Warner’s Safe Cure: The Morning Telegram (1903)

I am always on the lookout for advertising from Warner Safe Remedies offices outside the United States. While print advertising inside the US was prolific, the same does not seem to be the case with the foreign offices. Below is a print ad from The Morning Telegram of November 11, 1903, which at first glance appears to be from the London Office. However, when you take a closer look at the text toward the end of the ad, it directs the buyer to the Toronto Office at 44 Lombard Street.

My favorite part of this ad is that it claims to cure “Weak Women” from “a life of suffering and an untimely end.” Wow, what more can you ask?

Warner’s Safe Cure: Digging in Toronto

I always love to hear bottle digging stories, especially ones where the treasures unearthed include a Safe Cure or two.  Recently, on his site Dumpdiggers, Rob Campbell recounted the story of The Lost Creek Under Toronto’s Streetcar Condos.  This is a wonderful account of  the digging of a long lost creek that yielded some 300+ bottles, including a rare 3-Cities Safe Nervine Half Pint. The half pint Nervine from Toronto is rarest of the Warner’s from that office with the exception of the Reversed “N’s” Safe Cure. Nice work Rob.

Warner’s Safe Cure: Foreign Language Labels

It stands to reason that if you are going to market a product in a foreign county, doing so in the native language increases the appeal of that product. That is true, not only today, but in the late 19th Century as well. Many of Warner’s foreign markets were countries where English was the predominant language (Canada, England, Australia and New Zealand). That is not to say that other languages were not spoken in those countries, but rather that the use of English did not handicap sales of Safe Cure.

Other foreign markets did not use English as their primary language (Germany, Austria-Hungary and France) and the labels on those products were translated into the native language. It is interesting to note that, while the labels were modified to reflect the native language, the embossing was not. This suggests that there were limits on what Warner was willing to do to appeal to his customers outside the United States. It also suggests that the embossing was an important part of his “brand” and his trademark that he was unwilling to modify. The same can be said of “Warner’s Safe Cure” on the label. It remains in English notwithstanding the fact that the remainder of the label is translated. Again, brand and trademark. Above, is a detail of the Frankfurt Safe Cure label. Below is another version, this time it is the rare Darmstadt label.

The Pressburg labels offer a slight variation from Frankfurt, although they are very similar.

Finally, there is the French label Safe Cure. As I have said in earlier posts, this bottle is embossed “London,” but bears a French label, which suggests that sales to France were London-based. This notion is strengthened by the fact that the base of the French label does not list Paris or another French city as an office, but instead lists London, Franfurt and Rochester.

The labels included in this post are the examples that I am aware of, however, I still believe that Warner likely marketed his product south of the United States border to Mexico, Central and South America. Any yet, I am not aware of any examples of a Spanish label.  If such a thing exists or if you have examples of other foreign Warner’s labels, please let me know and I will supplement this post.

Warner’s Safe Errors: 3-Cities Safe Cure “Reversed N’s” Revisited

For those of you who follow this blog with some regularity, you know that back in October, 2008, I featured a bottle, which I referred to as the 3-Cities Safe Cure “Reversed N’s,” because of the fact that the “N’s” in the embossing of  “TORONTO, CANADA” and  “LONDON, ENGLAND” on the sides of the bottle were backwards. At that point in time, only one of these bottles had surfaced and it was listed in the Ojea/Stecher Warner’s Reference Guide as a “one-of-a-kind”.

If you watch eBay and other online auction sites, you know that on occasion, rare bottles surface and can be purchased for well under their true value. The key is knowing what is and what is not rare. As I have said in the past, I am constantly dismayed by people who list  common or good Warner’s Safe Cures are “rare,” either out of ignorance or as deliberate misrepresentations. Long story short, do your homework and know what it is you are buying and don’t just take the seller’s word for it.

In a recently concluded eBay auction, a second 3-Cities Safe Cure with Reversed “N’s” showed up and sold for slightly over $400, well under the value such a bottle might fetch at a show by a Warner’s collector. I was watching that auction with interest (since I have the other one) as was Steve Panton, who commented on it after the auction concluded.  So much for my one-of-a-kind. I guess two-of-a-kind isn’t so bad. Keep watching those online auctions, you never know when a gem may pop up!

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 Errors: 3-Cities Safe Cure “Reversed N’s”

Although the Warner’s reversed or left hand safe is perhaps the most classic of Warner’s error bottles, one of the rarest is the 3-Cities Reversed N’s. This bottle (only one example is known) is in all other respects a typical Toronto (3-Cities) Safe Cure. However, upon close inspection of the embossing along each side, the error becomes clear. The “N’s” in London, England and in Toronto, Canada are all reversed. It is astonishing that the glassmaker that assembled the mold that produced this bottled so completely flubbed the letters.  Having said that, I suspect that the person doing the assembly was required to assemble the letters in reverse, so getting the “N’s” backwards is understandable.  I suspect it was an error that was quickly caught by quality control, which explains the rarity of this unique bottle.

The Warner’s Reference Guide lists it as 69A and notes its status as a one-of-a-kind. Thanks to Ed Ojea for the photographs of this rare bottle.

Warner’s Foreign Offices: Toronto (3-Cities) Revisited

Back in June, when I first wrote about the Warner’s Safe Cure office in Toronto, I promised to update you as I came across additional material. Well, thanks in no small part to the work of Wayne Harris in Australia, I can keep that promise.  When I profiled the London Office, I was able to provide you with a fairly complete list of the addresses at which that office was located from its inception to its demise. Toronto was another story. I was never able to find any published material that provided that information. Thankfully, Wayne had been doing research on the Toronto Office and was kind enough to pass along (as best as he can tell) the locations of the Toronto Office duing its existence.

The listings for the Toronto Office were as follows:

1883     H. H. Warner & Co., 18 Front Street East, Toronto. Proprietary Medicines.[This is the first listing for Warner in Toronto].

1894     No Listing for H. H. Warner.

1895     Warner’s Safe Cure Co., 42 Lombard Street.

1896     No Listing for Warner’s Safe Cure Co.

1899     The Warner Safe Cure Co., E. H. Woolley, Agent, 44-46 Lombard Street.

1906     Edward H. Woolley & Sons are listed at the Corner of Atlantic & Pacific Avenues.

1909     Edward H. Wooley & Sons are listed at the Corner of Atlantic & Hanna Avenues.

1922     No Listing for Warner’s Safe Cure Co., but listing for E. H. Woolley & Son at 348-350 Sorauren Avenue.

1924     E. H. Woolley & Sons listed at 42 Wellington Avenue.

1929     No Listing for  E. H. Woolley & Sons.

1937     E. H. Woolley & Sons and Warner’s Safe Remedies Co. both listed at 3rd Floor, Caulk Building, West Side, 172 John Street.

1938     The last mention of the Woolley firm and Warner’s Safe Remedies Co.

1939     No mention of Warner’s Safe Remedies Co. and the Woolley firm appears to have fragmented.

Wayne notes that although the Warner’s Safe Cure Co. and its successors as well as the E. H. Woolley & Sons firm are not continuously listed at various times, the Woolley firm likely acted as agents for The Warner Safe Cure Co. and its successors from 1899 until 1939.

Special thanks to Wayne and his contacts in Canada for running down this information, which has not been published previously to my knowledge. It raises the question of whether any of the buildings that served as offices for the Toronto branch are still standing. As I am well distant from Toronto, that’s a question someone else will have to answer.

Warner’s Safe Cure: 3-Cities (Canadian vs. British?)

The Warner’s Safe Cure bottles that were produced from the Toronto Office were unique in that they bore the names of Warner’s foreign offices at the time: Rochester, Toronto and London arranged around the face of the bottle. It became conventional wisdom that these 3-Cities bottles were all Canadian. But, as with so many other aspects of the Warner patent medicine empire, there is always an exception waiting in the wings.

The Toronto 3-Cities variants have common features: double collar lip and the full spelling of CANADA and ENGLAND. Although the 3-Cities bottles do not come in variety of colors, they are great bottles and, with the exception of the Safe Cure, can be truly difficult to get.  Indeed, the half pint Nervine is considered a Top 10 bottle by many.

In the mid-1990′s a previously uncataloged 3-Cities Safe Cure pint emerged. Unlike the its Canadian cousins, this variant had a blob lip rather than the double collar and the words “Safe Cure” were on one line, rather than two. In addition, the names of the two countries on the left and right sides of the bottle were abbreviated: “LONDON, ENG” and “TORONTO, CAN.”  The question became, if these 3-Cities were not from Toronto, where were they from. No one knows definitely; however, because many of the known examples have surfaced in England, it is reasonable to conclude that they represent a British 3-Cities.  As far as the question of “why,” the best possible explanation appears to be that Warner may have been experimenting with a generic Safe Cure bottle that could be issued out of any of his foreign offices with the mere change of a label.  While the Canadian 3-Cities Safe Cure is considered a good bottle, its more recently discovered British cousin is rare.

The bottle pictured on top is the Canadian 3-Cities Safe Cure and the one below is the British 3-Cities Safe Cure. I apologize for the sub par lighting on these pictures, but if you look closely, you will see the bottom picture has the abbreviated country, the blob lip and “Safe Cure” on one line rather than two.

Warner’s Safe Cure in Paris?

In his quest to extend his patent medicine empire around the world, H. H. Warner made stops in Toronto, London, Frankfurt, Melbourne, Dundein and Pressburg. But why did he apparently miss the opportunity to open foreign offices in places like Rome, Madrid, Moscow or Paris? That may be a question that is lost to history, but there is evidence that Warner marketed his products beyond the cities embossed on his bottles. Perhaps the best evidence of this can be found in his advertising and in at least one of his bottles.

The 1891 Almanac is particularly interesting. It is entitled “Census Statistics” and depicts eight arms reaching toward a box of Warner’s Safe Cure. On the sleeve of each arm is the name of one of the Warner foreign offices: Frankfurt, Pressburg, Toronto, Melbourne, Dundein, London, Rochester and Rangoon, Burmah. That’s right, Rangoon. To me knowledge, no one has ever found a Warner’s Safe Cure embossed Rangoon or bearing a Burmese label. And yet, the almanac puts Rangoon alongside Warner’s other established offices.

The second piece of advertising that suggests a broader foreign market is a flyer issued by Warner’s London office. The flyer provides Warner’s London address on Laystall Street, but just below that it states “ALSO AT PARIS, KREUZLINGEN, BRUSSELS, &c.” This would seem to suggest that Warner’s Safe Cure had made it to France, Switzerland and Belgium in addition to Burma. As with the Rangoon Office, no one has unearthed a Safe Cure embossed Paris, Kreuzlingen or Brussels. Having said that, there is one additional piece of evidence which confirms that Warner had, in fact, targeted the French market.

Above is the only known example of a French labelled Warner’s Safe Cure. Although the label is clearly in French and designed for Parisian consumers, the bottles is embossed London. Had this bottle been tossed into a trash pit and its label destroyed, it would be just another London Safe Cure. This proves that Warner not only marketed his Safe Cure in countries beyond his foreign offices, but that he may have done so by using a bottle embossed with a known office, such as London, and a label for the new market. Based upon this evidence, it may be that Warner’s Safe Cure actually made it to Burma, but used a bottle embossed Melbourne or 4-Cities or that one was available to the Swiss in Kreuzlingen but contained in  a bottle from Frankfurt.

One thing is for sure, the Warner’s Safe Cure empire was larger than his embossed bottles  would suggest.

Warner’s Safe Rheumatic Cure

Rheumatism is one of those nonspecific diseases that I have always associated with elderly people. Another way of saying aches and pains. Dorland’s Medical Dictionary (27th Ed.) defines it as:

[A]ny of a variety of disorders marked by inflammation, degeneration, or metabolic derangement of the connective tissue structures of the body, especially the joints and related structures, including muscles, bursae, tendons and fibrous tissue. It is attended by pain, stiffness, or limitation of motion of these parts. Rheumatism confined to the joints is classified as arthritis.

Like I said, aches and pains. Apparently, rheumatism concerned folks in the 19th Century enough that they were willing to part with their hard earned dollars for the promise of relief from any number of patent medicine proprietors, including H. H. Warner.

In the world of patent medicine, most illnesses were the result of some affliction of the blood or the kidneys. Rheumatism was no exception. In his 1888 Artist’s Album, Warner devoted an entire page to Rheumatism saying “RHEUMATISM IS A BLOOD DISORDER AND MUST BE REACHED THROUGH THE KIDNEYS IN THE BLOOD.” (See above). The ad goes on to attribute this so-called blood disorder to “an acid condition of the kidneys caused by bad stomach action, indigestion, and false action of the kidneys and liver in blood purification.” It finally promises relief through alternating use of Warner’s Safe Cure and Warner’s Rheumatic Cure.

On an interesting note, if you look at the bottom of the page, you will see a testimonial for Rheumatic Cure attributed to Mrs. Carrie D. T. Swift of East Avenue, Rochester, NY. I suspect that she was the wife of Professor Lewis Swift, the astronomer who ran the Warner Observatory. Certainly, Mrs. Swift would have been motivated to support the products of her husband’s benefactor.

Warner’s Safe Rheumatic Cure was also the subject on one of Warner’s early trade cards depicting a poor soul with both feet bandaged and elevated and being attended by a lovely Victorian woman with Cure in hand. This card has no written pitch save that depicted on the box of Safe Rheumatic Cure on the lower right hand corner of the card. Obviously, the message of the card was thought to be self-expanatory.

The label on the bottles also offered relief from Sciatica, Lumbago and Gout. Indeed, most people associate the use of foot bandages as indicative of gout rather than rheumatism. The Rheumatic Cure must have been a good seller, because it migrated to most of Warner’s foreign offices including London, Frankfurt, Dundein and Melbourne. For whatever reason, the Toronto (3-Cities) and Pressburg Offices did not issue a Rheumatic Cure. As with most of the Warner’s Safe Cures, regulation gave rise to the use of “Remedy” rather than “Cure,” although the claims remained largely the same.