Ingredients of ‘miracle’ tonic were a closely guarded secret
FOR those winter coughs, chesty wheezes and bronchitis there was, in time gone by, a simple answer – reach for the bottle of Owbridge’s.
Every home seemed to have one and the dark brown cureall which came out was more than just a medicine, but a “lung tonic” as well.
For this “miracle” the people of the nation had to thank the work of Walter Owbridge, a Hull pharmacist who had moved across the Humber from Haxey, Lincolnshire, and opened a shop in Porter Street where he developed the mixture that would make him famous.
Just what it contained remained a closely guarded secret, even in the 1930s the recipe was kept in a safe and viewed each year by accountants doing their annual audit. Many tried to guess what it could be, and some publications even produced their own guessed recipes.
It was said to said to have included chloroform, honey and ipecacuanha wine and was not suitable for babies under six months old, but fine for everyone else.
When it first appeared, the “lung tonic” was popular with
fishermen who sailed for the distant water grounds, but began to achieve much wider appeal.
Owbridge initially made his home in Great Thornton Street and at first operated in a warehouse in Adelaide Street. In 1895 he moved to Midland Street on the corner with Osborne Street opposite the Model Dwellings and the distinctive building which today still marks the story of “lung
tonic” and is now converted into the Owbridge Court homes development that opened in 1991.
As his product reached across the nation Owbridge was honoured by Hull’s decision makers, being appointed Sheriff in 1896.
He was also a Hull councillor, but lost his seat the following year.
Undeterred, but still keen on being a part of local politics, he
then became an East Riding county councillor for Cottingham where he lived.
Owbridge died in 1901 and the business passed to his nephew, Fred, who masterminded expansion of the premises in 1919.
The following decades saw Owbridge’s established as a common “cure” in almost every home and in 1969 the business was bought for £350,000 by Organon Laboratories Ltd, a subsidiary of the Dutch pharmaceutical group KZO.
But the days of the product were numbered, not so much because it was regarded as outdated or inferior to later products, but because the new owners found it too expensive to carry out upgrading of the premises.
The result was that in January 1972, Hull saw closure of a factory that had turned out one of its most famous products.
IT SEEMED a good idea at the time. But like many others dreamed up in Hull, nothing ever happened.
This one came after World War One, when the “forgotten” keelmen and boatmen who had served in the Navy and minesweepers and handled lighters on European waterways were to be honoured with a victory hall on a site that would later be that of City Analyst’s Department on the corner of Alfred Gelder Street and High Street.
A meeting led by the then Lord Mayor Councillor P Gaskell, started a fundraising campaign declaring that work of the inland waterways would increase “wonderfully” in the years to follow.
Before the war, he said, there had been plans for a system of canals in the city. Land was to have been bought cheaply on the outskirts and canals run through it.
The Victory Hall was to serve as a keelmen’s exchange and club where merchants, carrying companies and shipbrokers requiring the services of keelmen could get in touch with them. The premises would also be a centre for social and religious work among rivermen. A river and canal population of up to 1,000 would benefit.
Nothing came of it however, how much was raised and what happened to it t is