A cure from the past at the Mount Hope library

Construction crew unearths a cache of intact bottles that once held Victorian-era elixirs and potions

DURING

ROUTINE construction work on the grounds of the Mount Hope library last July, a shovel full of earth started a treasure hunt.

Buried and long forgotten were bottles that once held elixirs, cures and potions.

The library, with the help of Fisher Archaeological Consulting, has pieced together a history of the objects which will go on display at the Mount Hope library at the end of the month.

“It was really special to find the pieces intact and in such good shape,” says Emily Anson, archeologist with Fisher Consulting, who was called to the site to view the discoveries.

The first item workers found when digging a water line for the new Mount Hope Community Park behind the library was an earthenware jar.

“The construction guys left it sitting on-site along with a few bottles,” says Carol Wilkinson, Mount Hope library manager. “We tucked them away and started investigating.”

The large stoneware jar was in perfect condition and was stamped F.P. Goold & Co./Brantford C.W.

The Brantford pottery was the largest pottery maker in Canada, operating from 1849 to 1907 using clay it imported from the U.S. on barges moving from Buffalo to Brantford, via Lake Erie and the Grand River. Their durable salt-glazed stoneware serviced a growing market in Southern Ontario.

“It’s really quite exciting to find a jar so intact and with the maker’s mark of a local potter,” Anson says. “It may have been stored deep in a basement, which protected it.”

Bottles found on the site date to the Victorian era, before regulations governed products sold as miracle cures.

“They were typical of what would be sold at travelling medicine shows,” Anson says.

Among the discoveries was a dirty brown bottle with “Kendall’s Spavin Cure” embossed on the shoulder. It seems, Dr. Benjamin Kendall made this secret formula around 1880 in Vermont to treat swellings, wounds and sprains. The ingredients were unknown, but based on Kendall’s other “cures” for both humans and animals, it’s not surprising he was later called “a typical enterprising quack of his day.”

A small aqua-coloured bottle embossed with “Mrs. Winslow’s Soothing Syrup” has an interesting history. This medicine, made from about 1845 to 1890 according to the Wood Library Museum of Anesthesiology, was a remedy for teething infants.

The two primary ingredients were alcohol and morphine, and proved so effective at soothing pain, the makers reportedly sold about 1.5 million bottles annually.

A bottle marked “Luby’s for the Hair” promised to keep hair dandruff-free, clean, cool and itch-free, it also claimed to keep hair from falling out.

Some bottles unearthed during construction were unmarked but one embossed with “Atlantic Wine and Bot” was clearly labelled “This bottle is not to be sold.”

There’s some speculation the collection of domestic articles relates to a former Temperance Hall that was built nearby in 1854.

Now this excavation of the past is soon to be on display at the Mount Hope library in a building dating to 1904. The bottles and jar will establish a sense of place according to Wilkinson.

“They are very much tied to our local history and make a visible connection to the site and how it was used.”

PHOTOGRAPHY BY BARRY GRAY, THE HAMILTON SPECTATOR

Construction work at Hamilton Public Library’s Mount Hope branch, pictured at top, unearthed a treasure trove of Victorian-era jars and bottles still intact, at left. Above, Shelley McKay, the library’s communications manager, inspects one of the bottles.

A tiny glass bottle of 'Soothing Syrup.’ One of the artifacts unearthed on the grounds of the Mount Hope branch of the Hamilton Public Library.

This bottle, at left, is embossed with “Atlantic Wine and Bot” and was clearly labelled: “This bottle is not to be sold.”

PHOTOGRAPHY BY BARRY GRAY, THE HAMILTON SPECTATOR The 1904 cornerstone of the Mount Hope branch of the Hamilton Public Library.