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1900-1949 1950-1999 Adverts Victorian War Women

Edwards’ Harlene Hair Products, 1897-1951

A special request today from Tasker Dunham – a look Edwards’ Harlene hair products and, as Mr Dunham put it, the “impossibly luxuriant hair and beard growth” they used to illustrate their advertisements.

Launching straight into the 1897 campaign below, you can see what he means. Hair of Rapunzel-like proportions is promised from Harlene by a woman in a dress that seems slightly indecent by Victorian standards. Plus, there’s miracle preparations for curing baldness and restoring grey hair to be had. “Scurf” is also cured by this wonder product – not a word you hear much these days, but as far as I can see it seems to mean much the same as “dandruff”. Perhaps there were subtle distinctions between the two?

The Shetland Times, 11th December 1897
The Shetland Times, 11th December 1897

Also in 1897, there was this rather artistic advert, which reminds me a bit of Holman Hunt’s painting, The Awakening Conscience. Except, it’s all proper and decent in this advert as it’s merely a long-tressed maiden advising a vicar on a baldness cure.

Moving on to 1916 – Edwards’ had a series of war-themed adverts to bring them bang up to date. Here, “a war-time gift to the grey-haired” is promised in the form of a free sample of the colour restorer “Astol” for their hair. Note, that “dye” is a dirty word – these products are claimed not to be dyes, but true restorers of whatever colour your hair was originally. I’m sure I remember that the “Just For Men” hairdye used to claim something similar even in the 1990s – can anyone else vouch for this? Your hair would magically restore itself to any colour you like as long as it was “tobacco brown”.

Sunday Pictorial, 28th August 1916
Sunday Pictorial, 28th August 1916

Here Edwards’ plays its part in making women feel insecure about their natural ageing. Grey-haired women look on in envy at their brown-haired sister.

Daily Mirror, 13th June 1917
Daily Mirror, 13th June 1917

Astol is not a dye or a stain, remember. This kind of cosmetics advertising is satirised in the book “The Crimson Petal and the White”, incidentally, which is an absolutely wonderful novel that immerses you in a Victorian world. I haven’t read anything apart from Dickens that has made me feel so actually part of the nineteeth century.

Daily Mirror, 4th September 1917
Daily Mirror, 4th September 1917

Edwards’ then introduced a new method for hair-improval. Here in 1918, we see the “Harlene Hair Drill” advertised, which went on to be used in their advertising for many years afterwards. The “Hair Drill” consisted of a series of steps to be done each day, which apparently took no longer than two minutes – although as you had to send off to see what they actually were, I have no idea what it consisted of. All I know is that you had absolutely no excuse not to be following “the lead of the navy, the army and the air force” , who were all at it, of course. Incredibly, the claim is made that “Even in the trenches our soldiers like to keep their hair “fit” by the “drill”.”

“Dandruff makes your hair fall out.” Really?

Daily Mirror, 1st January 1918
Daily Mirror, 1st January 1918

You’ll never snag a soldier with that grey hair, ladies.

Sunday Pictorial, 24th November 1918
Sunday Pictorial, 24th November 1918

More free offers in 1918, and more flowing mermaid hair to boot. This offer is being made “in view of the present prevalence of Hair Defects.”

Sunday Pictorial, 11th August 1918
Sunday Pictorial, 11th August 1918

More amazing hair here.

The Sunday Post, 21st March 1920
The Sunday Post, 21st March 1920

And here Edwards’ Harlene steps right into a lawsuit, if the Trade Descriptions Act had existed in 1920 (but it didn’t until 1968). Somehow mid-length frizzy hair is transformed into waist-length ringlets as if by magic. Although the friend with the bobbed hair is much more fashionable – I bet Edwards’ were seething at the 1920s fashion for shingled hair.

Lanarkshire Sunday Post, 13th June 1920
Lanarkshire Sunday Post, 13th June 1920

They were good with their free gifts, though.

Lanarkshire Sunday Post, 30th January 1921
Lanarkshire Sunday Post, 30th January 1921

Moving onto the 1950s now – and Edwards’ Harlene advertising has become much more realistic, using an actual photograph this time, of achievable hair. However, scurf was apparently still a thing in the 1950s.

Yorkshire Evening Post, 3rd September 1951
Yorkshire Evening Post, 3rd September 1951

The proprietor of the company, Reuben George Edwards (originally Reuben Goldstein), had died in 1943, and in 1963 the company was taken over by Ashe Chemical. I see that Ashe Chemical were also the makers of “Gitstick Concentrated Crayon Insecticide” – and hello, future blog post!

Categories
1950-1999 Adverts Ephemera

Hidden Treasures – Liverpool Echo, 1951

I’m happy to hold, read and buy any old Victorian book, really. I’m quite a visual, tangible person in general – I can’t concentrate very well on audio books and need to see the words on the page to really get into a story. I never much liked Jackanory as a child because of that (apart from Rik Mayall’s one obviously). And I’m the same with history. I’ve read so many history books (well, I do have a history degree) but seeing an old building, reading an old book, holding a piece of ephemera that has survived against the odds – they’re what brings the past to life to me.

So, when I found this 1889 book, Charles Stuart Calverley’s Fly Leaves, in a charity shop, I was interested at first purely because of its age. But I bought it mainly because, flicking through, I found that a torn page of a Liverpool Echo from 1951 had been used as a bookmark. And I really wanted to read that page. Any newspaper given time is fascinating. The most commonplace of things, the events, the layout, the adverts (especially the adverts) suddenly represents a time in a way you don’t realise while it’s your present.

Fly Leaves itself wasn’t especially interesting to me. Or at least it wasn’t until years later, when I found an appendix at the end with a spoof Charles Dickens exam on The Pickwick Papers which really made me laugh. With questions such as naming all the component parts of a dog’s nose and deducing Mr Pickwick’s maximum speed:

But the Echo was fascinating. It’s the front page, folded up for 60 years.

Along with a strangely high number of adverts for Private Detective agencies, here are some highlights from the so-very-closely printed page.

“What colour did you say you wanted your crease-resisting chiffon velvet gown, Mrs Clarkson?”

An advert to remove hair, moles and veins by Myra Howell’s diathermy techniques. She was a long standing presence in Bold Street – I’ve also seen adverts of hers from 1919. (An interesting side note – medical diathermy machines were used in the UK in the Second World War to jam German radio beams used for nighttime bombing raids in what was called “The Battle of the Beams”)

An advert for E Rex Makin’s Solicitors, that must surely have been newly set up in 1951, seeing as he’s still going, and I saw him in town not too long ago. A slightly legendary figure in Liverpool life, he is. Not only has his firm been going a very long time, but he was Brian Epstein’s solicitor and involved in setting up the Beatles contract with him. Plus, he’s supposed to have invented the word “Beatlemania”.

“Wednesday night is Landing Craft Night”

I love this advert – a wallpaper company gegging in on an upcoming General Election.