By George did Victorian Grimsby chemist have a rather hair-raising idea to make him some cash!

HAD the creation of the Victorian Grimsby chemist George Botterill been all it was cracked up to be then he would have become one of the most famous men of the age – and made a fortune.

Sadly Botterill’s Hair Restorer was like all of the rest of the 19th century quack cures promising to stop hair loss, cure dandruff and restore greying old locks to the natural beauty of youth. His potion didn’t do much and neither did it make George rich.

All that said, Botterill’s Hair Restorer has kept the Freeman Street chemist’s name alive in perhaps rather unexpected circles: The cobalt blue glass bottles in which George sold his concoction (a shilling a time) are now rare – and collectable.

Hold the thought whilst I report that next Wednesday we’ll be putting the huge bottle collection of the Fletcher family of Old Clee under the hammer in what promises to be one of the most spectacular auctions in the bottle collecting world this year.

The sale catalogue extends to over a thousand of the bottles, flasks and flagons that historic businesses used to sell their ales, ginger beers, mineral waters, herbal remedies, medicines and the like. The extraordinary collection started forty years ago when teenagers Mark and Simon Fletcher came across a Victorian ginger beer bottle sticking out of the ground in the garden of their new home at Old Clee.

They investigated and discovered an ancient rubbish tip that would yield a treasure trove of antique bottles and trigger a collecting interest that, in the case of their father, businessman

Ron Fletcher, would last a lifetime.

The Botterill’s Hair Restorer is just one of over 200 Grimsby bottles and flagons in the collection, with another couple of dozen of Cleethorpes interest, and then Limber, Caistor, Louth, Brigg, Barton and elsewhere in Lincolnshire, as well as numerous fine examples from all over the country.

As it happens the Botterill bottle did not come from the original Old Clee tip excavation