Let's Get the Lead Out, or Why Paints and Drugs Do Mix

Philadelphia was home to many early chemical and paint companies. The nineteenth century found these two industries to be integrally related by virtue of the fact that alcohol was a prime ingredient in both. One paint company, the John Lucas Works, prepared a green paint “heavier in body, and at the same time, when used by workmen, not detrimental to their health.” There was obviously no truth in advertising laws at that time, and these same workmen were at constant risk. The effect of lead poisoning was primarily due to absorption of the lead base by the painter and secondarily by anyone who lived within the confines of the painted house. Children chewing upon window sills laced with lead paint were especially vulnerable. Although not recognized at that time, lead, a potent neurotoxin, without proper precautions and with chronic exposure, was potentially lethal. However, this was the Victorian era, and that was the state of the art!

Although nothing of an historical nature has been written concerning Robert Baker, John Moore and Benjamin V. Mein, much can be gleaned from their illustrated advertisements. Their original building, located at 621 Market Street (rear entrance at 612 Commerce Street), was a rather dilapidated affair. The company touted itself as being a wholesale druggist and sole proprietor of the First National White Lead and Color Works. It can be seen below on an 1873 philatelic cover from my personal collection.

First National White Lead and Color Works philatelic cover, 1873. Collection of Dr. Gus Spector.

As a volunteer at the Library Company I was given the very pleasant task of providing an electronic transcription of a large number of medically-oriented billheads from the William H. Helfand Graphic Popular Medicine Stationery Collection, donated by Mr. Helfand, a former Library Company of Philadelphia Board President and Trustee Emeritus. As a physician, I found this challenging, attempting to decipher the nineteenth-century handwriting and  unraveling the names of proprietary drugs unfamiliar in today's medical lexicon. As a collector of illustrated Philadelphia paper  memorabilia, I found the collection most fascinating.

Within the Library Company’s collection was an illustrated billhead dated June 1887 showing the façade of the Barker, Moore and Mein Company, relocated to 609 Market Street. The new Market Street building was a much more imposing six story Italianate edifice. The busy street scene in front of the building suggested a most prosperous business. 

Barker, Moore & Mein billhead, 1887. Helfand Graphic Popular Medicine Stationery Collection. Library Company of Philadelphia.

Barker, Moore and Mein were masters of merchandising. An 1877 billhead from the Helfand Collection proclaimed that, not only were they purveyors of lead paint, but manufactured numerous other semi-related products such as Barker’s Vegetable Horse, Cattle and Poultry Powder; Barker’s Nerve and Bone Liniment; and Barker’s Brazilian Shoe Dressing. Since the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906 had not yet been conceived, it was anyone’s guess as to the actual composition of these products. The handwritten invoice seen here listed the sale of such sundry products as cologne, castor oil, Wright’s Liver Pills, and paregoric. 

Barker, Moore & Mein billhead, 1887. Helfand Graphic Popular Medicine Stationery Collection. Library Company of Philadelphia.

As part of their advertising campaign, Barker published a “Komic Almanac” that could be personalized for other companies with “your name and business printed on the cover.”  The 1893 philatelic cover from my collection seen below promised “a book containing nearly 150 pictures, side splitters and button bursters”. Unfortunately, as was common at the time, many of the cartoons contained within depicted extreme racial slurs.

Barker's Komic Almanac philatelic cover, 1893. Collection of Dr. Gus Spector.

It is indeed interesting to view the drug industry as stemming from a paint factory lineage. The advent of chemical engineering and the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906 gave rise to the disappearance of the mystique of Victorian homeopathy as the mainstay of pharmaceutical treatment. When the scientific technology became available, the only extra added essential ingredient was human ingenuity.

Gus Spector, M.D.
Library Company Volunteer

Off to the Fair

As Co-Director of the Visual Culture Program, I am always on the lookout for new materials to add to the library’s visual culture collections. Ephemera has become a particular focus of my treasure hunting in the last year. Although online marketplaces certainly provide access to a trove of promising new additions to our holdings, a good old fashioned fair – of the paper variety – allows for a more personal experience.

In the last few weeks, The Ephemera Society of America and Allentown Paper Shows have served as opportunities to obtain a variety of commercial ephemera, including a circa-1875 advertising envelope for a local casket maker, a late 19th-century trade card for a Philadelphia burlap bag manufacturer, and a Victorian-era paper toy dining room set promoting the Cosmo Buttermilk Soap Co.

Philadelphia Burial Co. envelope, ca. 1875. Proprietors George W. Hanna, George. M. Hanna, and John W. Hanna.

Back of John T. Bailey & Co. trade card, ca. 1880.

Front of John T. Bailey & Co. trade card, ca. 1880.

Cosmo Buttermilk Soap paper toy promotion, 1895.

From my initial research into these pieces, I have learned a few interesting tidbits; an inevitability with these engaging materials. George W. Hanna and his sons, listed as the proprietors of the Philadelphia Burial Case Co., worked in the funeral trade for fewer than five years before relocating by 1880 to Kansas to farm. John T. Bailey & Co., a premier twine and bag manufacturing company, used this trade card to showcase the building to which their growing sewing department moved in 1880 to meet increased consumer demands. And Jonas J. Burns, the owner of the Chicago soap company that marketed the paper toy furniture in the 1890s, turned out to also be a railway magnate. Small tokens of historical popular culture such as these never cease to enlighten and delight me—as well as the Library Company’s researchers.

These items are just the newest additions to our illustrious collections of historical ephemera, highlights of which will be on display in Remnants of Everyday Life: Historical Ephemera in the Workplace, Street, and Home May 13-December 13, 2013.

Erika Piola

Associate Curator, Prints and Photographs

Abolitionist Women at Pennsylvania Hall

From History of Pennsylvania Hall (Philadelphia, 1838)

 
As noted in a previous post, this year marks the 175th anniversary of the dedication of Pennsylvania Hall. Constructed as a forum for free discussion of abolitionism and other reform movements, the building was inaugurated on May 14, 1838. After four days of dedication ceremonies and conventions of numerous anti-slavery societies, Pennsylvania Hall was destroyed in a fire by a mob. The amalgamation of the races combined with the presence of women, as attendees and speakers, were supposed to have been the primary factors that enraged anti-abolition elements in the city. Angelina Grimké Weld, Lucretia Mott, and Maria Weston Chapman were among the women who spoke at the dedication ceremonies, while Sarah Mapps Douglass was in attendance as treasurer of the Anti-Slavery Convention of American Women. The Library Company holds several items that document the peril these women faced and the fortitude they displayed in continuing to attend the abolitionist meetings. 
 
A delegate to the national convention from the Fall River Female Anti-Slavery Society in Massachusetts, Laura Lovell recorded her experiences in Report of a Delegate to the Anti-Slavery Convention of American Women (Boston, 1838). Upon arriving, she raved that, “in looking abroad over this beautiful, quiet city, the first impression is, that I have found on earth a place where order, harmony, love and freedom prevail.” Sadly, her initial impression of Philadelphia changed over the course of the week. By the third day, her joy at being surrounded by like-minded anti-slavery activists was tempered by the growing violence of the crowd outside as “several stones were thrown through the glass [windows], evidently aimed towards the speaker.” One female delegate reported walking home with blood stains on her dress after nearly being knocked over by an injured black man fleeing from a mob. By the fourth evening, with so much of the violence directed at African Americans, Lovell and other white female attendees walked arm in arm with their black comrades in order to protect them from attack as they departed the Hall “through a mob of two or three thousand, fierce, vile looking men, and large boys.” 
 

White female abolitionists were also targets of the mob’s rage. In the Fifth Annual Report of the Boston Female Anti-slavery Society (Boston, 1838), members described being “assailed with Stones, Mud, Potatoes, Onions, and whatever first came to hand.” As they dispersed from a meeting shortly before the fire, they “bade each other farewell, not knowing that we should meet again, till we saw each other in the world of spirits.” Nevertheless, the morning after the conflagration, the ladies persevered by meeting in a schoolroom in order to complete their convention’s business and to document their proceedings.

John Caspar Wild. Destruction by Fire of Pennsylvania Hall. (Philadelphia, 1838).

History of Pennsylvania Hall, Which Was Destroyed by a Mob, on the 17th of May, 1838 (Philadelphia, 1838) recorded the convention speeches and proceedings as well as reports of the investigation into the fire. Members of the Pennsylvania Hall Association collected anonymously written placards that urged Philadelphians “to interfere forcibly if they must” in order to disperse the convention and protect slaveholders’ rights in their human property. Despite evidence that the violence was incited by the authors of these placards, the police were unable to find witnesses to name the perpetrators and no one was ever convicted for destroying the Hall. The Police Committee issued a report which largely absolved the city of responsibility, stating that “this excitement, (heretofore unparalleled in our city,) was occasioned by the determination of the owners of that building and of their friends, to persevere in openly promulgating and advocating in it doctrines repulsive to the moral sense of a large majority of our community.”

From History of Pennsylvania Hall (Philadelphia, 1838)

The arson, physical assaults, and lack of convictions demonstrated that resistance to abolition, as well as women’s participation in the public sphere, remained strong in many areas of the North.

Krystal Appiah

Reference Librarian/Curator of African American History