Categories
1900-1949 Adverts

This is What Keeps You Thin, Weak and Unfit, 1921

There is little that distinguishes the advertising of yesteryear from today so much as those products designed to fatten up the unbecomingly thin person. Enter Sargol, which claimed to overcome the “faulty food assimilation” keeping you thin, weak and unfit.

The British Medical Association’s “More Secret Remedies…” from 1912 reveals that the actual contents of Sargol pills differed widely from batch to batch, but mainly contained sugar, albumen and calcium.

Interestingly, Sargol was successfully taken to trial for fraud in the USA in 1917 on account of not doing what it claimed – although this evidently hadn’t deterred them four years later in the UK. However, the American version differed in that it mainly contained Saw Palmetto, a plant found in the south west of the US.

A thin person’s body is like a bone-dry sponge – eager and hungry for the fatty materials of which it is being robbed by the failure of the assimilative apparatus to take them from the food.

Portsmouth Evening News, 12th January, 1921
Portsmouth Evening News, 12th January, 1921

“There are thousands of men and women today distressed by excessive thinness, weak nerves and feeble stomachs, who, having tried no end of flesh-makers, foodfads, tonics, physical culture stunts, resign themselves to life-long skinniness, and imagine that nothing can ever give them flesh and strength.

Excessive thinness, often attended by nervous indigestion, is simply due to “mal-assimilation” in the vast majority of cases. Even if you feel comparatively swell, you cannot get fat if your digestive apparatus fails to “assimilate” the food you eat – food that now passes through your system as a waste, like unburned coal through an open fire-grate.

What thin folks require is a means of gently urging the assimilative functions of the stomach and intestines to extract the oils and fats from the regular daily food that is eaten, and pass them into the blood, where they can reach the starved, broken-down tissue cells and build them up.

You know that the human body is built of tissue cells and you must know that the only right way to gain flesh and strength is by replenishing the depleted tissue cells with more nourishing, fat-making elements. Is there anything better than the food Nature provides for that purpose?

A thin person’s body is like a bone-dry sponge – eager and hungry for the fatty materials of which it is being robbed by the failure of the assimilative apparatus to take them from the food.

The best way to overcome this sinful waste of flesh-building elements and to stop the leakage of fats is to use Sargol, the recently discovered regenerative force that is recommended so highly here and abroad. Take a little Sargol tablet with every meal and notice how quickly your food will make your cheeks fill out, and rolls of firm, healthy flesh are deposited over your body, covering each bony and projecting point.

All good chemists recommend and sell Sargol. Try it. It is inexpensive, easy to take, highly efficient and perfectly harmless.”

Categories
1900-1949 Adverts Women

Mothers, Its Your Fault, 1921

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.

Gloucestershire Echo, 16th June 1921
Gloucestershire Echo, 16th June 1921

Derbac is still available, fighting the good fight against those pesky lice.

Categories
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
1900-1949 Adverts

A Window Cleaning Warning, 1921

A warning from 1921 informing the public which window cleaners were covered by accident insurance in Burnley.

It’s a good point actually. Who checks whether your window cleaner has insurance these days?

Burnley Express, 19th November, 1921
Burnley Express, 19th November, 1921