Trademarks: Playing Possum?

It was one of the earliest trademarks registered in the United States - Number 247 - and the very first for a business in Lynn, Massachusetts. It's hard to imagine what inspired 22-year-old George B. Thurston to come up with the design. It was a distinctive symbol, to be sure, but what exactly was it and what was its message?

Maybe that was the whole point: to make the potential buyer be curious and wonder - capture the customer's attention.

Just 15 years old in 1864, George Thurston went down to New Bern, North Carolina, with his father to help sell food, medicine, tobacco, whiskey, and other goods to the Lynn soldiers of the 8th Massachusetts Infantry. During this time, the young teenager caught a young opossum and made him his pet. For the next year, the pet possum was probably a source of curiosity and amusement for the soldiers of the 8th, many of whom weren't much older than George. They needed something to take their mind off the war and help them pass the time.

When the war was over and the Thurstons came back to Lynn, George's pet possum came with them. In 1868, George loaned his "southern critter," as they called it, to Lynn's Post 5 GAR to have the 8th's mascot on exhibition at the veteran's fair, raising funds for the widows and orphans of departed comrades.

George's possum was a local celebrity. It was probably the critter featured on his first medicine trademark three years later.

Starting out in the patent medicine business at just 22 years old, George wanted something striking and memorable to represent the worm syrup he was selling, made from his mother's recipe. The cartoonish drawing could have been a bear cub dancing in a hoop, and I originally thought it was, but now I'm convinced it represented his pet possum. The skull shape is carefully drawn, rounded and sloping down to the nose, with whitish fur and a hint of pointed teeth, a characteristic feature in a possum's wide mouth. The fingers and toes are distinctively long and humanesque, again just like a possum, and grasping the hoop with prehensile ease. The rest of the animal's coat is darker, suggesting a light gray, a frequent contrast to the light-colored head of the North American Opossum. And, if you look really close, you will make out what may be its tail, wrapped along the front of the belly and up to the chest. Perhaps George had kept his pet in a cage designed for a large bird, like a parrot or cockatoo, with a large hoop suspended in the middle, and his possum frequently climbed into it, like in the trademark.

Was George inspired with cause to use his possum as the poster-pet for his worm medicine trademark? Very possibly. Possums do get infested with worms from the foods they scavenge. Maybe young George tried his mom's worm syrup on his pet, making it a sort of guinea-pig-possum. It's even possible that George and his father were selling his mother's worm syrup to the soldiers in camp who might have made some of the same bad food choices while foraging in the North Carolina wilderness that George's possum had made.

Possibly the worm syrup customer was just supposed to feel all warm and fuzzy about the cute, playful animal on the trademark (come on, Sandra Boynton fans, you know that feeling). Maybe the playful possum had been designed for customers to convince themselves that the critter was happy and dancing because it had been cured by the medicine, subliminally prompting them to buy a bottle for their sick and lethargic child back home who was suffering with worms. Or perhaps the unofficial regimental mascot was designed to be a locally patriotic symbol, encouraging all the returned veterans and their families to support their well-known townsmen, much like the Thurstons had been there for them during the war. Buy a bottle of Mrs. Thurston's Celebrated Worm Syrup and help out your friends, the Thurstons.

Whatever the trademark was supposed to convey, it helped the medicine survive for almost four decades, which in patent medicine years is a very, very long time, and in possum years, well, it's almost forever.

While George's possum helped the time pass, Mrs. Thurston's Worm Syrup helped everything else pass, or so George's trademark would lead us to believe.

For more on the career of George Thurston & Mrs. Thurston's Syrup, see:

PROMISING CURES, Vol.3, Chapter 7: Reconstructive Surgery

& Chapter 8: Heroine Addiction

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

Trademarks: Love in a Bottle

As America moved closer to the end of the 19th century, more and more products loaded store shelves and newspaper pages. Competition for consumer dollars consequently became tougher, so manufacturers resorted to branding their products and some got their product designs and names trademarked.

It was the early years of registered trademarks in the U.S. (the first being issued in 1870), so the art and craft of creating an effective brand went in many directions - some became standards that have lasted into our lives today and many more have gone the way of the dodo - but even those have fascinating and sometimes fun stories to share with us today.

Lots of Lynn medicine makers applied for trademarks and I have featured them in Appendix B of Promising Cures. I will drop them in as blog entries from time to time, starting with this amusingly dramatic scene for Parisian Aphro Tonic:

The product name was actually an abbreviation - probably to make it reader-friendly - it was short for Parisian Aphrodisiac Tonic. The man on bended knee is assumed to depict the product's proudly French creator, Charles Francois Julien Petit de Langle (note the enhanced detailing of the man's face compared to the plainer rendering of the woman's face). Although there were proprietary medicines for every human ailment under the sun, the French doctor created one for an issue infrequently discussed: sexual desire.

ARE YOU IMPOTENT?

his newspaper advertisement asked boldly.

The physician and specialist in genitourinary diseases had immigrated from France to the U.S. with his wife, Marie, and settled in Lynn. In 1893 he set up a complete medical facility in Central Square, comprising a waiting room, a laboratory, a dispensary, and an operating room, and Marie advertised her services as a Parisian dressmaker. He also introduced his own medicine in that year – the Parisian Aphro Tonic – an aphrodisiac medicine for the marketplace; in so doing, he had a trademark created that was clearly designed to attract attention.

The trademark depicted a man, presumably de Langle himself, on bended knee before a well-endowed and over-corseted woman, almost certainly Marie in one of her Paris creations, holding a bottle of the Parisian Aphro Tonic. The image makes you wonder: is he proposing marriage, or propositioning her, or just begging for the medicine? The scene implies that he is trying to be amorous, but perhaps he was just pleading for the bottle of tonic so that he could be! Maybe an even better question would be: is the curvaceous, wasp-waisted lady refusing to give it to him?

Something seemed to be working for Charles and Marie; the couple celebrated a “joyous triple ceremony” - their tenth anniversary, a house warming, and the anniversary of the French republic on 14 July 1896, and invited hundreds of guests for the grand event at their new home on the corner of Ocean and Basset streets. The de Langles seemed very happy and very much in love - perhaps there was something to his medicine after all.

For more on the career of Charles F. J. Petit de Langle, see:

PROMISING CURES, Vol.4, Chapter 10: Exposing the Naked Truth

& Appendix B: Lynn, Massachusetts Proprietary Trademarks

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

Their World Wasn't Sepia

We tend to get nostalgic when we look at old-time photographs. The world of our ancestors is almost always seen in sepia tones - faces, clothing, buildings, trees, pets - all in shades of brown and white; even old papers fade to varying degrees of tan. I probably even chose it as the predominant color of the background of my website because, subconsiously, it seemed to set the tone for all the old stuff I want to write about and show. The brown family defines the antique world for us because it seems so ubiquitous - but it wasn't to them.

I have read many accounts in old newspapers about new delivery wagons and trucks looking so fine in their green, purple, and other daring paint colors, with vivid trim and lettering boldy advertising the company's products or services. Victorian lives were full of color, just like ours; ladies eagerly anticipated each issue of Godey's Lady's Book to see the next color plate inserts of the newest fashions, and children pestered local merchants for colorful advertising trade cards to paste in their scrapbooks. So when my very talented son digitally colorized my antique real photo postcard (RPPC to collectors) of the Crompton's Zat-Zit mobile, I felt some of that same joy over the glimpse of Victorian color before me. I was blown away at how the addition of color changed my perceptions of the old scene so completely.

The first image is the original, sepia-tone postcard; following it are several colorized versions. I haven't found any description yet that indicates what the truck's colors were, but based on these versions, almost any colors would have been just amazing!

Charles Crompton and his son, Edward, stand proudly in front of their delivery truck in 1910. This photograph was taken when it was brand new, ready for use as a delivery truck at the high point of the company’s success; father and son resplendent in their new delivery uniforms, which included “ZAT-ZIT” stitched into their driving caps. Two months later the truck was hit by an automobile and Charles Crompton, foreground, had some injuries, but the medicine bottles in the truck were destroyed.

This RPPC is a treasure in my collection; a special jewel that, when held to digital light, lets the Crompton's new truck sparkle in the radiant beauty that made impressed bystanders take notice.

Don't make the mistake of seeing the past in shades of brown - make it come alive in your mind with color, just the way it really was.

For more on the career and medicines of Charles Crompton, see:

PROMISING CURES, Vol.4, Epilogue: City of the Dead, Land of the Living

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