Here’s a 1930s example of what became known as “shockvertising“. It still works as an attention-grabbing technique – it made me gasp when I found it.
The Hawick News, 25th November, 1932
It’s a rather strong method of advertising from Brown of Myreslawgreen, an economical clothes shop. You need to read the small print to see what it’s really saying, and I expect everyone did read it – I can’t imagine many people blithely turning the page without investigating further.
“Every husband worthy of the name likes to see his wife and children well-dressed. It is a difficult problem these hard times, and our advice is – don’t KILL YOUR WIFE with worry trying to make ends meet….”
A lovely little advert from 1914 for women’s facial hair removal. The “Ejecthair” system makes big promises – “It not only causes the hairs to instantly vanish, but without pain or harm kills the roots absolutely and forever.”
Ideal for women with the unusual “Laughing Cavalier” facial hair pattern.
If there’s one thing I’ve learned from this blog (well, there’s a ton of things I’ve learned, in fact, everyday is a school day here) it’s that there’s an awful lot of people still interested in Owbridge’s Lung Tonic. My last post on the subject here is one of my most popular pages. It’s really a rare day that there’s no hits on that post, which I wasn’t anticipating at all. As far as I was concerned, it was one of those pharmaceuticals lodged firmly in the past, like the mercury-containing Blue Pills of another post.
But Owbridge’s was a medicine that people obviously remember taking and are googling nostalgically for. And so I checked when it last was available, and I was surprised that production only ended in 1971 – no wonder so many people know of it still.
One thing I have to say – the British Medical Association’s “Secret Remedies” book of 1909 that I linked to in my previous post states that an analysis of Owbridge’s shows the medicine to contain ipecacuanha wine, honey and, alarmingly, a quantity of chloroform. But the formula did change again over the years and so the version that people had in the 1960s was (presumably) not the same as that analysed in 1909. Having said that, I haven’t found anything to state what exactly the last incarnation consisted of.
Still, for those Owbridge’s fans still out there (although it is apparently a love-hate kind of memory, I gather), here’s some more vintage adverts I’ve found.
It sounds like there was some dispute going on here between The Pharmaceutical Society and patent medicines. “No one has the right to attach poison labels” to Owbridge’s, it says. That wouldn’t have helped business. The Aberdeen Journal, 14th January 1893
A double page advert celebrating the “thirty-third season” of Owbridge’s. The Yorkshire Post, 1908
“Please remember we can produce originals of all these letters”: The Yorkshire Evening Post, 1910
This 1914 typeface reminds me of the opening credits of a black and white “Carry On” film. Daily Mirror, 2nd November 1914
Emphasizing the honey in this advert (rather than the chloroform): Yorkshire Evening Post, 19th January 1926
Finally, a celebration of the 80th anniversary in 1954. It was around for nearly 100 years, just missing the centenary in 1974. The Luton News, 1954
Brown Windsor Soup – surely the stuff that the British Empire was built on? I know of it through Tony Hancock ordering it in an unappetising 1950s canteen, the Carry On team being served it for dinner it like unadventurous Brits in Carry on Abroad, and, well, in numerous other comedy settings from the 50s to the 70s. It’s famously the dull embodiment of dreary British cuisine and looks a bit like sludge. Although I can’t remember the ingredients ever being specified, I imagined it as a kind of thin, liquidised beef stew.
So it rather blew my mind to learn on Wikipedia that, in all likelihood, Brown Windsor Soup never actually existed as an actual, real thing from Victorian or Edwardian times. It was first included on the odd menu in the 1920s and 30s and thereafter apparently mainly used as a jokey kind of reference to terrible, dull British food.
Michael Quinion has investigated, and makes the claim that Brown Windsor Soup is first mentioned in print as late as 1943 – in the book The Fancy by Monica “great-granddaughter of Charles” Dickens. He has a few theories as to where the name came from. Firstly, there was White Windsor Soup, an undeniably real Victorian dish. Secondly, Brown Windsor Soap was also a definite, very famous, type of soap. And so there might have been some kind of confusion between these two items, or possibly a deliberate mashup of them both, for satirical purposes or otherwise.
I decided I wasn’t going to take Wikipedia’s word for this. I was going to uncover some true Brown Windsor Soup, as enjoyed by Queen Victoria. Wading through The British Newspaper Archive, the extensive search results that immediately popped up looked promising. However, on closer investigation, it was a quirk of the reading software of the Archive, which isn’t always entirely accurate on account of the age of the papers scanned, and the tiny typefaces that can be used. Every result referred to Brown Windsor Soap, not soup.
However. There is another type of Victorian soup that may have been the Brown Windsor in all but specific name – the vague-sounding “Brown Soup”.
In basic form, this could be “Beef Tea” – either in invalid cookery form or as a kind of Bovril drink, like this one, “Bouillon Fleet” from 1889: Aberdeen Journal, 16th March 1889
Or here on this restaurant menu in 1890, which was probably a more substantial version: Shields Daily Gazette, 24th March 1890
And it was served as a starter at the New Year’s Dinner at a “Home for Old Men and Women” in Glasgow, 1895. This stereotypical Victorian menu consisted of brown soup, beef-steak pie and plum pudding. Glasgow Herald, 2nd January 1895
Talking of pudding – look! A recipe for “Brown Windsor pudding” in 1897. It’s a spiced fruit steamed pudding which sounds gorgeous. I’m guessing that this was a reference to the aforementioned soap, which was also advertised as containing spices such as cinnamon. If there was spiced food based on the soap, then maybe “Brown Windsor Soup” should properly also be cinnamonned, gingered and cloved, a bit like Mulligatawny soup? Dundee Courier, 22nd December 1897
Here’s a 1913 recipe for brown soup. It’s made of beef and vegetables, but made extra brown with the addition of Bovril and browning. None more brown. Northampton Mercury, 26th December 1913
And one from 1916, with instructions on how to make the soup extra brown, by browning the flour in front of the fire. The People’s Journal, 4th November 1916
And another one. It all sounds quite nice to me. The Arbroath Herald, 1th September 1925
The first actual mention of “Brown Windsor soup” I found, on a Hartlepool menu from 1928. It was from Binns’ Restaurant – perhaps they invented it? Hartlepool Mail, 1st February 1928
A 1928 recipe for Brown Soup here, using vermicelli to thicken, if wished. Western Gazette, 13th April 1928
Brown Windsor still being served at Binns’ in Hartlepool in 1931: Hartlepool Mail, 2nd October 1931
A prize-winning brown soup recipe from 1931. I suspect that the winner, Mrs G. Walker, had seen the “Everything That Is Good” recipe above, in 1928. Veeerry similar. The Western Gazette, 17th April 1931
Windsor soup was finally commercially available in the 1940s. Batchelor’s version is here, although it wasn’t called “Brown”. Tinned foods were handy in wartime, it’s “A meal in itself” and could be heated “at the minimum of fuel cost”. Although “quantities are rather limited and a little patience may be needed,” in order to obtain some. Emphasizing its potential scarcity makes it sound more desirable, of course. Nottingham Evening Post, 2nd June, 1942
Finally, the last reference I found. Because The British Newspaper Archive only goes up to the mid-1950s, so far. I love the Britishness of the “If you must eat out…” Berwick Advertiser, 17th March 1955
I wonder when the very last bowl of Brown Windsor soup was eaten? Maybe there are people still making it out there, although what their recipe is, who knows? I couldn’t find anything specifying what makes “Brown Soup” different from “Brown Windsor”, if there even is a difference. And so, now I feel the need to invent my own version – a very gently spiced, very brown, beefy, vegetabley kind of concoction. Watch this space.
Update – thanks to Steve in the comments below, who let me know that there was now a date of 1926 as the first reference on Wikipedia. This is it:
Portsmouth Evening News, 24th February 1926
And after some more research I’ve found a 1926 reference to Brown Windsor in Binns’, earlier than the 1928 version above. Still a few months later than the one in the Portsmouth Evening News though.
Hartlepool Mail, 21st May 1926Hartlepool Mail, 21st May 1926
I always love a problem page, and it doesn’t matter if it’s from the latest issue of a magazine or a publication 100 years ago. I’m not the only one – my post on a Victorian problem page still gets views every week.
So here’s another one, this time from 99 years ago. In the same tradition of the Victorian problem page, it consists of answers only. The actual questions are discreetly never mentioned – sometimes on such pages they’re obvious, but they can also be annoyingly impossible to figure out. The agony aunt here is “Aunt Kate” and she says (if she’s a real person) “if you are ever worried over anything or in difficulty, write to me, and I shall do my best to advise you.”
The People’s Journal, 4th November 1916
Dot had a couple of questions. The first was apparently to ask whether she might be able to get a job as a lady’s companion. Aunt Kate says no. Dot is too young for such a role, which involves being educated, capable and accomplished and an all-round housekeeper to boot. And, in any case, paid companions were becoming few and far between these days. Dot would do better to set her sights at secretarial or nursing work instead.
Dot’s second question involves her legs – the thinness of them, in particular. Aunt Kate dismisses this worry – “There is really no remedy for thin legs. As a matter of fact, most girls long to have thin legs. Why not wear boots with long uppers? These are the latest fashion, and would serve to make the legs a better shape.”
Iris – ah, I feel for Iris. She’s written in to ask how to manage her shyness. As I was a shy child myself, I recognise Aunt Kate’s advice as the same kind of thing I heard many times, from people who have no idea what it is to be shy. “Just get over it,” it boils down to. I had one teacher at school who was an outgoing, bouncing puppy of a man, and who had never experienced a moment’s shyness in his life, I’m sure. At the start of the year, he promised that anyone who started off shy in his class wouldn’t end up so. What he meant by this was that he would be loud at all times, put people on the spot with questions, and there would be a lot of interaction and role play exercises. Maybe this would help some people to miraculously eradicate any feelings of reserve, but I think that for many genuinely shy teenagers, this is actually close to your worst nightmare instead. I think that age is the best cure in the end, Clockwork-Orange-style.
Aunt Kate’s advice on shyness isn’t bad, it’s just easier said than done. I hope it helped Iris, anyway. “Dear child, you must try to fight down this shyness of which you complain. When in other people’s presence try not to be self-conscious – to imagine that all eyes are on you. Try to think about the other people in the room, and how you can make things more agreeable for them. If you are to cure yourself of shyness, go out amongst other people as much as possible, and very soon you will learn how to conduct yourself properly. Although you are only 16 you are not a bit too young to rid yourself of this complaint – the sooner the better!”
I wonder what “M.W” was asking for – it seems to refer to whether a certain type of institution existed in relation to looking after her child. Aunt Kate says that there is no such institution anyway, but that she could leave her child at a day nursery, enabling her to go to work. I get the impression there’s a sad and hard story lurking behind that one.
A protest against the Temperance movement in 1920. The advert is saying that the only real effect of an alcohol ban, as was seen in the US, would be to prevent the working class from accessing booze – those with money would always be able to pay their hands on it. I agree that “a sober working class” was, no doubt, desirable by those in charge.
Lanarkshire Daily Post, 13th June 1920
And here’s a nice little picture of some members of the labour movement having fun – trade union delegates taking a break from the 1917 congress for a splash about on Blackpool beach. How great it would be if politicians did this at their party conferences now.
Did you see the warning about skinny jeans the other day? There were news reports all over the place about it, with alerts on the dangers of “compartment syndrome” and that skinny jeans could be responsible for seriously damaging muscles and nerves in your legs. However, this is quite a good example of scientific stories being reported misleadingly in the popular press, as this top notch slapdown on the NHS Choices website makes clear – calling it “shameless clickbaiting” based on one (one!) case, which was seen in Australia.
NHS Choices says, excellently: “Many news sources covered this story. We suspect that this was because it gave them an excuse to carry photos of skinny-jean-wearing celebrities such as the Duchess of Cambridge. Call us cynical, but we doubt a case report involving anoraks or thermal underwear would generate the same level of coverage.”
Still, it’s not the first time that fashion has been held accountable for health hazards. I’ve previously looked at the mind-boggling mid-Victorian trend of walking with your back bent forward, known as the “Grecian Bend”. And today I’m going to look at the hullabaloo around the hobble skirt. The hobble skirt was a widely-ridiculed, yet very popular, fashion of the Edwardian, pre-First World War years – and really the War was pretty much responsible for ending the trend. It consisted of a long skirt, tied or narrowed tightly at some point from the knee down, and which resulted in the wearer having to “hobble” along while wearing it. I love the origin of this fashion – it is likely to have resulted from the latest technological development, the aeroplane. Designer Paul Poiret is credited for its invention, but he was probably influenced by Mrs. Hart O. Berg, who took a flight with Wilbur Wright in 1908, becoming the first American woman to fly as a passenger in a plane. In order to prevent her skirt billowing up in the air she tied a rope around it, which she kept on as she rather elegantly walked away afterwards.
Mrs Hart O. Berg and Wilbur Wright, 1908
A New Jersey judge in 1910 tried to define what the hobble skirt was, exactly. He called it “a pair of trousers with one leg”. This was an aside in a riotous-sounding trial of a schoolboy, charged with “smashing the straw hat of an elderly gentleman.” The defence for his actions was that “the season for straw hats had closed and summer headgear should not be worn in October.” To which the judge remarked that “public opinion might mould fashion, but not to the extent of employing violence. Public opinion might prescribe a hobble skirt for men, and then I suppose we should have to wear it. The hobble skirt would certainly look better on men than on women. It really is a pair of trousers with one leg.”
Hartlepool Mail, 18th October 1910
It caught on. It became the big new thing with women, seemingly confusing men in the process. In order to deal with this strange new fashion, widespread dismissal and scaremongering was the order of the day. Illinois and Texas even considered banning the hobble skirt in 1911, along with the “harem” skirt, which were long bloomers worn underneath.
Dundee Evening Telegraph, 27th March 1911
There were pros and cons to the hobble. On the downside, the restricted movement could cause accidents. This article rather prematurely declares the hobble skirt dead in 1910, due to a series of accidents on the part of the wearers:
Dundee Evening Telegraph, 25th October 1910
And, in fact, trying to get over a stile in a hobble skirt apparently resulted in the sad death of Mrs Ethel Lindley in 1912. She slipped, broke her ankle and with the bone protruding through the skin, she still managed to walk ten yards towards a farm, but sadly she died shortly afterwards from septic poisoning and shock.
Hull Daily Mail, 22nd February 1912
The implications of the fashion included the fact that less fabric was used in its manufacture, and there was a “crisis of yardage” – the earlier fashions involved dresses made from 14 to 19 yards of silk, whereas the new styles only took between 4 and 7 yards, with underskirts becoming almost obsolete and demand for petticoats much reduced.
Aberdeen Journal, 30th August 1912
The fall in the demand for underskirts also had this result – 1200 clothes factory girls in Northampton went on strike in 1911 as their sewing services were not so much needed and they were given other work, which they said did not allow them to earn a living wage.
Dundee Courier, 10th October 1911
Even the Pope got involved – the hobble skirt and cleavage-revealing dresses were condemned as “scandalous and corrupting”.
Dundee Evening Telegraph, 9th August 1911
But, it wasn’t all doom and gloom. “Medical men approve of women wearing tight skirts” says this headline, rather cheekily. The Chicago Medical Society decided they were “hygienic, artistic and comfortable, and that they correct bad walking.” Dr Arthur Reynolds explained that “American women think it stylish and pretty to turn their feet out at right angles while walking,” which was hard to do in a hobble skirt, and sounds painful and much more ridiculous than the tight skirt. Full skirts were also liable to become “germ-laden”.
Dundee Evening Telegraph, 30th May 1913
Straight out of Monty Python, a joke about a hobble skirt “almost caused the death” of a Connecticut Judge in 1910. He saw his daughter wearing one and wisecracked that “a woman in a hobble is like a giraffe in a barrel.” He found his joke so funny that he couldn’t stop laughing, which developed into a ten-day bout of violent hiccups that apparently were life-threatening until “specialists…succeeded in reducing them to infrequent periods”. Lots of “self-appointed hiccough experts” tried to ease the judge’s suffering. I particularly like the bizarre advice of “sleeping on the bedroom door with the feet on the window sill.”
Hull Daily Mail, 29th October 1910
And “hobble skirt races” were held as a novelty instead of sack races:
Dundee Evening Telegraph, 7th September 1910
The reasons for its demise are discussed in this look back at the hobble skirt from the viewpoint of 1940. A suggestion had been made that fashion should be “standardised” for the duration of the Second World War, and this article reflects that had this been the case with the First World War, women might have remained wearing their hobble skirts much longer. As it was, war work meant that women’s fashions had to be practical above everything else – “Wider skirts, shorter skirts and shorter hair all came about through women’s need for greater freedom.” This was probably the biggest ever change to women’s position in society – “Women had become workers: they continued to work in the years which followed. If fashion had not been permitted to keep pace they would have had to shuffle instead of stride.”
Another peek at a book from the brilliant Forgotten Books website, and one which includes one of my favourite topics – the disappeared art of invalid cookery. This book, “The Art of German Cooking and Baking” by Mrs Lina Meier is a general cookbook from 1922. I like looking at the slight through-the-looking-glass effect of recipes from other countries with their different ingredients and food traditions.
Pre-NHS (in the UK), there were a lot of sick people being looked after in the home, and effective medicines for many diseases were either new or non-existent. If you look at any cookery book from Victorian times to pre-World War Two, you’ll find a chapter on “Invalid Cookery“, aimed to help those looking after sick loved ones, and designed to be appropriately nutritious and easily digestible. However, they are significantly different to what we might think of as food for sick people now. When I’m ill I want either Heinz Tomato Soup, toast and butter or my mum’s mashed potato. When I was a kid the upside to feeling ill was that it was the only time you could have Lucozade. It would have been weird to drink it while not ill in the 1970s. However, if anyone had tried to give me toast water or raw minced beef soaked in lukewarm water, I wouldn’t have considered that my first choice to settle my stomach.
Looking at the Invalid Cookery section, this doesn’t differ much from what was suggested for British invalids – a lot of beef tea and bouillons.
We’re getting on the train to crazy town now, though – with “Fried Calf’s Brain” and “Calf’s Tongue” being offered as suitable sickness foods. Also “macaroni” is classed as a vegetable for some reason.
Mmmm, invalid puddings. It starts off sensibly and recognisably with a kind of rice pudding, but quickly starts getting quite raw-eggy. “Chocolate Cream with Red Wine”, is a strange chocolately-wine cross between a jelly and an uncooked meringue. I object to “Beaten Egg” (ingredients – egg and salt) being classed as a “sweet dish”. Interestingly, there are strict instructions on where to beat the egg – “The egg should be beaten in a well-ventilated room only, because the air in the room influences the nourishment served to the invalid.”
There’s lots of “foam” recipes – “Red wine foam” on this page. Very cheffy, circa 2013. Ice cream “can often be given to invalids without harm”. I think I’ll pick that, please.
I can’t help noticing that invalids were expected to drink quite a lot of wine. It’s in nearly all the recipes. Here there’s the disgusting-sounding “Milk Lemonade” – water, sugar, milk, lemon juice and, of course, white wine. Even the ascetic-sounding “Water with Lemon Juice” contains sherry.
This is an interesting recipe – “Iron and Wine“. Iron deficiency was a big problem then, as it still is now. In fact, I recently read about a simple remedy to combat endemic anaemia seen in parts of the world today – an Iron fish which you add to your cooking pot, and which leaches out small amounts of iron into the food. In 1922, you could either have your Pink Pills for Pale People or you could cut to the chase and add iron filings directly into your wine, like the kind of reckless experiment I would have done with my chemistry set aged 9. Ignoring the iron, which I imagine would give the wine a bit of a bloody tang, wine with ginger and horseradish sounds pretty exciting.
More for the alcoholic invalid here – “White Wine Soup”, “Red Wine Soup” and “Beer Soup”.
“Cow Udder”, anyone?
Moving on from Invalid Cookery, some general baking now. The directions for “1 1/2 cents’ worth of yeast” in the ingredients didn’t make these recipes very time-proof.
Berliner pancakes, of John F. Kennedy fame:
I object to to this one – “English Cake“. It contains ammonia as a raising agent, not something I believe is traditional in English cookery, but is seen in German and Greek baking. Ammonia, though. Apparently, it smells as a raw ingredient but the aroma bakes off during cooking. I don’t think I’d chance it, to be honest – the fear of ending up with “Cat Litter Cake” would be too much.
“English Bride’s Cake” here – still the traditional wedding fruit cake.
I like this recipe for “natural” green food dye – soaking coffee beans in egg white to produce a green colour.
Finally, another “English” recipe – “English Chow Chow”, . It’s a kind of piccalilli, although I think the name “chow chow” only lives on in parts of the US now.
Edward VII was not amused in 1908. He was “much annoyed on the promenade at Marienbad yesterday,” (Marienbad being in what’s now the Czech Republic) “when he discovered that cinematograph pictures of his early walk had been taken by the director of a Berlin cinematograph company.”
I wonder if this is the first time the Royal Family were “papped”?
Nottingham Evening Post, 31st August 1908
“The man in question had succeeded in securing an excellent set of pictures before the King noticed his operations, but on the discovery being made, his Majesty took prompt measures….the King keenly resented such an intrusion on the privacy of his summer holiday.”
There’s a slightly sinister undertone as the cinematographer at first refuses to hand over the film to the police, but the King’s equerry, General Sir Stanley Clarke takes control of the situation. He visited the culprit’s hotel, and “what happened between the King’s equerry and the cinematograph operator is unknown, but General Sir Stanley Clarke finally left the hotel with all the cinematograph negatives in his possession, the operator having consented to surrender them to the King.”
The trenches of the First World War were pretty hellish – and made worse by the fact that you were also likely to become infested with lice – “Our soldiers greatest enemy in the trenches.” So here’s a cure for them advertised in the local newspapers at the time. The adverts are directed towards family members to buy for their soldiers and then post them to the trenches. It’s “Somerville’s Asiatic Body Cord”, which apparently “Exterminates all body lice and prevents them lodging on the person or underclothing.” Lanarkshire Daily Record, 9th October 1915
The lice were the potential cause of huge problems. Apart from the irritation of the bites, they could also carry typhus and other diseases. The “Asiatic Body Cord” was based on an Indian folk medicine cure. It consisted of a woollen cord tied around the waist, and which was impregnated with 2 parts mercury ointment and 1 part beeswax. The mercury ointment was presumably toxic to the lice, but it could also be toxic to the soldier too with prolonged use. “The skin absorbs its germicide properties, and these are carried to all parts of the body” says one advertisement, which isn’t great if the germicide is mercury. Daily Mirror, 9th May 1916
At the height of production, 120,000 body cords were produced per year. Edinburgh Evening News, 18th December 1916
“Far superior and more effective than any insect-powder”, the advert says in relation to what was probably its main rival – Keating’s Powder, as well as Maw’s Antiverm Trench Powder. Edinburgh Evening News, 8th July 1916
“Keating’s Powder” was a more long-standing insect powder, used in Victorian kitchens too to rid the house of beetles and the like. This advert implies the fact that it’s been around a while with its “Business as usual!!-Beetles as usual!!-Killed as usual!!” It contained pyrethrum, an insecticide found in chrysanthemum flowers. Dundee Courier, 5th May 1915
