Doorways to Time Travel

I should be packing for my trip right now. My daughter, Gwen, and I will soon be departing for the ultimate daddy-daughter date to the other side of the world: South Korea. We will leave through the doorway of our house, go through doorways to the flight terminal, the intrusive security portal, and into the jet, then over seventeen hours later, we'll begin to explore through unfamiliar doorways in an exotic land 7,000 miles away - what an incredible journey.

But what would it be like if, instead of just going through different doorways of space, we could pass through different doorways of time? Jules Verne helped us do it with his wonderful book, The Time Machine, but we have also done it many times when going through doorways at places like Plimoth Patuxet Museums in Massachusetts and restored historical buildings all over the continent. There is something about ancient doorways that call to me, urging me to go through, and for a few moments at least, to try imagining what it was like to be there centuries ago.

That's what I offer you today: some very special doors to the past. This photograph contains doorways to the house and the early laboratory of the Pinkham family of Lynn, Massachusetts, probably in about the year 1880.

The original, sepia-toned photograph is from a stereopticon view: two identical images pasted next to each other on the same piece of cardstock; when viewed through a pair of lenses called a stereopticon viewer. An optical illusion is created whereby the two copies of the same photograph visually merge, making the subjects they contain appear three-dimensional. I submit to you, though, that a stereopticon viewer is not essential to enjoy a multi-dimensional perspective on the subject. While our eyes can perceive three dimensions, our imaginations can enjoy many more, if we let them. Let's work wiith this old sepia-tone photo and see what we have missed at first glance — with or without the stereopticon viewer.

My son, Nick, has done another great job using computer graphics to bring the sepia image into our world by adding color (see my 25 November 2023 blog post, "Their World Wasn't Sepia") and in doing so, some parts of the picture come to life in a way that my eye just missed before. Maybe the biggest surprise was to see a dog lying across the tops of two barrels on the left side of the photograph! So we have not only the Pinkham family and the Pinkham company workers, but the Pinkham pooch!

Something else that also stands out much better after the colorization are the stacks of Pinkham packing crates, either ready for packing or already packed and ready for shipping. The stack on the far left may be showing the ends of the crates (stacked by the narrow side so as not to block the door to the right), while the stacks to the left of the big entrance to the laboratory building are visible from the long side of the crates. I have also added a photograph here of two Pinkham shipping cases in my collection, showing them from the long and short sides; if you look closely enough at the photo, you can see the arch of type on some of the boxes and sometimes even a blob of black under the arch that was actually Lydia Pinkham's face, just like on my examples here.

Who the people are, specifically, is harder to determine. From the existing photos of Lydia's husband, Isaac, and their three sons: Charles, Dan, and Will, it is very difficult to determine who's who; relying exlusively on facial hair, it is possible that the man behind the dog was Charles, their oldest son, who later in life sported a bushy walrus moustache. If the photo was taken in 1880 as I believe, then sons Dan and Will were still living, although Dan may have already been showing signs of his terminal affliction with tuberculosis, then known as consumption for its propensity to make advanced victims look emaciated; perhaps the gaunt-looking fellow to the left of the dog is Dan, based on what look like hollow cheeks.

The Pinkhams had only one daughter, Aroline. I suspect she is in the photo, too, because this type of late-19th century photography is typical of a proprietor's photo, intentionally taken to include all the owners, family, and workers, set in front of the business to show it off and use it as a promotional piece. Given this purpose, I'm sure Aroline is one of the three young women (I'll take a wild stab and say the one at the base of the stairs, depicted in light blue, in front of her mother) and the other two were employees who helped Lydia in responding to her correspondence. The only person I am certain of in the entire picture is the matronly image of Lydia E. Pinkham herself, standing all in black in her doorway. Blown up and slightly colorized, she looks almost spectral — appropriately so for a woman who died over 140 years ago.

I invite you to walk up to these Pinkham doorways — maybe even go through them, if your imagination will take you there. Can you hear the inside of the laboratory building echo with the sound of men's and boy's voices, talking and sometimes punctuating with laughter, and hard-soled shoes scuffing along the floorboards? Does the sound of glass bottles clinking together in wooden crates echo their music as hay is stuffed around each one to quietly protect them? Do the pungent odors from the barrels of herbs waft through the air under your nose, constantly reminding the senses that this is not just another storehouse or barn?

And when you are invited through the front door of the Pinkham home, is it a quiet domestic sanctuary? Listen carefully, though, and you can hear the voices of a few young women respectfully seeking guidance from Lydia herself about how to answer the next letter sent by a desperate woman from some distant place who is hoping for a solution to her private discomforts from the lady renowned for her knowledge and wisdom.

     It should also be pointed out that that narrow, gravelly dirt cartway in front of all of them is what became the very wide, busy, fast-paced thoroughfare called Western Avenue and Route 107.

Hopefully this picture will transport you, even for just a few minutes, to a different place and time, bringing you great enjoyment at the very nominal expense of a little imagination, while Gwen and I travel through other doors in an exotic land far away, seeking memorable adventures, just like you. Bon voyage!

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

Blowing Smoke on the Ideal Victorian Lady

NOTICE: This article has been updated as of 20 June 2024: additional image of a woman smoking in an ashtray - contributed by Sonny Jackson of California. See bottom of article - well worth the look!

The 1890s were a decade squarely focused on ideal form and fashion: women with hourglass shapes, perfect complexions, and smoldering Gibson Girl looks, expertly coiffed and always wearing the latest fashions. No one felt the strain of presenting properly for public appearance more than the Victorian woman. She was told by men and media to be stylish, beautiful, and a lady. There was more pressure on a woman to be ideal than there was on her body from the corset she wore, and just like the corset, she was expected to maintain proper form all day long. It was considered undeniable that she was “the weaker sex,” physically and intellectually inferior to men, dependent upon and subservient to her husband, and designed for beauty, virginal modesty, domestic duty, and motherhood. Any behaviors breaching this mold were viewed as morally, socially, and physically dangerous, and signs of an unvirtuous and fallen woman – certainly no lady.

A perfect example of this physical and behavioral confinement of woman was the rigid social construct that a gentleman could freely smoke but a lady never should. A New York physician’s statement on the matter was copied in many newspapers as if it was a public service health announcement:

… ladies … take the use of cigarettes to their very great detriment. … men are [not] often injured by the moderate use of tobacco in smoking. But the female body is no more adapted to the use of tobacco than the female mind is to mathematics. It causes neuralgia, headache, dyspepsia, palpitation of the heart, and worse than all, ruins the complexion and disorders the teeth. ... all will agree that the stale odor of tobacco coming from a woman's mouth is worse than the same smell exhaled by a man. ... men's nervous systems are not so impressionable as women's, and hence a man can do many things with impunity, or even benefit, which would be impossible for a woman to do without great risk. ... beauty ... is the smallest gift a woman can have, for it not only means aesthetic enjoyment for all that look at her, but it means a healthy mind and a healthy body ...

Cigarette display box label - updated image, 3/28/2024; collection of the author

Poor frail, fragile creatures, the doctor insisted, clearly the weaker sex ...

Despite laws and social mores, women and adolescents were smoking those “obnoxious and injurious cigarettes” and men and boys were spitting out tobacco juice at or across the path of oncoming members of the fairer sex for amusement or out of sheer meanness. Tobacco use was becoming ubiquitous and its smokey seduction was settling over men, women, and children across the country like a London fog. On January 1st, 1891, a newspaper squib read, “A good many New Year anti-tobacco resolutions will end up in smoke.”

Some companies quickly recognized the growing interest of young women to explore the cigarette experience by sneaking smokes, so they tried to pitch the social acceptability of allegedly medicinal cigarettes to alleviate symptoms of colds, allergies and asthma (pretty much all conditions falling under the catch-all term, catarrh). A few of these products, like Perrin’s and Marshall’s, offered cigarettes made from cubebs, a tropical bush of the pepper family with a very pungent taste and aroma that was often difficult for the smoker and bystanders to enjoy. But hey, it’s medicine, and strong, off-putting aromas and flavors were considered signs of its medicinal qualities and benefits: if it was yucky, it must be good medicine.

The two companies were producing the same type of medicated cigarettes, using the dried-up, ground berries of the cubeb plant, but their approach to advertising was very different.

Dr. Perrin’s advertising trade card showed their cubeb cigarettes being used by the whole family: Grampa and Gramma are in the lower corners, both looking old and weary; the son in this family is wearing knickers and has schoolbooks tucked under his arm and his sister is in the other corner (with a short skirt that emphasized her youth rather than suggesting her to be a fallen woman); and in the center was mom, relaxing in her comfy stuffed chair, her feet up on the hassock, a book in one hand and her Dr. Perrin’s cigarette in the other. The message was clear: cubeb cigarette smoking is okay – "everyone's doing it." The smoke that emanates from the entire family's cigarettes or lips is clear – it was purposely understated to make the activity less offensive and to get the reader to focus on the medicinal nature of the advertising message. Perrin’s was trying to encourage the use of their cubeb cigarettes by both sexes and all ages because of the product’s alleged health benefits for all; they were definitely trying to avoid any impression that they were attempting to break Victorian mores.

Marshall’s went in the opposite direction with the subtlety of a runaway freight train. What I find especially interesting about the Marshall’s advertising matter shown here is the manufacturer’s effort to show that the trademark woman smoking their cubeb cigarette is still the Victorian ideal of a beautiful, genteel lady. But if that was the intention, it just doesn’t work. It seems highly unlikely that those who frowned on females smoking could have their opinions changed by this image. She looks like a tough,

hardened woman with smoke rising from her cigarette and her lips; she’s not even trying to exhale discreetly to the side. She looks completely relaxed, not at all worried about being caught in a guilty pleasure – and she is purposely blowing billowing plumes of smoke like a factory smokestack, not to mention that she is demonstrating a skill at creative smoking – not just making smoke rings, but a full advertising message: “Marshall’s Prep’d” ("Prepared," emphasizing they were ready-made, so ladies didn't have to futz around with rolling the ground cubebs into cigarette papers like the men were constantly doing to make their tobacco cigarettes). So by skywriting in smoke she had “skills,” I guess, but she still looks more like a saloon floozie than a Victorian lady.

Then again, that may be exactly the type of woman Marshall’s was going for – not a floozie, but a young woman who was ready and willing to break barriers, listen to her own desires and blow smoke in the face of stodgy, controlling husbands, crusty clergy, and prim society women who still weren’t willing to make waves – or clouds of smoke.

For more on Victorian women and cigarettes, see:

     PROMISING CURES,

Vol.3, Chapter 9: Heroine Addiction

Vol.4, Chapter 10: Exposing the Naked Truth

UPDATE (28 March 2024): My dear friend, Barbara Rusch, offered me the use of the following image from her collection as an appropriate addition to this post on the Victorian cultivation of young women as smokers. She called it my article on "Smokin' Hot Women" - indeed, a better title for this topic than I had given to this blog. Given the manufacturer's use of this young model to promote Sweet Sixteen cigarettes (not "medicinal" cubebs but actual tobacco cigarettes), this advertisement is clearly designed not only to sell this brand of cigarettes but to encourage the sexualization of young women and immodest behavior. Then as now; some things never change.

Courtesy of the Barbara Rusch Collection.

UPDATE (29 June 2024): Sonny Jackson of California sent me this image of an ashtray he owns. He immediately thought of the great graphics in the ashtray when he read my article, "Blowing Smoke on the Ideal Victorian Lady", "Smokin' Hot Women" in the July/August 2024 issue of Antique Bottle & Glass Collector. He wrote to me:

"This item was dug here in the San Francisco Bay area and dates between the late 1890s to sometime after the San Francisco earthquake. ... A young friend gave it to me about 45 years ago - he dug out in Hastings Slough near Concord.  Looks like maybe it's made of some type of pewter. The little emblem in the left top corner shows the Capital and says Washington, DC.  Measures approximately 5 x 7 inches."

Thanks so much for sending me this image, Sonny. I love how the design combines the young woman and the smoke of her cigarette. If you follow the smoke trail from her cigarette, it becomes the long strands of her hair, or vice versa. I also think its more than just coincidence that the geometry of the smoke rings she's artfully blowing is repeated in her hoop earring. The subliminal message seems to be that through her vice, she and the cigarette have become one.

The surreal element turns out to be the U.S. Capitol building framed by the words "Capitol" and "Washington D.C.," hovering over the back side of her head. It's obviously nothing more than an indication that it is a souvenir from the nation's capitol, but masters of metaphor might imply that the government was sanctioning the ruin of women by allowing the tobacco industry to continue turning cigarettes into the national vice.

Courtesy of the Sonny Jackson Collection.

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

Soule's Eradicator: the Flower or the Worm?

It's so easy for me to imagine the scene in 1885: a young woman of Lynn, Massachusetts, has put in another long, hard day at the dismal factory. She runs a noisy, dangerous machine, repeatedly stitching soles to shoes as part of a large assembly line operation. She leaves the factory late in the afternoon, one of the many drained workers breathing the outside air for the first time since very early in the morning. Tired, achy, and hungry, she walks down the sidewalk, being bumped and jostled constantly by the crowd of people going in all directions, amid the additional confusion of yelling paperboys, peddlers, and sidewalk preachers, and the dizzying animation of horses, wagons, and omnibuses snorting and rumbling through the street. Worn out, she feels anything but pretty. Being noticed was frankly the last thing on her mind - she was anxious to be once again hidden away in the privacy of her home.

While trying to avoid being stepped on or tripped by the stampeding herd of feet all around her, her mind replays the upsetting memories from earlier in the day, when she had noticed spots on the backs of her hands while running shoe parts through her machine at the factory. Then when she walked by a smudged mirror on the factory wall, she had glimpsed in her reflection some more unsightly blemishes on her checks and chin as well. Life seemed to be wearing her out and making her old before her time.

She finds some space between the bodies shuffling along the sidewalk and slips herself into Bergengren's drugstore, hoping there might be some cheap and sure solution for her stained skin - something that would help her feel more feminine and less like just another defeated face in the crowd. Feeling a little overwhelmed and lost among all the bottles, boxes, and signs that glare at her everywhere she turns in Bergengren's shop, her eyes are then tenderly invited to a scene in a tall card on the counter. Rendered in soft colors, it appeals to her feeling of femininity that she had worried might be disappearing.

There was nothing dark and harsh in the picture - nothing at all that dragged her thoughts back to the miserable factory floor where she slaved away each day. The two women in the picture understand her - both of them are her: the woman she is, and the woman she wishes she could be. She doesn't have to analyze the scenes; her heart and mind quickly agree that the product advertised is worth a try. She really, really wants to be the beautiful, poised woman it promises she could be. The two hard-earned quarters in the bottom of her purse shine a little against the dark leather, as if a sign that this purchase is, indeed, the right thing to do.

She walks home with her purchase of Mrs. Soule's Moth-Tan, Freckle & Pimple Eradicator, hopeful about something in her life for the first time in weeks.

There are many pieces of Victorian advertising that have survived their century-and-a-half ephemeral passage through time, and I have seen thousands of them, but the Mrs. Soule's counter card that our young heroine saw is truly special and possibly the only surviving example. There had been a tremendous array of "before-and-after" advertisements for all sorts of products, from anti-fat pills to stove polish, and the creativity and artwork are often exemplary pieces of creativity and design. But the counter card for Mrs. Soule's Moth-Tan, Freckle & Pimple Eradicator, abbreviated on the bottle's embossing to Soule's Eradicator, is something very special and in a class of its own. The greatness of Madison Avenue advertising has never excelled this advertising masterpiece, and this blog post intends to give it the few minutes of reverent admiration that it rightly deserves.

"Subliminal advertising" was just being introduced in the early 1880s. For a century the public had been amused and, well, mesmerized by watching friends and family members become unwitting participants as hypnotists seemed to control the actions and words of their subjects without them being conscious of it. In the middle of the decade, Sigmund Freud began using hypnosis in his work to understand the subconscious and unconscious mind. This counter card had done far more than present an obvious before-and-after metaphor: the designer and artist had created an advertising piece that spoke eloquently without words, playing at depth with the potential customer’s fears and dreams. Our factory worker decided to purchase after just a cursory perusal, but let’s break it down like Dr. Freud might have been inclined to do.

Mrs. Soule’s Moth, Tan, Freckle & Pimple Eradicator. Die-cut counter card, about 1885 (Shown on a black background. Height: 9½ inches) The back side has a cardstock kickstand that can be manually angled to allow the display card to be freestanding on the store counter. (Collection of the author; gift of Barbara Rusch.)

The counter card image depicted two conjoined scenes apparently featuring the same woman. In the “before” scene on the left side, the young woman was still in her peignoir, looking self-consciously in her hand mirror as she tussled hopelessly with her hair, trying to figure out how she was going to overcome her real problem: the skin blemishes spotting all over her face and forearms.

She was shown in an interior part of her home, hiding behind a chair and a wall, not at all ready for the world. The “after” image on the right side shows the same young woman, beautiful and ready for any social event: she doesn't have the slightest spot of skin blemish; her skin is flawless and she confidently shows it off with a sleeveless, bustled gown and a daringly plunging décolletage.

She has traded in her symbol of worry, her mirror, for a fancy, fashionable fan, and her other hand reaches not for her hair but for the drapery, purposely pulling it open to let the sunshine into the room where she had previously hidden herself; she is completely ready for a posh party or social.

Behind her were two healthy, lush green houseplants, one in full bloom with golden-colored flowers, while behind the morose “before” woman there is a vase holding only brown stems, suggesting no life, and a drab framed landscape on the wall, with vegetation also in brown.

And lest the message wasn’t clear enough, the artist superimposed three roses on top of the scene: the one on the “after” side was in perfect bloom, just like the ideal woman below it; the rose on the opposite side drooped towards the miserable woman, heavy with decay on its petals and worms on its stem. The third rose was perfectly positioned over the partition that separated the two scenes; in this neutral zone, it was still a bud, not yet bloomed, but pointing hopefully to the banner above that announced the miracle skin cure: "Soule’s Moth-Tan, Freckle & Pimple Eradicator, L. M. Brock & Co., Sole Proprietors, Lynn, Mass. U.S.A." The counter card sign left no question which woman represented the ideal Victorian lady nor could any doubt remain about which skin care product was going to help her achieve the goal.

I would like to think that my fictional customer would have had her dreams come true when she used her bottle of Soule’s Eradicator, but alas, that would not have happened. The published ingredients had no dermatological benefits but did have something sinisterly bad for the skin and body.

The manufacturer, Lemuel Brock, a very successful medicine maker and major candidate for Lynn mayor, promoted that it contained nothing dangerous:

“A great many people have the idea that all skin preparations contain either Bismuth, Arsenic, or Sugar of Lead, and are afraid to use [skin preparations for that reason]. We pledge ourselves that Mrs. Soule’s Eradicator DOES NOT contain any of the above-named ingredients, and we warrant it not to injure the skin, and that a continuation of its use will restore the same to all its youthful fairness.” [emphasis as in original]

He also assured he had further helped his customers by keeping the cost of Soule’s Eradicator way down through the use of a very simple bottle rather than some overcharged decorative container designed to sit prettily on a lady’s vanity, among her fancy perfumes:

“This preparation is not put up in a cut-glass bottle, or fancy jar or pitcher, and then the price fixed to match the glassware. Say one or two dollars per bottle or jar, as the case may be, - but a common white glass bottle that would not be out of place on any lady’s dressing table, and is for sale by all druggists and fancy good dealers for fifty cents per bottle – one-third the price of any other preparation that comes near containing the virtues of the Eradicator.” [emphasis as in original]

In 1890 Brock was taken to court for selling a bottle that contained 60 grains of corrosive sublimate, a chemical compound of mercury and chlorine that is very toxic to humans. Its toxicity is due not just to the mercury but also its corrosive properties which, according to Wikipedia, can cause ulcers to the stomach, mouth, and throat, and corrosive damage to the intestines. It accumulates in the kidneys and causes acute kidney failure. It can also cause burning in the mouth and throat, stomach pain, abdominal discomfort, lethargy, vomiting of blood, corrosive bronchitis, insomnia, excessive salivation, bleeding gums, tremors, and dental problems – even death may occur in as little as twenty-four hours, or as long as two long and lingering weeks.

Lemuel Brock had sold the mercury-laden medicine to a woman who was an undercover agent for the government. Despite the state chemist’s careful chemical analysis and the female agent’s testimony, the judge took the side of Lemuel Brock, “whom he knew[,] rather than that of the woman,” whom he didn’t know. Brock’s case was discharged and he was exonerated.

The counter card for Mrs. Soule’s Eradicator is the keystone of my collection – the quintessential piece of Victorian proprietary medicine advertising – and it was the gift of a dear friend and fellow time traveler. I never assign or measure the monetary value of pieces in my collection, but if I were asked, the answer would be easy – its priceless to me.

For more on Soule's Eradicator, see:

     PROMISING CURES,

Vol.3, Chapter 9: Heroine Addiction

Vol.4, Chapter 10: Exposing the Naked Truth

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