Warner’s Safe Cure: Some Very Rare Safe Remedies

Warner's Safe Diabetes Remedy in Green

Recently, Michael Seeliger was in San Jose giving a presentation on Warner’s to their bottle club.  He had the opportunity to see the collection of Michael and Kathy Craig, which includes some very nice Warner’s and he was kind enough to share them with me. Thanks also to the Craigs for allowing me to post these.

The photo above is an exceptionally rare Diabetes Remedy in green. How about a  3-Cities Safe Cure in green?

Warner's Safe Cure 3- Cities in Green

By any standard, the Craigs have a nice collection of Warner’s, including some rare examples including an olive Kidney & Liver Remedy, a clear Diabetes Remedy and a clear Kidney & Liver Remedy for starters. And, appropriately enough, a nice collection of Craigs cures.

Warner’s Collection of Michael & Kathy Craig

Collecting Warner’s can be kind of addicting. Once you get into them, you always want that variant that you don’t have. As with most addictions, the problem is that you just can’t stop. Thanks again to Mike and to the Craigs for allowing a peek into their collection. Hope you enjoyed it as much as I did.

Warner’s Safe Cure: Newspaper Advertisements

It seems that virtually every medium available to H. H. Warner carried his pitch to the patent medicine buying public. In the age the preceded broadcast media, newspapers were the principal way to reach out to the public at large. Fortunately, copies of those newspapers including their advertisements still exist and I have been able to pull out a few of the Warner’s Safe Cure ads that ran from the early 1880′s until into the 1920′s.  As you will see, many of the ads take on a familiar formula and incorporate testimonials that proclaim that Warner’s Safe Cure saved the user from certain death. Although the ads are not limited to Safe Cure, many of them continue the pitch that Warner made when he first introduced his line of Safe Cures – the kidneys are the key to good health.

The above advertisement is the earliest I have found to date. It ran in the Fort Wayne News on June 11, 1880. Notably, it mentions parenthectically “Formerly Dr. Craig’s Kidney Cure”.  Clearly, Warner had not established himself and wanted to ride the coattails of Craig. The ad also lists the early Safe Cures including: Kidney & Liver Cure, Diabetes Cure, Nervine, Bitters and Safe Pills.  With an almost biblical flourish, it says “Read! Save Thyself.”

A close look at the ad reveals that it looks almost amateurish. Most of the print is typeset, but the graphics look almost hand-drawn. Needless to say, it would be a few years before Warner would have a full marketing department at his disposal.

Warner’s Safe Cure: The Ultimate Go-With

If you are a Warner’s collector,  what would you consider to be the ultimate go-with?  There are no shortage of possibilities since Warner was such a prolific advertiser. There are wonderful posters, almanacs, dominoes, signs, etc. While all of these items are great to highlight a Warner’s Safe Cure collection, I think the ultimate go-with might just be an actual Warner’s Safe. For those of you who are familiar with the history of the Warner’s Safe Cure Company and its founder, H. H. Warner, you know that his first fortune was made as a salesman of fireproof safes. It is that image that then graced so many bottles of his medicines into the 20th Century.

Every once in a rare while, one of these Warner’s Safes surfaces and is offered for sale. Now is such a time. The folks at Antique Searchers in Syracuse are offering a safe for sale on eBay. You can find their listing at: http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=330422118971&ssPageName=STRK:MEWAX:IT. They have kindly let me reproduce their pictures here:

About two years ago, I did my first installment of Warner history entitled The Rise and Fall of the Warner Empire (Part I). In that posting, I briefly discussed Warner’s early history as a safe salesman for the Mosler Safe Company of Cincinnati. I also attached a link to Dr. Richard Cannon’s article in the Antique Bottle & Glass Collector highlighting another Warner’s Safe in Colorado. This article is repeated in the eBay listing. Dr. Cannon did some excellent research and it is well worth a read. It does not seem to me to be overstatement that had H. H. Warner not been a highly successful safe salesman and had he not contracted Bright’s Disease and been “cured” by Dr. Craig’s concoction, he would have been completely lost to history.

But I digress. This wonderful safe is up for sale for a few more days. Needless to say, the successful bidder will need to pick it up in Syracuse. Considering it weighs in at 800 pounds +, you would have some heavy lifting on your hands. However, just think how nice this safe would look adorned by a nice collection of Warner’s Safe Cures. Good luck on the bidding and thanks to the folks at Antique Searchers for letting me highlight this great go-with.

Warner’s Safe Cure: A Chronology

I thought I would take a shot at creating a time line that summaries the significant events in the existence of the Warner’s Safe Cure Company and its founder, H. H. Warner. I’m sure that I will miss something and welcome any suggestions. This will likely be a work in progress, but here goes:

• 1842    Hulbert Harrington Warner born near Syracuse, New York in a small town called Warners, which was named after his grandfather, Seth, who had moved there in 1807 from Stockbridge, Massachusetts.

• 1864     Warner marries Martha L. Keeney, a prominent young woman from Skaneateles, New York. Like Warner, she was born in 1842, but died suddenly in 1871. The marriage produced no children. 

 

• 1865    Warner avoided service in the Union Army in the Civil War. He moved to Ann Arbor, Michigan where he and a partner were engaged in the stove and hardware business.

• 1870     Returned to New York and settled in Rochester as a dealer in fire and burglar proof safes. He was a dealer for the predecessor of the Mosler Safe Company of Cincinnati, Ohio. (See New York Daily Graphic, May 10, 1888; Rochester Union & Advertiser, April 27, 1883).

• 1872     Warner marries Emily Olive Stoddard (born 1847 in Michigan). It appears that this second marriage produced one child, a daughter, Maud. It also appears that Emily predeceased Warner.

• 1879     Following his recovery from Bright’s Disease, Warner purchases the rights to Dr. Charles Craig’s Kidney Cure and promptly begins to market it as Warner’s Safe Kidney & Liver Cure. In addition, he offers four other products: Safe Pills, Safe Nervine,  Safe Bitters and Safe Diabetes Cure. The company operates initially out of a building on Exhange Street in downtown Rochester.

• 1879     Warner is introduced to “Doctor” Lewis Swift, who was by vocation a partner in a hardware store and by avocation an astronomer who has discovered several comets. It was rumored that Swift was leaving Rochester, because he believed his talents were not sufficiently appreciated.

• 1882     Warner opens his Toronto Office and offers his cures in the 3-Cities bottles.

• 1883     Warner opens his London Office and begins offering his cures in a spectacular array of colored bottles.

• 1883     The Warner Observatory is completed and fitted out by January at a cost to Warner of $100,000. It boasts a 16″ telescope that was 22 feet long donated by the citizens of Rochester. It becomes a focal point of much of Warner’s advertising.

• 1884     The Warner’s Safe Remedies Building is opened on Warner’s 42nd birthday in January on St. Paul’s Avenue in Rochester. The iron front building was also marketed as the Warner’s Safe Yeast Building and in its eight stories housed Warner’s manufacturing, shipping and marketing operations. The fascade is graced with the monograms “W” and fitted out with first class details. The building remains today as the last vestige of Warner’s patent medicine empire.

 

• 1885     Warner adds his Safe Rheumatic Cure, Animal Cure and Safe Throatine to his product line. In addition, he introduces his Tippecanoe Bitters in two grades, “The Best” and “XXX” and phases out his Safe Bitters.

• 1887     Warner introduces his Log Cabin Remedies line of products, which included Log Cabin Sarsaparilla, Log Cabin Hops & Buchu Remedy, Log Cabin Cough and Consumption Remedy, Log Cabin Extract, Log Cabin Rose Cream, Log Cabin Hair Tonic, Log Cabin Plasters and Log Cabin Liver Pills.

 

• 1887     Warner opens his Frankfurt, Germany and Melbourne, Australia Office expanding his patent medicine empire onto three continents.

• 1888     Warner delivers his inaugeral address as president of the Rochester Chamber of Commerce in January.  Warner had been elected president in 1887 winning out over George Eastman, the owner of a little known camera company. Warner is perhaps at the peak of his prosperity with business failure and bankruptcy looming on the horizon.

• 1888     Warner opens his Pressburg, Hungary Office, which remains open only two years. Bottles from the Pressburg Office are particularly prized by collectors because of their rarity.

 

• 1891     Warner opens his Kreuzlingen, Switzerland and Dundein, New Zealand Offices. No Warner bottles embossed Kreuzlingen have ever surfaced. The bottles from the Dundein Office have become known as 4-Cities bottles because they bear the names of four of Warner’s offices at the time: Rochester, London, Toronto and Melbourne.

• 1893     In what would become known as the Panic of 1893, the American securities market crashed in February. Warner was overextended and when his creditors began to call his loans, he scrambled to raise cash. Warner’s longtime business partner, Arthur G. Yates, was unable to cover all of Warner’s debt. Warner was left to travel the country trying to offer his shares in H. H. Warner & Co. Ltd. as collateral for his debts. While some creditors accepted the shares, others did not, and Warner was forced into bankruptcy  on May 8. He lost his mansion on East Avenue, his Observatory, his yacht, his retreat on Warner Island in the St. Lawrence River and, most importantly, his reputation.

 

• 1917     Christina de Martinez Warner (born 1878 in Mexico) was never officially married to  Warner, but apparently resided with him and served as an officer to the Nuera Remedy Company in Minneapolis in the 1930′s to early 1940′s. She resided at his address of 1311 Blaisdell Avenue in Minneapolis between 1917 and 1948.

• 1923     Warner dies in Minneapolis having never regained the economic prominence he enjoyed when the the Warner’s Safe Remedies Company was at its peak. To his credit, he never quit trying to reestablish his former renown. Warner is buried next to his first wife, Martha, in her family’s plot at Lakeview Cemetary in Skaneateles, New York.

• 1929     The Warner Mansion on East Avenue in Rochester is razed to make way for a parking lot.

Warner’s Safe Cure: The Sincerest Form of Flattery

If you were starting up a patent medicine company in the late 19th Century, you might consider emulating the business model of H. H. Warner (at least before he began investing gobs of money in worthless mining ventures). While you would be hard pressed to be as successful as Warner on such a large scale, perhaps you could imitate one of Warner’s more visible marketing devices…his bottles. Now, you could not just copy his bottles. Indeed, Dr. Charles Craig, who sold his Kidney and Liver Cure to Warner in 1879, was on the receiving end of a lawsuit when he tried to reenter the patent medicine business. But, if it happened that your product’s bottle bore a resemblence to Warner’s Safe Cure, well, that might be the way to go.

Having said all that, there is no evidence (that I’m aware of) that any of Warner’s competitors set out to imitate the appearance of his bottles as a means to tapping into his customer base. And yet,  for some of the Warner’s Safe Cure look-a-likes, one cannot help but wonder if their similar appearance was just coincidental. 

With help from Jack Stecher, I picked out a few good examples of Warner’s Safe Cure look-a-likes. In my mind, perhaps the best candidate is Baker’s Vegetable Blood & Liver Cure of the Lookout Mountain Medicine Co. of Greeneville, Tennessee. Baker’s has both the Warner’s shape, the amber color and “Blood & Liver Cure,” which is not dramatically different from “Kidney & Liver Cure.” The other look-a-like candidates have to include Craig’s Kidney Cure and Long’s Standard Malaria Cure, both from the center of the Warner universe, Rochester. Both Craig’s and Long’s have the Warner shape and color as well as the geography. One final example is Spark’s Kidney & Liver Cure - Perfect Health of Camden, New Jersey. Again, Spark’s has the Warner shape and color that begs comparison. The benign explanation is that the Warner’s Safe Cure bottle was just a standard shape and size among glassmakers that appealed to other patent medicine proprietors. Nevertheless, it’s an interesting question to ponder.

Thanks to Jack Stecher and Glass Works Auctions for the photographs.

Beware of Fraud!

In today’s world, we are constantly bombarded with warnings about identity theft and fraud committed with the assistance of computers. Apparently, the topic of fraud was much on the mind of proprietors like Warner in the late 19th Century. Indeed, it appears that he was positively preoccupied with the subject. The inside cover pages of his 1882 Book of $2000.00 Prize Enigmas are devoted almost entirely to the subject of Fraud and Detection of Fraud. Although no particular source of fraud is cited, one wonders if Warner’s ongoing dispute with Dr. Charles Craig did not give rise to his concerns. Although Craig sold the formula and rights to Warner, he later reemerged and began to market a similar concoction.

For his part, Warner attributes the fraud to the inability of his company to meet the demands of those stricken with disease of the Kidneys, Liver and Urinary Organs:

After a long series of scientific experiments, the only Herbs which have absolute power over these organs were discovered.  They were carefully combined and proved by expert chemists, and they form the preparation which cured Mr. H. H. Warner and have restored thousands to health. Indeed, all medical science for the past ten years has scarcely relieved so much suffering as the SAFE REMEDIES have in the past three years.  As a result of this the demand has been so great from all quarters that we cannot fill our orders. We do not therefore, so much desire to increase the present demand as we wish to warn the public against using pretentious “medicines” for diseases of the Kidneys, Liver and Urinary organs, for, as the rare herbs which compose the SAFE REMEDIES are are [sic] known only to us, and as we consume the entire crop of Europe and North and South America, it is plain that the SAFE REMEDIES cannot be successfully imitated.

….

BEWARE of such unscrupulous persons and their nostrums, lest they inflict lasting injury upon you.

Warner then instructs his customers on “How to Detect Fraud” and offers three indicia of genuiness:

(1) Safe Remdies “are put in Amber glass bottles,”

(2) the trademark “IRON SAFE” is printed on each wrapper and “blown into the back of each bottle,” and

(3) the presence of a light brown Private Proprietary Internal Revenue Stamp (of various demoninations depending on the type of Cure and size) bearing the outline of a safe “and within it the picture of a Negro gathering herbs.”

Warner closes his fraud warning by offering a $200 Reward “for the detection and conviction of any person selling or dealing in any preparation of any name or pretended nature dishonorably designed to secure a market over the genuine, or ‘as good as the genuine,” WARNER’S SAFE REMEDIES. As it turned out, Warner’s concern about fraud was not without merit.

Dr. Charles Craig

Were it not for Dr. Charles Craig, would H. H. Warner have ventured into the patent medicine business?  This question can be contemplated on two different levels. First, as described in an earlier post, Warner’s health had deteriorated in 1879 as the result of some form of kidney ailment, which necessitated his use of Craig’s remedy and second, Warner’s decision to acquire and market Craig’s concoction.

 After receiving less than satisfactory results from his physicians, Warner turned to Craig’s Cure for help. In his 2001 Biographic Sketch of Warner, Jack Stecher quotes from Warner’s 1879 Almanac in an article entitled “THE DISCOVERY.”:

The remedy was suggested to the mind of Dr. Chas. Craig, when lying at the point of death from Bright’s Disease, not as a probably cure for this presumably fatal terror, but as a possible relief from some of the intense pain he was suffering, and a help to his rebellious stomach. To his surprise, as soon as  he had taken the first dose of this first weak vegetable decoctin, he felt better, and, continuing to take it, he was soon on his feet again, a well and strong man. After his recovery, he administered it to his neighbors similarly afflicted, and they also got well. By degrees, as the result of experience and professional consultation, other vegetable ingredients were added to quicken and increase its efficiency, and with the compound thus prepared, thousands of cases have been cured, and many of them to the astonishment of the patients and their acquaintences. Therefore, the sick-bed suggestion which came to the mind of Dr. Craig, has seemed to him and to others almost like a revelation.

Warner’s admiration for Dr. Craig was short-lived and his tribute was limited to the 1879-1880 Almanac.  Stecher notes that Dr. Craig’s product was marketed by Warner with much fanfare and initially offered to the public by label as “The Original Dr. Craig’s Kidney Cure – An Absolute Specific For Bright’s Disease – Hulbert H. Warner.” The bottle label features his trademark four-leaf clover. The bottle is embossed “The Original/Dr. Craig’s/Kidney Cure/Rochester/NY.” Indeed, this is, in fact, the first Warner bottle as opposed to the shoulder-embossed Safe Cure so ofter touted.

The relationship between Craig and Warner continued to deteriorate. Although Craig had come to work for Warner, by 1882, he was back in business selling a product remarkably like the Safe Cure, whose rights had been purchased by Warner. Warner sought to enjoin the sale of this product, which Craig sold for 25 cents less per bottle than the Safe Cure. Ultimately, the Court sided with Warner and Craig was eventually driven into bankruptcy. A sad end for the man that no only inspired Warner’s Safe Cure, but who also (supposedly) saved Warner from certain death.

Photos courtesy of Glass Works Auctions and Jack Stecher.

The Rise and Fall of the Warner Empire (Part II)

Part of the attractiveness of Warner’s Kidney & Liver Cure was no doubt the fact that Warner had personally benefitted from its medicinal properties. In 1879, he was beset by some form of kidney ailment for which his physicians had no treatment. It is unclear if this was the infamous Bright’s Disease that became a staple of the Safe Cure label. In any event, Warner obtained considerable relief from the patent medicine of another Rochester “physician,” Dr. Charles Craig, who had sold the rights to manufacture his concoction to investors from New York City in 1877. Having been miraculously cured, Warner embarked on the enterprise that would allow him to amass his second fortune.

He purchased the proprietary rights to Craig’s cure from the investors and Warner’s Safe Kidney & Liver Cure was born to great fanfare. The new venture was heralded in the Rochester Union and Advertiser on July 5, 1879. Warner established his operation on Exchange Street. Warner understood that the secret to success was  offering every person the ability to heal him or herself. The invitation was gratefully accepted. To ensure that his brand was firmly established in the mind of the public, Warner embarked on a campaign of advertising in newspapers, almanacs, trade cards and every other conceivable medium to carry his message. The limitations on marketing in those days were stark. Essentially, a manufacturer, such as Warner, were limited to the print media. There would be no broadcast media for decades, until radio opened that frontier. Nevertheless, Warner took full advantage. Apart from his bottles, his advertising, which graces the collections of many Warner enthusiasts. His advertisements were loaded with both practical information (calendars, recipes, legal advice, etc) as well as with testimonials from others who had benefited from his Cure (clergy, politicians and celebrities). The hook was set and demand grew…and grew…and grew.