost to create bewilderment. Unfortunately the truth is bad enough … Platte City is now in the hands of the guerillas.” Less than a year earlier, Dr. Bishop had signed up in the mandatory Union draft registration; the 38-year-old physician wasn’t called upon to serve, but  reaching his patients by traveling alone through the bushwhacker-infested countryside probably made for many unsettling trips.

In the spring of 1865, as the smoke and gunfire of war cleared, 40-year-old Dr. Bishop was ready for a change; with “threatened lung disease, induced by exposure incident to a rough country practice, and also with a view of securing a more central location, he determined to move to St. Joseph,” 20 miles north of New Market. With over 10,000 residents and at the end of the railroad line, it was an ideal location for a doctor – it had lots of potential patients and the ability to receive more from afar. Dr. Bishop located pretty much at the center of the city, on Francis Street opposite the Pacific House hotel.

DEAD CENTER 

St. Joseph was, indeed, a busy place; one of the busiest in the state, and the large 100-room Pacific House accommodated all sorts of visitors to the city, from heroes to criminals. Generals Grant & Sherman once stood together on its balcony, a vantage point that would have provided a clear view of Dr. Galen Bishop’s new office across the street. In stark contrast to the illustrious generals, two local women arrested on the charge of feeding bushwhackers were confined under guard at the hotel. Frank and Jesse James, two of Quantrill’s Raiders were frequent lodgers at the Pacific as well, in the years before they began robbing banks in nearby towns.  Rogues from the realms of quackery, like Dr. J. J. McBride, “The King of Pain,” and the miracle worker, Dr. Lighthill, worked out of the Pacific House when they were in town. Just how busy the hotel was became clear in April 1867 when a rare and strong

earthquake hit the region and “The Pacific Hotel emptied a stream of affrighted guests into Francis street.” It was indeed a wise, strategic decision for Dr. Galen Bishop to locate his new office across the street from such an establishment of the glorious and notorious – new patients from near and far may not have known where Dr. Bishop was newly located, but they knew the Pacific. From the very start of his post-war advertising, his trade cards and newspaper ads specified, “I am permanently located in Saint Joseph, Mo., near the Pacific House, on Francis street.”

Dr. Bishop used his first wave of newspaper advertising to establish the breadth of his practice. His introductory ad ran in newspapers from mid-August 1865 through June 1866. They described his specialization in treating chronic diseases like tuberculosis, syphilis, cancer, and rheumatism, but unlike most doctors who advertised, he showed restraint by not making reckless promises to always cure those diseases.  The same ad also announced his availability to perform surgeries for hernia, cleft palate, cataracts, club foot, hemorrhoids, and other imperfections and abnormalities . Everything about this first year of newspaper advertising was positive, professional, and full of promise. His message was straightforward and matter-of-fact – no razzle-dazzle or shuck-and-jive – the brilliant, self-taught doctor was just confidently letting people know what he was certain he could do for them.

But then there was his trade card. It was printed and distributed during the same time that his newspaper ad was running but it talked to the reader in an entirely different way:

TO MY FRIENDS.

It has been reported through the country that I am dead, and that I am drunk, and at different times that I had moved to St. Louis or other distant places. Medicine peddlers and humbugs have tried to impose themselves on strangers and distant communities by assuming my name, and even nearer home my patients have been duped by men assuming my name.

HUH? Wait a minute here! If it wasn’t for the fact that he put his full name at the bottom of the card, I wouldn’t have believed this was a trade card about Dr. Galen E. Bishop!

Reverse side of Dr. Galen E. Bishop's advertising trade card, ca.1865-1866. Rapoza collection

Rumors and gossip often found their way into newspapers, but so far, no mention of Dr. Bishop’s alleged death, moral ruin, or relocation have been found in over 120,000 issues of newspapers from Missouri and bordering states during August 1865-June 1866. The small-time country doctor had just set up shop in the big town of St. Joseph – he was a strange choice for character assassination and a smear campaign. It seems incomprehensible that there would be so many rumormongers spreading untruths about him and impostors pretending to be him, let alone all at the same time. Besides, he had just relocated to St. Joseph during the same timeframe that this card was made; it therefore seems far more likely that he was creating his own news story rather than already fighting off critics and impostors. The saying, "All news is good news," had been in play for over a century; I believe this card was a publicity stunt perpetrated by Galen to get attention for his business in St. Joseph.

I use pure and costly medicines; my druggist is accused of charging my patients too much and paying me a per cent for my prescriptions; - a lie, growing out of strong competition in the drug business.

Dr. Bishop continued to unveil the cavalcade of calumnies leveled against him – exorbitant fees, conspiracy, and kickbacks – and these lies were being waged not by nameless gossipers or peddlers but by medicine manufacturers – according to this trade card, his list of enemies was as long as his list of sins.

I issue these Photographs to counteract those falsehoods and let the public know that I am “wide awake and duly sober,” and would advise the sick not to be kept away in the future by any falsehood originated by those noted liars.

Here we see Dr. Bishop beginning to fight back in his classic style: straightforward and no-nonsense. “I am wide awake and duly sober,” he wrote, and then offered his photograph to prove it. Even the photograph reflects his personality: the doctor looks forward, his facial expression lacking any emotion; the canvas behind him is devoid of artificial, painted scenery and there are no other pleasantries of a photographer’s set. His photograph focused on giving the reader only what he had promised – proof of life and sobriety.

Two versions of the Dr. Galen E. Bishop trade card have been located thus far. (LEFT) the 1st version, ca. August 1865-June 1866; Rapoza collection. Note: the photographer who took this photo (Rudolph Uhlman) gained notoriety years later for creating a CDV souvenir card with a post-mortem photograph of the notorious bank robber, Jesse James, who was killed in St. Joseph in 1882. (RIGHT) the 2nd version, June 1866 – December 1872 (Courtesy Dick Sheaff collection), but likely early in that window in that it shared the same message as the first and the issues raised would have been unlikely to have been the same if there was an intervening gap of years between the two cards. Note that in the second photo the doctor has a longer, fuller beard; a deeper vest opening; and the watch chain and T-bar are not being used. His beard fullness and length and possible gray hairs at his temple and over his ear indicate a slightly later photography session. Both cards have been dated by the location histories of the two photographers whose names and addresses appear at the bottom of the card backs. Besides the photographers, the only change in the text was renaming the hotel from Pacific Hotel in the first version to Pacific House in the second.

These malignant reports, originating with my old enemies – the quacks and humbugs, and peddlers of physic – fall harmless on me; and are surely shots fired from the rear, in their last retreat.

In this sentence, Dr. Bishop purposely separated himself from the rabble of unqualified doctors of ill repute, calling them his enemies; even though he hadn’t qualified to be a member of the medical societies, he refused  to be dragged down into the mire of quackery. He saw himself as the exception to the professional vs. quack dichotomy of physicians; the regular vs. the irregular. He was wedged in between – the highly skilled physician who was not a member of the medical societies – a medical Missing Link.     

I am permanently located in Saint Joseph, Mo., near the Pacific House, on Francis street; and my office is open day and night, from year to year, where the sick will always find me alive, and will always find me sober. Believe nothing without first seeing me, as I deputize no one to attend to my business, or to know anything about it, except what each patient should know with regard to his own case.

DR. GALEN E. BISHOP.

From an advertisement in the St. Joseph Standard, 29 September 1873.

Dr. Bishop concluded by telling his friends and prospective patients to trust only him, which really meant to stay clear of the irregulars and the medical society members – he was the only doctor they would need. He promised to be at his post day and night, every day of every year, alive, sober, and ready to bring all his knowledge and skills to bear in their behalf. Don’t listen to rumors, half-truths, or outright lies – “believe nothing without first seeing me.” Whether or not there had really been scandalous rumors and imposters besmirching his good name, the message of his trade card was as strong as his newspaper ads: he was professional, ethical, and capable – the perfect physician.

DEAD SERIOUS 

Within just three years, Dr. Bishop had issued 6,000 prescriptions for those afflicted with chronic diseases and at his “operating theater” he removed kidney stones in five patients, one of which was his own brother; he also operated on over 100 eyes for cataracts, and cut out 35 cancers and tumors, “specimens of which … may be seen in his pathological museum.”  The St. Joseph press praised Dr. Bishop’s “large surgical and chronic practice,” crediting the city’s post-war growth and success to him in no small measure, “The reputation of the city is raised by the professional ability of Dr. Bishop … his practice has become a feature in the material prosperity of St. Joseph,” and reported that he had received over 40 offers of partnership with other doctors who were clamoring to join in the success. 

Three Dr. Galen E. Bishop bottles. (LEFT TO RIGHT) a small, clear pill bottle, an aqua bottle of Therapeia Biothrepteira, and a cylinder bottle with the doctor's monogram: "G E B". (Courtesy of Dan Moser and Rebecca Ann Thacker.)

His practice continued to grow and by 1873 it had been expanded into a new, large facility the doctor called his Academy of Medicine & Clinical Surgery, a three-story brick structure with Mansard roof and statuary perched on the front ledges, “beautiful in [its] architectural design and arranged with every modern convenience.” From the street, a list of about 200 diseases were displayed on the window shades – all of which could be removed or remedied through Dr. Bishop’s surgeries or medicines. He made his own medicines and had barrels of drugs stored in the back of his building.

His proprietary medicine line seemed to cover all needs, from Knownothing for venereal diseases; The Granger for renewing vigor, strength, and appetite; and The Native American for blood diseases; to The Amaranthus or Old Man’s Medicine to prevent, cure, and counteract the physical decline that comes with old age (oh yeah, I’m so ready for some of that!); and many more. Making proprietary medicines and advertising them were two more huge offenses to the medical societies, but their rules had long before prevented his admission, so there was nothing they could do to stop a non-member. Breaking these additional rules probably felt to Dr. Bishop like a bittersweet protest and rebuke of those groups who considered him unworthy to be counted among them; every bottle was a glass finger flipped in the air at them.

In contrast, however, all that he did, from making medicine to performing surgery, the doctor was widely admired by the public and the press for “stand[ing] by his own impressions with good-humored inflexibility, trusting himself ”: 

His rare surgical gift is the result of the cumulative experience of a whole life’s cultivation and an obedience to a secret impulse … of devotion to his profession, [which] so cloistered [him] and constitutionally sequestered [him] from society. … [It] ripened him into the most skillful surgeon in this country. He has his own methods. 

The city’s infatuation with its physician surgeon had blossomed into a full-blown love affair: The St. Joseph Gazette gushed,

Dr. Galen E. Bishop is now one of the most celebrated and distinguished physicians and surgeons known to the annals of the medical profession.

By the time that his Academy of Medicine was established, he was known throughout the West and patients came from many miles around to benefit from the vaunted physician. In March 1876 two little blind girls were brought to him from a small town 100 miles to the east; two more patients came in from Jackson County, Kansas, to the west; and a husband-and-wife couple arrived from Ray County, northeast of Kansas City, Missouri, the wife being afflicted with sore eyes and the husband with a diseased bone in his leg. Even Indians from one of the reservations in Kansas “had faith in the pale face medicine man. Sometimes a dozen could be seen in the doctor’s office taking treatment.” (The  Kickapoo reservation was the closest, at 50 miles west of St. Joseph.)

An older couple from Troy, Kansas, also came to the Academy of Medicine for help, the wife needing her eye treated by Dr. Bishop. Apparently avoiding the cost the Pacific hotel or nearby boarding houses, the 67- and 70-year-old couple had been camping near the Academy for a few weeks in October 1879, sleeping in their wagon and cooking by a camp fire, waiting their turn for the wife to be treated by the doctor.

Yesterday the old man strained himself carrying a sack of corn, and at 2 o’clock this morning he awoke his wife and informed her that he was sick. Upon striking a match it was found that he was bleeding profusely at the mouth. Dr Bishop was sent for, and in two minutes after his arrival, the poor man died. It is believed that he ruptured a blood vessel.

Dr. Bishop ran into some legal difficulties in the 1870s, being served with lawsuits for malpractice and slander. One patient sued the doctor for $20,000 ($586,010 in 2024 USD) for malpractice after multiple surgeries on both eyes resulted in making one eye blind and the other one effectively useless (so he was literally blind in one eye and couldn’t see out of the other). The verdict was in favor of Dr. Bishop, which met “with universal satisfaction.” A woman sued the doctor for slander, demanding $35,000 in damages ($1,025,518 in 2024 USD) for referring to her as a prostitute, but again the verdict found in favor of the popular doctor.

In May 1879, two weeks after the creation of a new St Joseph newspaper called The Evening News, the editor positioned himself squarely against Dr. Bishop, insisting he was an “impostor, swindler, and humbug … chief among ten thousand … corrupt quack and medical shysters.” The newspaper chided that he was perceived by others as a “medical saint (so considered by a few poor, deluded devils” but then insisted, “he lies in his teeth, in his throat, and way down deep in his black, cowardly, craven heart” and claimed they had at their office affidavits of some disillusioned former patients of the doctor to prove it. In the following months, however, the same newspaper mentioned Dr. Bishop’s activities on several occasions but dropped all insinuations that he had a sinister side.

Nothing seems to have come of the newspaper’s earlier assertions, either in court or in competing newspapers, and Doctor Bishop didn’t bother to produce a third revised edition of his trade card to add impostor, swindler, and humbug to the earlier accusations that he was dead, drunk, and disappeared.

DEAD STILL

Dr. Galen E. Bishop finally died in 1902 at 77 years old, after a lifetime of medical and surgical service. No evidence of drunkenness ever showed up, but at least the rumors of his death were no longer exaggerated.

Lynn Massachusetts History - History of Medicine - 19th-Century Health Remedies - Vintage Medical Ephemera - 19th-century Medicine

A Tribute to Mad Hatters & Others Who Just Struggled Along

Was the hatter mad or was it the world around him?

I recently had the opportunity to buy a trade card that was made way back in 1825.

Yeah – 200 years ago – (mic drop).

Forget about airplanes and automobiles – back in 1825 there were no such things as sewing machines, the telegraph, or even photographs. This acquisition predates my few Civil War era trade cards by over 40 years (see my recent blogpost, “The Unwelcomed Success of Dr. Curtis,” for a card from 1867 that most advertising trade card collectors would call an early trade card).

The Mad Hatter from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass by Lewis Carroll, 1865. (Courtesy of Internet Archive)

Truth is, I would have wanted this antique treasure even if it was only promoting the sale of broken wagon wheels, but the fact that it was the trade card of a hat manufacturer in the mid-1820s had a special allure for me because I know my Alice in Wonderland.

“MAD AS A HATTER”

The hat making profession was getting ridiculed even back in the 1820s. A preparation of mercury salts was used to soften the hairs on pelts of beavers, otters, and other woodland creatures for easy use in making the flared "bell" and "chimney" styles of hats worn by men in the early part of the century. Constantly dipping the pelts in the hot bath of mercury and nitric acid allowed the mercury solution to seep through skin pores and into the bloodstream and its noxious vapors were inhaled causing many hat makers to have physical trembling, speech problems, and emotional instability such as:

excessive timidity, diffidence, increasing shyness, loss of self-confidence, anxiety, and a desire to remain unobserved and unobtrusive. The victim also had a pathological fear of ridicule and often reacted with an explosive loss of temper when criticized. (H. A. Waldron, “Did the Mad Hatter have mercury poisoning?” British Medical Journal, Vol.287, DEC 1983, p.1961.) 

A brief interchange in an early play script demonstrates the widely understood association that hatters had with odd and even neurotic behavior back in 1829 when it appeared in Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine:

Man Wearing Beaver Hat. Daguerreotype, ca.1855. Hand-tinted on cheeks and chin to appear more lifelike. Courtesy of a private collector.

TICKLER (aside to SHEPHERD.) He's raving.   

SHEPHERD (to  TICKLER.) Dementit. [Demented]

ODOHERTY (to both.) Mad as a hatter. Hand me a segar.

In 1847 a British newspaper correspondent lambasted the hat worn by a member of Parliament, calling it “atrociously ugly” then placing the blame on the hat maker, precisely because he was a hat maker, of being mad:  

The hatter who originally conceived the design must have broke[n] out of a lunatic asylum, and was assuredly more mad than hatters usually are, though the craft are proverbial maniacs. (The Birmingham Journal [England], 27 November 1847, p.8; emphasis added)

Consumer demand for hats had been high for decades and was increasing as England moved towards the middle of the 19th century. Even though the demand for hats was met with real health problems and popular ridicule, many men and some women braved the unpleasantness of both and became gentlemen’s hatters.

JOHN CONQUEST 

Conquest – the name implied success in a dominant way. In Great Britain the word conjures up a history-changing triumph – the Norman Conquest of England in 1066 and its ruthless, successful leader, William the Conqueror. The surname may have its roots in that epic event and commander, but almost eight centuries had passed and no glories, fame, or fortune had been handed down to John Conquest.

He was born the son of a manual laborer in the quiet country village of Clophill, England, floating about 40 miles northwest of London. He was as common a man as common could be: just another Anglican by faith, with unremarkable brown hair and a pale complexion, and he stood 5 feet 6 inches tall, although wearing one of his hats may have made him feel taller. He was also illiterate, signing both of his marriage records with a mark that someone else had to surround with his name to make it official. The only thing that truly distinguished him from most of the countrymen who surrounded him was his occupation – he was a hatter.

It singled him out and, if his trade card reveals anything about the illiterate, diminutive hatter with a pasty complexion, it was that he wanted to make a strong impression – a commercial conquest.

 

Trade Card for J(ohn) Conquest & Co., ca.1825. Rapoza collection. Card dimensions: 3 5/8" x 3" (92.075 mm x 76.2 mm). The card is made from thick, quality paper stock but is flexible and neither as thick or rigid as trade cards from the second half of the century. The reverse side and sometimes the margins on the front side were sometimes used by the proprietor to create a receipt for the customer by writing down the transaction date, purchase price, and payment date; however, the reverse side of this card is blank; J. Conquest & Co. had very little time to record such sales before the partnership was dissolved.

It is a superb, dynamic example of the neoclassical artistic style in an elegant presentation of copperplate engraving and printing. Instead of the previously popular rococo style, which featured flamboyantly curving flourishes profusely garnished with floral and marine decorations, neoclassicism simplified design, using the classic architecture stylings of Rome and Greece, with symmetry and harmony in its presentation. John Conquest’s trade card was all that, arranged with a block paved floor and two classically fluted columns symmetrically flanking each side of the floor and firmly set on solid pedestals, all of which was then secured to a large foundation. Sound, solid, and safe – that was the underlying message about John Conquest’s business, but there was clearly more to catch the eye. The large eagle festooned with ribbon and banner, and boldly surmounted by the name, “J. CONQUEST & Co.”, was likely a duplication of the sign in front of his building that identified his shop; the great bird was literally spread-eagle, dominant in the scene and poised to soar above the hat making industry. There was nothing pale and diminutive in the entire design of the card.

Two of Conquest’s Regency hat styles were posted on the card’s two columns: the gentlemen’s popular bell-shaped Wellington and chimney-styled hat designs, well-formed from fur soaked and steamed in mercury nitrate. Gentlemen’s hats were more status symbol than functional protective headgear. In US dollar equivalents, a beaver hat could cost $10-$25 in a time when the common laborer, like John Conquest’s own father, was making only 10 to 25 cents a day. Although illiterate and of common stock, John Conquest understood the importance of catering to an upscale clientele and his card showed it.

Mr. Conquest also assured his card recipients that he could also resurrect old worn-out hats, relining them with silk. In the 1820s world of men’s hat fashions, silk was the new beaver; for over two centuries, the North American beaver population had been decimated, almost to the point of extinction, and the cost of beaver hats consequently inflated. Silk became an acceptable substitute, looking every bit as shiny and swell as the beaver hats. John Conquest was on the cutting edge of hat fashion, adding the newer and more cost-effective silk alternative next to the beaver hats in his hat showcase. New or refurbished, Conquest’s shop was the place to go.

CHEAPSIDE TO PICCADILLY

John started his shop in big, busy Manchester, England, in 1825. It was much smaller than London (not even a twelfth of its size), but still the second-largest city in the country – ripe with potential for a new hatter whose powerful eagle signage looked ready to make the business take off. He would need all that enthusiasm and confidence because there were already 75 hat makers in Manchester in 1825 (not including the additional 14 shops that were making women's straw hats). With so many hatters in the city, the naming the naming of one of its many pubs the Jolly Hatters Tavern seemed quite logical. The address of John Conquest's new shop, 38 Piccadilly, put his business in the center of the city and just a half-mile away from the Jolly Hatters. His path to Piccadilly had been a long and challenging route strewn with life's obstacles and potholes to overcome.

Business opportunities were not dazzling in Clophill, so in his early twenties John made his way to London, already with a population well over a million people. In 1813 when he was 23, he lived deep in the city and married a country girl named  Ann Fearn who had grown up in another village about 20 miles west of his hometown; John signed the marriage record with an X for his mark, since he was unable to read and write. The young couple set up house on Little Somerset Street in downtown London where eleven months later, Ann gave birth to their first child, a daughter they named Mary Ann; her birth record listed her father as a hatter.

Their wedded bliss was interrupted in January 1815 when John was arrested for perpetrating some unspecified misdemeanor against his employer. He was convicted and sentenced to one month of hard labor, serving his sentence when his little daughter was six months old. Reunited with his little family, they increased in 1816 with the birth of their first son, George.

In the span of the next few years multiple tragedies struck the young Conquest family: wife Ann and daughter Mary Ann both passed away. Now 33 years old, widower John remarried to Ann Chipping in 1823; the marriage record shows he was still illiterate and he likely was for the rest of his life.

For ten years, at least since his first marriage in 1813, John had been working as a hatter in London’s Cheapside Street. The name is a modern corruption of “marketplace” and it was true to the original description; by 1825 it was possibly the busiest shopping district in the city, if not the world. Each day and well into the night, Cheapside was a hive of activity, with shops and sidewalk vendors; horses, wagons, carriages, and coaches; professional offices, residences, apartments, boarding houses; and people – lots of people. Hat makers, haberdashers, and shoe shops offered the newest fashions, ready to be accessorized by watch makers, jewelers, goldsmiths, and silver smiths. China and glass dealers, chair and cabinet makers, wallpaper stainers, and upholsters stood ready to furnish homes, and physicians and apothecaries were poised to help those among the Cheapside shoppers who didn’t feel so well. John Conquest name-dropped his former business location on his Manchester business card precisely because Cheapside was nationally known as the country’s most vibrant business district and he was one its alumni. His Manchester customers didn’t have to make the day-long trip to travel the 200 miles to London to shop in style – he was bringing London to them.

CONQUEST GOES DARK

John Conquest’s trade card, almost certainly created in 1825, presented a business and businessman that was ready to accomplish great things in Manchester.

The firm of John Conquest & Co. was established in Manchester late in 1825. His partners were the Robinson brothers, Isaac and William. Isaac was about the same age as John and William was a dozen years younger. The Robinson brothers were educated Quakers from Leeds, the sons of a shopkeeper and already working as silk hatters in Manchester at least through September 1825 before they agreed to the new partnership with John Conquest. On 29 September, Isaac and his wife also welcomed the birth of their first child, a son, and John’s wife arrived at Manchester very pregnant, shortly before delivering the first child of their marriage.

John had an older brother named William who was also a hatter. He had been with John through the Cheapside years and came with him to Manchester; however, he wasn’t included in the new partnership but chose instead to start his own business, “Wm. Conquest & Co. Hat Manufacturers,” just a half-mile from John’s new shop in Piccadilly. All four men hoped for success in their new ventures but all their dreams were doomed.

The new partnership fell apart almost before the ink was dry on the new trade card. Founded after September 1825, the partnership was formally dissolved on 11 March 1826:

Notice of Dissolution. The Manchester Guardian and British Volunteer, 25 March 1826, p.1.

Seven weeks later, Ann Conquest gave birth to their first child.

It’s easy to guess but hard to know just why the Conquest-Robinson partnership failed so quickly. On paper, John Conquest and the Robinson brothers had nothing in common. He was from a country village and they were from a big city; John’s father was a manual laborer but their father was a middle-class merchant. John was an Anglican and they were Quakers; they were educated and John was illiterate. Their differences could have been molded into shared strengths to help their partnership and business succeed, but all or some of it may have driven a wedge between them; however, the suddenness of their dissolution suggests that something else was quickly pulling them apart. It may have been mad hatter disease.

John Conquest and Isaac Robinson had both been making hats for years; William Conquest had probably been working alongside his brother in Cheapside, and William Robinson may have been helping his brother Isaac for a few years prior to the new partnership. Mercury poisoning can work fast, but in the case of these four men, it had plenty of time to change their minds and alter their personalities.

William Conquest had set out in his own hat making business in Manchester in 1825 but was declared bankrupt by December 1826. In 1828 he tried starting up again, this time with a partner and, perhaps significantly, focused on making only silk hats, probably due to the increasing demand for them, along with concern about the health effects of making beaver felt hats with mercury. Nonetheless, their partnership was dissolved in 1831. In 1834 he shows up one more time, having reopened his old shop briefly by himself. The last we see of him was ten years later, when a newspaper reporter called him “the old curiosity man,” being arrested and brought before the magistrate for stealing a bag of silver from the bar of the Commercial Inn, just a few blocks from his old hat shop.

William Robinson had a sadder fate, dying in August 1827; the youngest of the four hatters was only 24 at death. True, many illnesses and innumerable injuries could kill a hale and hearty young man, but mercury poisoning can damage the brain, lungs, and kidneys, so it could easily have been the cause or a significant contributor to the young hatter’s death.

Less than two months after the partnership had fallen apart, Isaac lost his first-born son at just 10 months old. Again we don’t know why the infant died, but mercury present on Isaac’s clothing and body could easily have transferred as Father Isaac held his baby boy after each long day’s work. The small lung capacity of babies also increased their risk of inhaling any vapors emanating from such exposure. Isaac himself lived a long life, dying at 84, but after 1828 we no longer see him mentioned as a hatter, but rather as a tea dealer, a grocer, and a “retired hatter”.

Even if mercury poisoning didn’t kill any of the Conquests or Robinsons, it often played havoc on a hatter’s mental, emotional, and physical health. All three hatters in the ill-fated partnership were constantly exposed to mercury poisoning and perhaps one, two, or all three exhibited various symptoms that could easily have ruined their interrelationships or the business itself. Physical trembling could have frustrated their ability to make a fine quality hat; speech problems could have been frustrating in trying to deal with customers and suppliers and might have made them resistant to doing future commerce with that hat shop.

The dissolution notice specified that it was John Conquest who was leaving the partnership. The man with all the aspirations for success in Manchester, as displayed on his trade card, was breaking up the team and he was never again listed doing hat making as did his brother and his former partner, Isaac. It seems like John Conquest was the weakest link, even though his younger partner died just 15 months after the dissolution. You can almost hear the sighs of relief from the Robinson brothers when the phrase, “dissolved by mutual consent, so far as concerns John Conquest” was added.

John appears to have been the problem. Perhaps he was exhibiting some of the neurological dysfunctions brought on by mercury exposure. “Excessive timidity, shyness, and anxiety” are significant challenges for many in the workplace, but a complete “loss of self-confidence and a desire to remain unobserved” are more serious and troubling. John Conquest was suddenly, willfully leaving John Conquest & Co. – he was making himself invisible. Had he come to that decision because he had developed “a pathological fear of ridicule” and therefore couldn’t deal with complaints and accusations from his partners about mistakes they perceived he was making? Perhaps he even exhibited “the explosive loss of temper when criticized,” which could destroy any workplace or partnership. 

Worn Out. Both the unidentified gentleman and his hat appear to have had hard lives. Ambrotype, ca.1860s. (Courtesy of FamilyHistoryDaily.com .

What makes me feel that John Conquest may have suffered from some or all of these symptoms of mad hatter disease is how abruptly his partnership ended and how he completely disappeared from the public record for the last nine years of his life – he just vanished from public view. From the 1826 dissolution to his death in 1835, he had gone dark, appearing in surviving records only for the births of his two children in 1833 and 1834 and the death of the latter in 1835 (the first had died in infancy and the latter died at one year old). No records have been found showing that he continued to be employed. Perhaps he had stopped working altogether from the terrible effects of mercury poisoning. Had he become a mad hatter? Was that what brought the end of his career and eventually his life at age 45? We'll never know, but there is a high likelihood that he and his one-time partners, as well as family members were affected to some degree by the mercury solution that marinated their bodies and vapors that filled their lungs during and after hat making. 

John loved and lost – wives, children, his business, partners, and perhaps his own life. Some of the losses may have been due to the mercury he used to make beaver felt for the older style top hats. But his glorious trade card helps us feel his joy for life – the only remaining proof of his hopes, dreams, and ambitions. Whether or not his life was ruined by mercury, we should remember him for the positive messages his trade card tells us about him.

If I could travel back in time to meet John, I would want to compliment him about how wonderfully impressive his trade card was. Maybe, amid all the loss and dashed hopes, he would realize that he had triumphed with that card which has preserved his memory for 200 years – as it turned out, it was his ultimate conquest.

 

AUTHOR’S POSTSCRIPT: On 1 May 1826, just weeks after John Conquest’s business partnership had been dissolved, Ann Conquest gave birth to a daughter, their first child. They named her Mary Ann. It is possible for mercury poisoning to be transferred to a fetus during pregnancy and through breast milk, affecting the developing brain and nervous system, which could then potentially lead to neurological problems later in life, appearing even in adulthood; perhaps it impacted the mental health of Mary Ann Conquest.

In 1865, at 39 years old, she committed suicide by swallowing rat poison and possibly even infanticide. Before her suicide, she was asked if she had given anything to her month-old baby who had suddenly died, but she denied doing so. A newspaper reported that “the loss of her child, and the fact of her having told an untruth, weighed upon her mind and she appeared very much distressed.” She eventually confessed to her husband that their baby had died because of what she had done: the infant “was rather troublesome [so] she gave it a few drops of some mixture ...”  She then told a neighbor she had taken a dose of “vermin poison,” and died shortly thereafter. The coroner’s verdict was that she poisoned herself “during a fit of temporary insanity.”

Was her temporary insanity seeded by mercury poisoning during her fetal and infantile development? The answer to that will forever be buried deep in the depths of history’s mysteries.

ONE LAST NOTE:  And for those readers preparing to jump to Google Maps to see exactly where 38 Piccadilly and China Lane meet, there is now a Kentucky Fried Chicken on the corner; the location has come a long way from a magnificent spread eagle to a box of fried chicken.

The Happy Couple. Dressed in their finest to have one of those newfangled pictures taken. Ambrotype, ca.1860s. (Courtesy of FamilyHistoryDaily.com .

Lynn Massachusetts History - History of Medicine - 19th-Century Health Remedies - Vintage Medical Ephemera - 19th-century Medicine

A Yankee Peddler of Bitters & Baseballs

A rare little record reveals a forgotten profession.

     Frank Albert Kidder didn’t know he was making history. He thought he was just leaving an order with the printer to create a low-cost advertising card he could give to his customers or whoever would take a gander at it.

     Today, as I hold Frank’s card in my hand, I see not a small piece of quaint advertising, but an amazing window into the life of a country peddler in the late 19th century. Let’s look through it together and enjoy the view into a forgotten past.

     Frank Kidder drove his horse-drawn wagon chock-full of small goods and notions through the New England countryside; his range almost certainly covered the many farmlands north and west of Boston and probably into New Hampshire. Farmers were his target audience; they were very busy taking care of their livestock and crops every day, so traveling to cities to shop was an unwise  extravagance of time and money. The visit of a peddler with his wagonful of goods was a practical solution. 

Advertising Trade Card for Frank Kidder’s Grocery Wagon, ca.1876-1880. (Front). Rapoza collection.

Eye-Catching Messages

Frank had his business card made sometime between 1876-1880. Collecting what were called advertising trade cards was becoming a national obsession; children and women pasted them in large scrapbooks and even the smallest, one-man business like Frank Kidder could afford to have some basic trade cards printed. The least expensive cards were called stock cards, displaying preprinted images with a blank area reserved for the customized message of the advertiser; Frank’s card was one of this type.

  The card front that Frank Kidder selected was defined by a single-color illustration of an attractive young woman, fashionably dressed but revealing a low neckline and a bared shoulder. In rural New England, far from the salacious temptations of large cities, it was a rare, provocative image that probably found its way onto the walls of some barns, outhouses, and tool sheds or perhaps secreted away in a workbench drawer.

     The sultry beauty casually leans on an ivy-bordered signboard, the center of which was left blank by the designer so that advertisers like Frank could have the printer fill it in with their own message. Frank maximized the tiny space with as many pithy messages as could be fit:

BUY YOUR GOODS FROM FRANK KIDDER’S Grocery Wagon.

     As peddlers, traders, hucksters, and other traveling salesmen roamed the countryside selling their wares, Frank wanted to make sure that  people waited for his return for an honest deal on quality goods.

William Ayres Hurlbut, peddler, stands before his well-stocked wagon of goods for sale. Image taken in DeKalb, NY, ca.1870-1880. De Kalb Historian Bryan Thompson points out that Hurlbut [Thompson’s 3rd great uncle] was holding eggs in his hand, with a bowl of eggs next to him as well, “It was commonplace for peddlers to sell their wares for eggs while they were traveling, then bring the eggs back to town” and sell them for cash or more goods for their wagon. [Courtesy of Bryan Thompson and The Historian’s Office, Town of De Kalb, NY.]

“The Farmers’ Friend”

     Back then, this phrase was oft-repeated and full of connotation, from natural to political. Many things were called the farmer’s friend, from harvesting equipment and a newspaper to earthworms, rat snakes, and barn owls. Farming fed the country and farmers were a significant portion of the nation’s population; businesses large and small, like Frank’s, beat hasty paths to the farms, wanting to be favored with their business.

None but first-class GOODS. Everything Warranted.

     Itinerant peddlers and salesmen, here today and gone tomorrow, were distrusted as a class of business, so Frank Kidder’s promise of nothing but the best goods was his attempt to separate his grocery wagon from his competitors. He also warranted everything he sold with a bold promise – if the customer didn’t like it, he would take it back and refund the purchase price.

“Redwood Peddler on the Calaboga Road.” Image taken in Hammond, NY, ca.1900. [Courtesy of Donna Demick, Hammond Historian.]

The first in the Field; always Reliable.

     The first part of this phrase may have meant Kidder was the first to bring new goods to the farms or that he was claiming to be the best of peddlers in terms of quality and reputation, but either way it was read, he was setting himself up as the best of the bunch; then he ended the sentence with the reassurance that his customers would have no regrets – how could you if he’s always reliable?

     Between the strategic promises and the Victorian vixen displaying them and herself, the inexpensive advertising card was a powerful and enticing message being placed in the farmer’s hand as cows mooed nearby, chickens clucked underfoot, and the air stank from the unseen pigpen on the other side of the barn. Frank Kidder had their attention; taking a few minutes to look over all the stuff in his wagon became more of a break than a chore. It was a welcomed visiting store on wheels – a combination of convenience store and curiosity shop. 

The Punctilious Peddler

Advertising Trade Card for Frank Kidder’s Grocery Wagon, ca.1876-1880 (Reverse side). Rapoza collection.

     The text on the back is the historian’s heaven. Frank Kidder supplied a richly detailed inventory of his wagon, giving a very clear picture of what he was selling to the farmers and country folk to make his living. 

     Everything was small: he chose not to carry the brooms, shovels, scythes, dresses, fabrics, or jewelry often stocked by other peddlers, and certainly no fruits, vegetables, or meats – not for fear of spoilage but because farms were the source of such things.

     Instead, Frank Kidder loaded his wagon with small and less accessible ingredients for cooking, other necessities that couldn’t be conviently made at home, and a long list of medicines. Oh, and “Base Balls” (it didn’t become standardized as one word, “baseball,” until about 1884) for playing the game that was yet another passion sweeping the nation.

     Most of the food items, like coffee, tea, sugar, lemons, cinnamon, and coconut were not native New England crops but they packed and traveled well in the wagon. Lamp chimneys and bases, shirt collars, stationery, blank books for journaling and record keeping, pocket knives, hair pins, combs, and pencils were some of the practical and helpful whatnots that filled needs in almost every home. But by far, Frank Kidder packed more medicines into his wagon than anything else. He was most likely able to carry such a wide selection of remedies and sundries in small quantities and consistently enough to have them regularly stocked on his wagon and listed on his trade card because he was being supplied from the regular stock of a drugstore, grocer, or wholesaler. But make no mistake about it, he was no employee or underling for someone else's store back in Boston; Frank Kidder was an entrepreneur, proudly running and promoting his own business: “Frank Kidder’s Grocery Wagon.”

     The list of medicines on the back of his trade card was anything but a random jumble of remedies; it reveals a carefully planned stocking strategy. Looked at closely, it can be seen that the medicines were carefully selected to cover a broad range of illnesses and body complaints, and they were for everyone – not just for family members but for the whole farm.

     The extensive medicine list was deliberately started with two prominent selections from the bitters category. Walker’s Vinegar Bitters and Drake’s Plantation Bitters were brands with national reputations, an accomplishment that was happening among patent medicines moreso than any other category of consumer goods. Bitters were usually promoted for disorders associated with digestion, from weakness and indigestion to constipation and diarrhea. The Vinegar Bitters appealed to those committed to temperance, as it promised (falsely) that it was alcohol-free. The Plantation Bitters was well-known for its log cabin bottle, a distinctive shape with contents that were more than a third rum – a powerful punch for those who preferred alcohol in their bitters.

Goods from Frank Kidder's Grocery Wagon. A representative recreation of items he listed on his trade card inventory (left to right): lamp chimney and base; essence of peppermint; lemons; pocket books; flavoring extracts (essence of wintergreen in the foreground); elixir of paregoric, and a bottle of Drake's Plantation Bitters (Houston24 commemorative bottle). Rapoza collection.

     Kidder also carried Rush’s Medicines and Kennedy’s Medicines, two more widely popular lines, especially for their flagship cures like Rush’s Pills, a laxative so powerful that they had early on gained the nickname, “thunderbolts.” Then came the balsams and Dr. Pierce’s "Golden Medical Discovery,” all of which were primarily for lung diseases like consumption and colds. While the balsams worked on the lungs, the salves were for inflamed, sensitive skin, like piles and sunburn. The oil group – Wizard Oil, arnica oil, and Gargling Oil, were liniments for sore muscles and painful joints and some, like Merchant’s Gargling Oil, advertised themselves as being for “Man or Beast.” It’s not just a coincidence then, that “Condition Powders” were listed next to the Gargling Oil; they were medicinal supplements to be added to livestock food to make weak and sick animals strong, primarily horses, cattle, poultry, and swine. Frank Kidder was trying hard to prove he was “The Farmers’ Friend” in every way. Even more than a ratsnake.

     Kidder concluded his medicinal inventory with perhaps the most important category to farmers – pain killers. If such a medicine could make the pain go away, farmers could keep working. Most of the painkillers were effective but dangerous because it was the opium or morphine they contained that killed the pain. Many babies and teething toddlers died from the application Mrs. Winslow’s Soothing Syrup to their painful gums because of the morphine it contained. Babies crying from colic were often given opium-laden paregoric to calm them down.

     The entire list, from the powdered foodstuffs to the painkillers, was a Victorian shorthand that any New Englander could review quickly and recognize subconsciously the product categories it contained. The only thing that remained unclear was the assurance that there was much more, “&c., &c., &c., &c.,” – it was, I suspect, more hyperbole than reality; there probably wasn't much room left on the wagon – but it promised his customers there was more and the occasional new item, encouraging them to go look at Frank Kidder's wagon once again, even though they saw it just a month or two back.

Frank Kidder’s road to becoming a Yankee Peddler

     Frank Kidder became a Yankee peddler because life hadn’t prepared him for much else. He was born into a family that was falling apart from the start and never recovered. His parents were Dwight and Mary Kidder who had two boys in two years: Charles was born in 1849 and on 8 September 1850, 22-year-old Mary Kidder gave birth to baby Francis at her parents’ house in Dummerston, Vermont, while her husband, Dwight, 21, was boarding and working as a tailor in neighboring New Hampshire. The apparently fecund potential of their wedded bliss then abruptly stopped. There were no more children and surviving records struggle to find Dwight and Mary under the same roof. In 1855 when Francis (now called Franklin) was 5, the family had moved to Fitchburg, Massachusetts; it was a pattern of frequent movement by Dwight, a tailor and fabric cutter who went wherever there was opportunity to make some money.

     In 1860 Dwight was boarding and working on the southeast side of bustling Boston while Mary and 10-year-old Frank were back at her parents and 11-year-old Charles was put up at another family in Dummerston, about twenty houses away from his mother and Frank. The Kidders were biologically but not geographically a family – and the strained bonds of family would soon break altogether. In 1863 Dwight had taken work in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, 500 miles away, leaving his wife and two boys at his in-laws in Dummerston. In 1864 he was adulterously and possibly bigamously starting a second family, having a son named after him by a woman named Catherine who was just 8 years older than his son Charles. Three years later in 1867, Mary Kidder died of consumption in Dummerston. At 17 years old, Frank Kidder had become an orphan for all intents and purposes. His mother was dead and his father was gone, building his second family. Frank had to follow his own path.

     In 1870, after three more years had passed, the remnants of the original Kidder family were spread in all directions: father Dwight had moved yet again, bringing Catharine and 6-year-old Dwight with him to New London, Connecticut; Charles, now 21, was a clerk in a Boston dry goods store, and Frank, 20, was boarding in Mont Vernon, New Hampshire, working in a box-making shop. On 17 December 1873, at age 23, Frank finally found some stability, marrying Clara I. Howe in Somerville, Massachusetts. Their marriage record lists him as a trader, which in his case probably meant a peddler who accepted the farmer’s goods in exchange for his merchandise, like William Ayres Hurlbut who accepted eggs in payment then sold them in the city.

For the next 24 years, from 1874 until 1898, business directories listed him as a traveling salesman with his home base at his in-laws’ house in Somerville, just over the Charles River on the north side of Boston. From there he traveled to northern Massachusetts and New Hampshire, peddling his goods from his horse-drawn wagon.

The distinctions between peddlers, traveling salesman, hucksters, hawkers, and traders were blurred back in the 19th century and are almost invisible today, since those professions have either metamorphosized into something else or disappeared altogether. But Frank Kidder, the traveling salesman, was practicing the trade of generations of Yankee peddlers who had preceded him. He roamed the landscape selling bitters, baseballs, and much more, while trying to build up his clientele, planning his inventory, and getting cards printed to promote his business.

Game box cover, “Ye Peculiar Game of Ye Yankee Peddler,” produced by Geo. S. Parker & Co., Publishers, Salem, MA, ca.1888. Country peddlers and their wares were such a colorful, ubiquitous oddity in the countryside, game makers sought to exploit the popular interest in the curious traders by making them the subject of a parlor game. Note the peddler’s wagon to the right, jam-packed with his wares. (Courtesy Rachel T. Van)

His career mimicked the peregrinations of his father in some significant respects, traveling afar wherever there was opportunity to make some money, while his wife stayed at home with her parents. The only life lessons he seemed to have inherited from his father was the legacy of his absence. Frank and Clara had no children.

     By 1880 father Dwight had moved his second family to Springfield, Massachusetts, where he would die in 1881 of a lingering illness, a month after his son Dwight, then 17, murdered his half-brother, Charles, 32, in the same city. Frank and his wife were better off living in Somerville on the other side of the state; besides, his father, mother, and brother were now all gone. Frank’s solitary wanderings in his grocery wagon probably helped prepare him emotionally to be the solitary survivor of his biological family.

President Kidder and Dr Daniels’ Horse Medicines

     Back in 1870, when Frank Kidder was working in Mont Vernon, New Hampshire, he may have bumped into or even rubbed shoulders with another Vermonter, Albert Chester Daniels, a farmer who lived in Keene, a little over 30 miles from Frank. Albert shared Frank’s entrepreneurial spirit; had begun making and selling something he called the Excelsior Plant Protector, “for the protection of Squash, Melon and Cumber Vines from Hens, Bugs, Worms and Frosts.” He advertised his contraption and for “a few energetic young men” looking for “steady employment and large wages by acting as sub-agents, soliciting orders for an article that sells at sight.” Frank just might have added one of Albert’s plant protectors to his wagon and taken orders from interested farmers while selling them his medicines and sundries. If so, it was the extent of their relationship; Albert went on to become a coal dealer upstate in Lebanon, New Hampshire, then in 1884 he auctioned off everything – his farming tools, coal wagon, and household furniture – and moved to Boston, “having changed my business” once again.

By 1886 Albert showed up as a traveling salesman out of Boston, selling his own line of “horse medicines” and he had styled himself, “Dr. A. C. Daniels.” He didn’t really have a veterinary degree but perhaps he felt qualified by what he had learned from having livestock on his farm. His product line for cattle and horses included Dr. Daniels’ Colic Cure and Fever Drops, a Horse Renovator and Cattle Invigorator, Hoof Grower and Flyene, “to protect horses from being tormented by flies,” and the Wonder Worker, which name carried all the bravado of the boldest patent medicines for people. Frank Kidder’s trade card was produced long before Dr. Daniels started selling his animal medicines; maybe they became part of Frank’s “&c., &c.,” in later years.

Dr. Daniels passed away in 1897 at about 50 years old, but his business was continued by investors. Probably road-worn and wearied by 25 years of living the nomadic lifestyle of a traveling salesman, the 49-year-old Frank Kidder ended his itinerant wagon driver days, trying instead to invest in some businesses that kept him in the Boston area, close to home and Clara in Somerville. In 1915 he became one of three investors in Dr. A. C. Daniels, Inc., and in 1923 he became president of the company. Dr. Daniels was alive only in the continued use of his name and facial image on the products and it was also time for President Kidder to join him in death. Frank Kidder passed in his 73rd year, just a few months after he had become the president of Dr. A. C. Daniels, Inc.

Whether or not Frank Albert Kidder and Albert Chester Daniels had done some business together in their younger days, the journeys of the two traveling salesmen, classic Yankee peddlers, had crossed at the end of life.

Dr. Daniel’s Veterinary Medicines cabinet with an embossed tin inset panel and an assortment of the company’s products arranged in the foreground, ca.1920-1930. (Courtesy of Bryan Ashley)

Lynn Massachusetts history - History of medicine - 19th-Century Health Remedies - Vintage Medical Ephemera - 19th-century medicine