Objects Mr Lubbock’s advertisement for smelling salts, 1898
WITHIN THE collection of the Jewish Museum London are hundreds of items relating to Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. So for this third object, just before the High Holy Days, I looked at the myriad of shofarot and the white Ark curtains. But when I came across this shop notice I was intrigued by Mr Lubbock.
We have a few objects in the collection that relate to Mr Lubbock and his shop. They nearly all relate to Yom Kippur and his adverts for smelling salts. I have no idea if Mr Lubbock ever advertised at other times of the year but if he did then we weren’t lucky enough to either receive them into the collection or we haven’t yet found them in the pages of the non-digitised items.
This black and white notice is from Yom Kippur 1898 and Mr Lubbock has taken out a notice in both English and Yiddish to tell his potential customers that not only will he be open late the night before “on this date only” but that he has “large supplies of the strongest smelling salts and choice refreshing perfumes”. Adverts for smelling salts were common at this time with the 25-hour fast day leading many men and women to purchase them to help revive themselves if they began to feel faint, especially when inside the packed and warm synagogue prayer halls.
Like many of the JC’s readers, my own family must have seen this notice and the adverts in the windows and papers of the time for Mr Lubbock’s shop. There is something about this time of year with the familiar words, routines, and foods that connect us to our past and to the generations before us. This object has the same effect for me. My family would have walked past and through Artillery Lane almost daily, and were perhaps customers of Mr Lubbock. There is a connection we find when we see these adverts that brings life to maps and names in our family tree.
Our collection has thousands of adverts within brochures, dinner and ball pamphlets, within newspapers and on trade cards. Thousands of voices shouting their wares across the years giving us a flavour of personalities down each road on the East End maps we store. When people come to the museum to learn more about their family’s past, I always encourage them to look through these records too. You may not find your family name but you’ll find their neighbours who ran the shop downstairs, the butchers they likely visited, and the bakers they popped into. Connecting to the past requires layers, and the adverts fill in all the noise that would have been there on our now quiet and orderly street maps.
We thank Mr Rubens who donated this object to the Museum’s collection, which preserves the story of Mr Lubbock, his customers and the feel of the east end of London 123 years ago.