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.

The Rise and Fall of the Warner Empire: The Warner’s Safe Remedies Co. (Part VIII)

Warner’s slide into insolvency was hastened by the Panic of 1893, which some historians compare to the Great Depression of the late 1920′s and 1930′s. However, the fact of the matter is that H. H. Warner was the architect of his own misfortune. His once great patent medicine empire could not support the weight of his wildly speculative investments and ever diminishing interest in managing his once great enterprise. His collapse surprised many, who had seen him as favorite son of Rochester. Indeed, in December, 1887, he had been elected as president of the newly formed Rochester Chamber of Commerce. Ironically, Warner’s inaugeral address to the organization highlighted the importance of reinvestment of capital to promote business growth. The Chamber later selected Warner as their Man of the Year over a lesser known camera maker named George Eastman. Clearly, the Kodak would never last.

 By 1893, however, Warner’s successes were ancient history. The British directors of the H. H. Warner & Co. Ltd. voted that his stock should be forfieted as a penalty for his mismanagement. With his last valuable asset stripped away, Warner filed for bankruptcy and spent the remaining years of his life attempting to regain his business prominence. Although he was out as the owner of the company, it continued to exist without him. Atwater reports that the American branch of the company was sold to Rochester businessmen, J. J. DeMay and S. B. Keaner, who moved it back to Rochester to occupy the Duffy Malt Whiskey warehouse and it survived on an ever diminishing scale until the mid-1940′s.

Under the management of DeMay and Keaner, the company produced remedies under the name Warner’s Safe Remedies Company, which included a Diabetes Remedy, Rheumatic Remedy, Kidney & Liver Remedy, Acute Rheumatic Compound, Compound: A Diuretic, Nervine and Sedative.  As Seeliger reports, these bottles had the same embossing with different labels to designate the specific contents. An approach similar to that used with the H. H. Warner & Co. Ltd. bottles in Melbourne. The Safe Remedies Co. bottles generally appear as amber, aqua and clear variants, although a select few may have color variations that make them more valuable.

From its beginning in 1879, Warner’s Safe Remedies had been a dramatic success growing almost exponentially and spreading out to the four corners of the globe. Perhaps in the end, its rapid success with Warner at the helm was its undoing. Perhaps he began to believe that everything he invested in was bound to produce the riches he had become accustomed to. Whatever the reason, by 1893, Warner’s intuitive skills for investing and marketing failed him. The star that had burned so brilliantly was burning itself out. Although Warner would live another 30 years, he would live them in the shadow of his former successes.