During the Blitz if you didn’t have your own Anderson shelter in the back garden, or a Morrison table shelter in your house, sleeping in the space under the stairs was another option. But make sure you thoroughly clean it with antibacterial Bodyguard Soap first.
As the proud owner of a six year old boy, I’ve recently been inducted in the world of the nit. In one evening I went from never having even seen a head louse in my life, to being a rather immediate expert in them. Judging by other parents comments, and the sheer volume of head lice adverts around at the moment, there may be something of an epidemic of the little blighters around at the minute. I’m going to blame the strange, mild, wet and windy weather we’ve been having, if that has anything to do with these things. It’s also my go-to reason as to why I’ve had non-stop colds for the past three months.
It inspired me to have a quick look through the archives for advice on head lice in days gone by. I quickly found out that It Was My Fault. Apparently alongside Jerry Hall’s advice that a woman be “a maid in the living room, a cook in the kitchen and a whore in the bedroom,” a woman should also be wielding a nitty-gritty comb and a bar of foul-smelling Derbac soap in the bathroom too.
Derbac is still available, fighting the good fight against those pesky lice.
Hand-shaming here in 1939 by Hinds Honey and Almond hand cream.
“I try to hide my horrible hands,” says a woman whose hands are dried out from the washing and housework at home. To be fair, washing laundry by hand is absolutely brutal on the skin. It’s so bad that “No-one ever dances with me twice – I’m sure it’s my horrible hands that keep men away.”
A spot of Hinds Cream later, and she has “Honeymoon Hands”, whatever they are – does it mean hands as soft as the women who have managed to get married? Or have her new improved hands resulted in an immediate proposal?
Apparently Hinds is still a popular brand of hand cream in Mexico and Argentina, and now owned by GlaxoSmithKline. I don’t know if they still sell the Honey and Almond variety, though – analysis in 1917 by the American Medical Association showed that there was no honey in the formula at all, but that clearly hadn’t prevented them marketing it as such for at least the next 20 years.
It’s funny how this is pretty much the same basic premise as that of Fairy Liquid, which cut out the need to use hand cream (supposedly, although not actually in reality, in my experience) with their “Hands that do dishes can feel as soft as your face with mild green Fairy Liquid.” At least it didn’t go on about your horrible hands though, and it assumed the woman was already married. Hooray!
This is a kind of anti-Rohypnol advert from 1909. It’s a product that you surreptitiously slip into the unaware’s drink in order to sober them up.
“No More Drunkenness” is promised with “the Great Coza Powder”, which has “the marvellous effect of producing a repugnance to alcohol in any shape or form.”
The USP for this product is that the user isn’t aware that they’ve taken it. It’s for other concerned members of the drunkard’s family for administer in “coffee, tea, milk, beer, water, liqueurs or solid food, without the partaker’s knowledge”.
The troublesome imbiber suddenly doesn’t fancy a drink anymore as the powder “does its work so silently and surely that wife, sister, or daughter can administer it to the intemperate without his knowledge and without his learning what has effected his reformation.”
I’m not sure exactly how it works – you can get a free sample sent out to you, so it’s obviously not a one shot deal. Maybe you have to take it every day.
Annoying as the drunkard is, I suppose it’s not technically moral behaviour to secretly slip them some Coza Powder. Or it wouldn’t be if this remedy wasn’t pure quackery, and easily made in your kitchen right now. One of my favourite publications, The British Medical Journal’s “The Composition of Certain Secret Remedies” of 1909, the very same year as this advert, was a take down of the old Victorian and Edwardian pharmaceutical industry with analyses of all those “never fail” medications. It dismisses Coza by its findings that all it consists of is ordinary bicarbonate of soda, cumin and cinnamon.
I came across this advert for Dundee Beer in an old newspaper – it grabbed my attention by its proud declaration that it had been found to be free of arsenic. Hooray! Hang on, though, isn’t that pretty much the least you can expect from a pint; for it to be, by and large, arsenic-free? Either this is the most desperate advertising campaign in history, or there was a bigger story behind it.
I looked further and found out a story I’d never been aware of – an spate of poisonings in Manchester, Salford, Liverpool and other places in the North-West in 1900, apparently caused by drinking beer which contained arsenic. At first, the true nature of the illness wasn’t apparent, as the victims were assumed to be suffering from some kind of alcohol poisoning caused by the sheer volume of alcohol drunk. However, the symptoms weren’t quite the same and many moderate drinkers were also affected, and eventually a doctor came up with the implausible idea that the beer they had drunk had poisoned them, not by alcohol, but by arsenic.
Testing confirmed that the glucose and sugars which had been supplied by Liverpool company Bostock, and used as a cheaper substitute for malted barley in the brewing process, had become contaminated with arsenious acid. The sugars had been made using sulphuric acid to strip the sugar from the cane, but instead of being made from pure sulphur, it had been made from pyrites or iron sulphide for cost reasons. The pyrites were, it turned out, the source of the arsenic, and this sub-par sulphuric acid had been sold to Bostock by their supplier Nicholson.
A Royal Commission was set up in 1901 to investigate and thousands of gallons of beer were thrown away, into the sewers – 267,000 gallons of them in Liverpool. In the end it was concluded that around 6000 people had been affected by the poison, 115 of which had died from it. Although due to the initial confusion as to the cause of the outbreak, it was hard to determine actual figures.
A very thorough and interesting account of the epidemic can be found on this Brewery History site.
There was a worry that jams and syrups also produced by Bostock were contaminated with the poisoned sugars.
“The Coroner remarked it was for the police to take action if they could prove that anyone was to blame.”
Bostock took Nicholson to court for damages of £300,000 for not supplying them with what they thought was pure sulphuric acid made from brimstone, which had been their previous arrangement. Nicholson had changed to the cheaper pyrite version, without Bostock’s knowledge. They said that Bostock had not told them what they used the acid for, and could have supplied the pure version had they known it was for consumption. Nicholson claimed the difference in colour in the pyrite acid should have alerted Bostock to the change. The judgement was made against Nicholson, but with the recognition that Bostock was also negligent. Nicholson was ordered to recompense the actual costs of the acid and sugar, but no damages on top.
It was later claimed that malt and hops could also be a source of arsenic themselves, although in smaller quantities. “While it may be possible to produce beers absolutely “arsenic free”, the majority, when brewed mainly or entirely from malt and hops, will contain minute traces, which will, however, be below the amount likely to produce any harmful effects.”
An order was produced by the Treasury prohibiting the use of glucose or sugar containing arsenic in the production of beer.
It took a while for the problem to finally go away. Arsenic was detected in beer in Wolverhampton in 1914.
Even in 1950, a claim was made by a consumer that they had been the victim of arsenic poisoning in their beer. Although whether this was true or not is another matter. The report sounds very sceptical, and put it in the same bracket as another customer who complained of buying “a loaf containing a seagull”. Must have been a big loaf.
Another worry about the consumption of arsenic in 1952, with the inclusion of potassium bromate in flour, which has an arsenic content. Inclusion of potassium bromate in food is now banned in many countries, although not the USA.
A revised report for the recommended arsenic limits in food was made in 1955. “…Evidence led to the view that water and milk should not normally contain arsenic but in any case should not contain more than .1 parts per million.”
Having never worried about my accidental arsenic consumption up until now, I decided to look into the situation today. It turns out that rice absorbs arsenic pretty well during the growing process and the Food Standards Agency is working on recommended limits right now. Apparently cooking rice in a coffee percolator is the answer – according to this anyway.
Also – brussels sprouts are pretty good at absorbing natural arsenic from the soil, so that’s a good enough reason for to me avoid the blighters.
Oh, and it’s still in beer, by the way – beers and wines are made clearer through filtering using diatomaceous earth, which contains arsenic. Unfiltered beers and wines are the way to go….
It feels like there’s always something new to be body-conscious about. A new zone that hair should be entirely removed from or else some hidden part of the body that now, apparently, should be bleached. Of course, there’s always the accompanying new products marketed to solve our problems before we even knew they were problems.
Well, it was always this way. Just like Skin Constipation tried to become a “thing” in 1937, “Stale Foot Acid” was the new thing to worry about in 1939. It was basically the same thing – clogged pores which could be cured by, well, having a good wash.
Here’s the (not-so) science bit – the sweat from your feet, left to become “stale”, turns to acid, blocks up all the pores in your feet and then starts piling up in the muscles, resulting in corns, callouses, stabbing pains, burning and tingling.
“You’ve got to shift that acid or go on suffering!”
So, what can be done to alleviate this dreadful condition? The “modern treatment” is to bathe your foot daily in water with Radox bath salts added. Radox is the best bath salt to use because it “liberates about five times as much oxygen as other bath salts.” Somehow, this “supercharges” the bath water and lets the acid escape through the now unblocked pores. Hooray!
And as a bonus, you now also don’t have people fainting at the vinegary stench when you take your shoes off.
It’s the time of year where every magazine and newspaper has its gift guides – for him, for her, for the kids, presents under £50, under £10, inexplicably expensive stocking presents, even stocking presents for adults (do grown ups really get stockings, still? If so, I want one.)
Ever wonder what kind of presents people would get in centuries past? I generally imagine a kind of Dickensian setting where the kids are getting an orange, some nuts, a hoop and stick and maybe some kind of improving book.
So I was interested to find this advert from what sounds to be a bookseller or general stationer, from the Norfolk Chroncicle in 1791, advertising potential gifts to include in “Christmas boxes”. It’s also fun to see that you can still get a lot of them now, if you wanted to recreate Christmas in 1791. Actually, I do kind of want to do that.
There’s card games, such as Cent Dix, there’s a book that I really want to read called “A New Moral System of Geography“, the Bible and various history books, something else called “The Royal Engagement Atlas” and almanacs for the coming year of 1792. There’s also some ideas for the ladies – thread cases, “etwees” (or “etuis”, decorative needle cases) and purses. There’s dictionaries, ink stands and paints. “Reeve’s Cake” sounds a like a historic curiosity, but you can still buy this now – it’s Reeve’s watercolour paints.
Reeve’s were a market leader in these watercolours as they had successfully found a way to prevent the paint cakes from cracking in storage by adding honey to the mixture.
My favourite item is the “La Partie Quarree” (which means “foursome”) conversation cards for ladies. Conversation cards were cards with pictures and vague suggestions to be used to break the ice and start conversations. I love the idea of it, it’s like a parlour game without the actual game, like feeling you’re playing “Just a Minute” while having a chat.
I found some 18th century conversation cards, from this antique dealer also in Norfolk, appropriately enough. Small talk begone, let’s talk about some meatier subjects – death, crimes and punishments, the passing of time and the wheel of fortune.
Beautiful pictures in that 18th century satirical style. Not sure why the fop is what seems to be some kind of goat-man, but he looks a bit like an enlightenment-era hipster. The doctor has a huge wig, which I presume is a comment on his wealth. “Hymen or Marriage” – well, there’s a topic and a half.
The idea is still very much out there – this link will give you some ideas for the conversation round a family dinner table, but there’s loads of variations out there. And, strangely enough, as often happens when I find something for this blog, I happen to come across other relevant bits of information from completely unrelated sources. The Pool have just advertised some absolutely lovely conversation mugs, with exactly the same idea, except for a chat over a cup of tea. They’re from the brilliantly-named shop Dept. Store for the Mind
My first thought on conversation cards, though, was this, from Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life, which was possibly the first thing of theirs I ever saw. A rather unsuccessful conversation on philosophers (which is also very 18th century).
Craven A cork-tipped Virginia cigarettes – not only does their cork tip prevent “wet end”, but “you’ll not know what real cigarette enjoyment is” without them.
“You should smoke them because they’re made specially to prevent sore throats.”
I presume this means that the cork-tipped filter makes them less harsh to smoke than non-tipped cigarettes. But remember, always check with your doctor before you embark on a cigarette-based sore-throat-cure course.
Who among us can say with confidence that their liver is freely pouring out two pints of liquid bile into their bowels daily? For those in doubt (and living in 1950), there’s Carters Little Liver Pills. The very next year, Carter had to drop the “liver” from their name in the US as the Federal Trade Commission found that while they were an “irritative laxative” (with one of their ingredients described as “drastic”), they actually had “no medicinal effect on the liver”. I think you can still get Carters Little Pills in the US, but in the UK, Dulcolax is the modern version.
The mention of being “without Calomel” is reassuring. Despite the appealing-sounding name (which could derive from the Greek words for “beautiful” and “honey” due to its sweet taste), Calomel is actually mercury chloride. In the first half of the twentieth century it was used as a laxative, a disinfectant, a remedy for syphilis, and (anxiety-inducingly) as a teething powder for babies.
As you can imagine from a mercury compound, it was toxic. In the teething babies it could cause a type of mercury poisoning called “pink disease” which was painful and caused pink discolouration of the hands and feet. The mortality rate for pink disease was a horrifying 1 in 10. After discovery of the toxidity of the compound, it wasn’t used in teething powders after 1954.
WAKE UP YOUR LIVER BILE
Without Calomel – and you’ll jump out of your bed in the morning full of vim and vigour.
The liver should pour out two pints of liquid bile into your bowels daily. If this bile is not flowing freely, your food doesn’t digest. You get headaches and feel rotten. You get constipated. Your whole system is poisoned and you feel sour, slack and the world looks black.
Laxatives help a little, but a mere bowel movement doesn’t get at the cause. It takes those good old Carters Little Liver Pills to get those two pints of bile flowing freely and make you feel “up and up”. Harmless, gentle, yet amazing in making bile flow freely. Ask for Carters Little Liver Pills. Stubbornly refuse anything else. 1/7 and 3/10. Also new 3 1/2d. sizes.
An advert from 1898 for “Dr Tibbles Maltated Bread” that sounds like it should be announced by the town crier, or else the Beatles should have written it into a song, Mr Kite-style.
“Be it known unto all men that the celebrated DR TIBBLES of VI-COCOA FAME is now introducing MALTATED BREAD, MALTATED BANANA BISCUITS, MALTATED BANANA FOOD and numerous Household Remedies, including Brain Feeder, Cough Balsam, Child’s Restorer, &c”
“Dr Tibbles” – he was probably one of those made-up doctor names used to add some weight to branded products. But this is what I’m imagining….
