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

High Noon in Old Texas: Ambushed by the Quarter-Inch Killer

Not everything is bigger in Texas.

AUTHOR’S PROLOGUE: A single letter came to my attention a year ago while I was engaged in a project of digitizing the Gandy Collection of family and business records and correspondence for Montgomery County, Texas, from the mid- and late-19th century. It was a personal letter, written in October 1859 by Sarah Elizabeth Davis to her sister, Amelia Jane Davis. What struck me as so especially poignant was Betty’s discussion of the season’s dangerous yellow fever epidemic, followed a paragraph later by her personal experience of being repeatedly bitten by mosquitoes and seeing it only as a miserable inconvenience. There was no way for her to know that some of those mosquitoes could be the vectors of yellow fever. I have researched the impact of the 1859 yellow fever epidemic on Betty, Montgomery, Texas, and the region, and would like to share it now with you.

High Noon

A month of drought across Texas in August 1859 had baked the crops, greatly reducing their yields. People were anxious for better times. Houses, barns, and stores were little better than ovens on the landscape, made barely habitable by wide-open windows, handheld fans, and likely various forms of liquid refreshment.

Little changed as summer melted into fall. On September 15th, the hot, humid, sun-burned air continued to blanket the little town of Montgomery, 50 miles northwest of Houston; in other words, it was another typical Texas day. But it was also a day for celebration as the town welcomed it’s guest of honor, “the lion of the day, the hero of his country,” governor-elect Sam Houston.

Loud Cheering

A huge crowd, estimated at as many as 3,000 – more than the entire population of the town – thronged to the all-day festivities. It was the rare day like this that made all the heat, all the manual labor, and the many do-withouts of rural life bearable. It was likely a welcome diversion even for a woman like the pregnant Sarah Elizabeth Davis, who went by “Betty”; she busied herself daily with household chores in addition to her pregnancy and mothering her toddler. The celebration was a refreshing break indeed.

The air was full of sounds, sights, and smells to savor: cannons thundered tributes; the minister’s invocation lifted heavenward; the inevitably long-winded VIP speeches did their part to further warm the atmosphere; patriotic music of the brass band marched through the breeze; beckoning smells of the Texas-sized barbecue on a very long table set for 700 to be seated, and even a manned hot air balloon drifted up into the sky. Later, bright lamps were suspended over “the fair women and brave men” who danced into the night. In newspaper accounts of the celebration, no mention was made of a single mosquito; even an occasional minuscule blood-sucking puncture was a tolerable inconvenience in the mist of so much fun – it was just another fact of life in Texas and the least of their worries.

Low Moaning

Like many of the towns and villages in eastern and inland Texas, Montgomery was established close by water – several creeks along the west fork of the San Jacinto River. They were sources of water for drinking, cooking, farming, laundry, and sometimes waste disposal. Hot and humid Texas summers sometimes turned creeks into boggy swamps and the gasses emanating from them drifted under noses and into homes.

On October 10th, less than a month after the Sam Houston celebration, Betty wrote to her sister Jane in Mississippi, that with her husband away on business and her toddler sleeping, she was finally able to write the letter; she also gossiped about neighbors who were “splitting the blanket” (divorcing) and of another yellow fever epidemic breaking out nearby. In the hot season, outbreaks of yellow fever, nicknamed “Yellow Jack,” were always alarming news.

In that long season of hot, humid weather that dominates the Texas calendar, the bad-smelling air was the harbinger of sickness, the omen that people would soon die. The stink of rotting vegetation and other foulness often seemed to result in young and old getting suddenly, terribly sick. A healthy young man in one moment could become suddenly ill in the next with muscle aches, nausea, chills and a fever that could quickly push the mercury up the thermometer to dangerously high temperatures. The skin and eyes turned yellow, signifying liver failure which earned the disease its name, the yellow fever.  The body became death’s barometer: the deeper and more wide-spread the yellow, the sicker the person was becoming. Within as few as three days, they often began puking what was called “the black vomit” – dark blood hemorrhaging from the nose and stomach – a sure sign that the end was near. Before Sunday dinner, the person who had sat next to you at the dinner table during last week’s sabbath was suddenly gone and often – too often – someone else at this week’s dinner table was starting to turn yellow.

Texans got sick from other lethal epidemics throughout the 19th century, like cholera, measles, smallpox, and dengue fever, but for frequency, yellow fever outpaced them all. Epidemics broke out in almost every hot season between 1839 to 1867. Doctors and patent medicine makers promised cures for the disease, but they were just guessing. The doctor’s mercury injections and mustard baths did no more good than St. Nicholas Stomach Bitters. It was advertised heavily throughout Texas during the hot weather epidemic of 1859 by incongruously using the symbol of winter, Santa Claus, sitting next to a chimney, holding a bottle of the bitters in his hands, promising that “As a Tonic in Cases of Yellow and other Fevers, incidental to Tropical Climates, it is unsurpassed.” Some may have taken false comfort in the graphic suggestion of a cold weather cure. A heavy frost (also called a “white frost”) stopped further cases and spread of the disease. Mother Nature could end an epidemic, but Saint Nicholas was a fraud.

Quiet Buzzing

In her October letter to her sister, Betty wrote that two local friends were away when yellow fever cases began showing up on the river (she didn’t specify which one), and they would therefore probably stay away until about Christmas. It was a common response to the earliest reports of confirmed cases of yellow fever – many would travel far away to protect themselves from the disease; residents of Galveston and Houston often ran away from the city to the interior when new cases were emerging in the coastal cities; Betty’s friends were doing the same thing, waiting until a heavy frost ensured the end of the epidemic.

The only effective defense to prevent the fever’s spread was quarantine, isolating the infected from the healthy. She explained further,

There is some excitement in town about yellow fever. Two persons have died with it[;] one a white man the other a negro belonging to Dr. Price[;] both had been exposed to it at Cypress City where it is now raging – The Town Authorities have been yesterday and today passing some [quarantine] regulations to keep any more cases from coming here -

Betty and her husband, Nathaniel Hart Davis, a lawyer and Montgomery’s first mayor (in 1848) would have been well aware of the yellow fever epidemic that had devastated the town of Cincinnati, Texas, in 1853. That small country town was only 44 miles to the northeast of Montgomery and it lost a quarter of its population, about 150 people, to the disease. Betty wrote to her sister that the 1859 epidemic was “now raging” in Cypress City, 33 miles to the south of her Montgomery home, and two men exposed to the yellow fever in Cypress City had come to Montgomery and died there. One report stated that 33 of the 54 residents of Cypress City were sick with Yellow Jack and there were three deaths within the last few days of the report: “The conditions of the place [are] truly deplorable.” Betty bravely told her sister that she didn’t “apprehend any danger unless some of the citizens here were to [catch] it that had not been exposed to it [elsewhere].” She was hoping that the new town quarantine regulations would prevent it from coming any closer to her house and family.

Then Betty’s letter shifted to more pleasant topics, like the new spotted flannel material she bought to make her toddler some winter clothes and the calico and gingham dress she had bought for herself. She tried to keep her focus, but she had become so tired, she couldn’t even finish her sentence: “You must tell me if you get any nice dresses – I am getting sleepy.” Then she told her sister that what was really messing up her focus as she wrote was not sleepiness but mosquitoes:

The musketoes are worse than I ever saw them. I can hardly stay in the house for they bite me so. I don’t know what I am writing scarcely. I wish we could have a white frost to kill them for we will be annoyed with them until we do have frost.

This woman, wife, and mother lived during an epidemic outbreak in a town with terminal cases, nearby another town where it was “raging” and strangers were stopping at and passing through her town that may themselves have the disease. The chances that an infected aedes aegypti mosquito would land on Betty or her babies were, in deed, elevated – she and her family were certainly at risk. Two weeks after Betty finished the letter to her sister, three more deaths occurred in Montgomery and two more men were expected to die. By November 30th yellow fever deaths had totaled 15 in the town, including one of its doctors; he was a 36-year-old husband and father of four small children, which included a newborn. The future of the Davis family of Montgomery, Texas, could have been far different if just one of those mosquitoes that were driving Betty to distraction as she tried to write her letter had been the lethal kind.

But don’t worry, happy ending lovers. Betty had not inadvertently written her own eulogy. She and Nat and their toddler all survived the yellow fever epidemic of 1859 and she successfully delivered a healthy baby girl on December 30th, whom they named after her sister Jane. A thick frost had settled in on November 12th, the temperature having dropped from 80° to 25° Fahrenheit in less than 24 hours and a newspaper reported.

The wind continued all Saturday night, and Sunday morning found ice everywhere, ice in the prairie, and ice in the town, ice in the gutters and ice in the houses, ice in the kitchens and ice in the bedrooms, And cold? – guess it was cold! Cold enough to keep lazy people and invalids in bed half the morning; … cold enough to freeze the horns off from a Billy goat! And of course, cold enough to freeze Yellow Jack’s ears off. Runaways can come back now. The frost we have had has killed the fever if frost will do it. Last night we had another heavy frost. And to-day is bright and beautiful, but not brighter or more cheerful than the faces of our citizens, who are all rejoicing that the dark days are over.

In the decades to come, Texas outlaws would become infamous for being the bad boys of the Wild West – mean, unpredictable, and dangerous. All combined, Texas-based outlaws like James “Killer Miller,” Sam Bass, Doc Holliday, John Wesley Hardin, Butch Cassidy, and the Sundance Kid were said to have killed about 63 people. Amateurs. There was another killer in Texas – Yellow Jack – a deadly terror that killed an estimated 4,000 in Texas alone during the 19th century, without a single bullet being fired from a six-shooter. It was the meanest, most unpredictable, and most dangerous killer of them all – and it was just a quarter-inch long.

Definitely NOT the official flag of Texas; just the author goofing around.

AUTHOR’S POSTSCRIPT : By the way, if you’re enjoying my blog, the kindest favor you could do for me is to tell a friend about it. The blog has about 50 consistent readers at this point, which is wonderful, but now my goal is 100! Thanks very much for your continued support.

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