1906 Archives - The Skittish Library

Before Irn Bru was Irn Bru, it was Iron Brew. Up until 1946 when a new law declared that drinks couldn’t be described as a “brew” if they weren’t actually brewed, and so the spelling, if not the pronunciation, was changed to keep within the letter of the law.

The basic Scottish hardness of Iron Brew’s advertising strategy is already in place in 1906, with the drink being endorsed here by champion wrestler and cable tosser Alex Munro, and all-round champion athlete of the world Donald Dinnie.

Here’s an illustrated advert to show what they actually looked like.

Oh, for the days when you could be the all-round champion of the world and look like Donald Dinnie. He was a big celebrity of the day and well hard to boot. He’s been called “The Nineteenth Century’s Greatest Athlete”, and had the honour of heavy artillery shells used in the First World War being called “Donald Dinnie’s” in recognition of just how rock he was. To be fair, he was 69 in 1906, if this is when this illustration of him was made.

Here’s Alex Munro, who excellently won bronze at the 1908 Olympics and silver at the 1912 Olympics in the Tug of War event. Oh, how I wish they still had Tug of War, but sadly that ended as an event in 1920. It reminds me of all those strong man programmes you used to get on TV in the 80s, around the time World of Sport was on.

Here Iron Brew was apparently an essential part of the recuperation of “The Fasting Man” Mons. Beaute, who held the world record for fasting at the time. 40 days with only Barr’s Soda Water as sustenance, and recovering afterwards with a heady mix of Iron Brew and Bovril.

Houdini’s “The Right Way To Do Wrong”, 1906

I recently stumbled across a wonderful website for lovers of old books – Forgotten Books. You can look at a huge selection of ancient books for free, although there are some pages removed unless you pay for a subscription. But if you sign up to their mailing list, every day they will send you a link to one of their books that is entirely accessible for free for that day. It’s like having a little lucky dip every day.

A few days ago it was this, “The Right Way To Do Wrong” by legendary escapologist Harry Houdini. It’s an exposé of a range of scams used by confidence tricksters of the time – and it’s interesting how many of these are still current, just repackaged a bit.

It reminds of the kind of thing Derren Brown might write, but 100 years earlier. Incidentally, if you’ve never read Derren Brown’s books, I really can’t recommend them enough – they are an absolute joy to read. The man is a great writer, and he also seems to be a completely lovely chap. And you’ll never look at Monster Munch the same way again.

But back to Houdini. It’s really a corker of a book, and very easy to dash through. These are the chapters he covers, I’ll post up a few excerpts from them.

An intriguing chapter about Burglar’s Superstitions:

Begging letter swindles, including chain letters, which I still remember being a thing when I was a kid. Email chain letters – that happened for a while too, didn’t it?

Tricks of Bunco Men – or con men who convince poor saps that they’re about to get a big something for nothing. Much like the Nigerian 419 scams today. This explains the bit in The Paul Daniels Magic Show with the “Bunco Booth” – never knew what that meant.

Tales of quack doctors and psychics – both still very much with us now:

Lady criminals:

And a bit of autobiog from Houdini at the end. He had one of those old-school interesting lives alright.