R155 & Pharmaceutical Company Cancels: Gilpin, Langdon & Company

GILPIN, LANGDON & CO.

DEC

16

1898

BALTIMORE.

from The College of Pharmacy Catalog, 1891

Documentary Printed Cancels: Is the C.E.C. Found on Half Cent Gray Documentaries a Charles E. Cornell Printed Cancel?

Yesterday I posted stamps canceled by Dr. Fahrney & Son, a proprietary medicine company based in Maryland.  Dr. Fahrney used printed cancels on the 5/8c proprietary and 1/2c documentaries.  Today is presented Charles E. Cornell, who used printed cancels on the 5/8c proprietary, and, if the initials are any indication, on the 1/2c documentary as well.  Additional confirmation is needed for the 1/2c documentaries, as all we have is a match with the initials, C.E.C., though not the type font.  Courtesy of Frank Sente, we have multiple examples of the 1/2c documentary.

Based in New York, Charles E. Cornell made a variety of soaps and skin products.  

C.  E.  C.

August,   1899

Langlois scan, ex-Tolman

Below are three examples of 1/2c documentaries with August 6 1900 dates and C. E. C. printed cancels.  Are these by Charles E. Cornell?:

C.  E.  C.

Aug.  6th  1900

Langlois scan

C.  E.  C.

Aug.  6th  1900

Sente scan

C.  E.  C.

Aug  6th  1900

Sente scan

Sometime ago, Frank Sente sent the stamp above with an off-center C.E.C. cancel that includes perpendicular to the stamp printed letters at the upper right.  He offered the following comments in an email:  

"I have a gray 1/2 cent documentary with what I believe is a printed cancel that also bears some extraneous printing on it. I always figured it had been placed on the document BEFORE it was printed and picked up some of the printing either because it wasn't properly placed on the document to begin with, or the printing went a bit askew.  Look at the upper right corner of the right of the R162, 1/2 cent just above. See the extraneous lettering? Another stamp with presumably printed C. E. C.cancel is provided for comparison. Puzzling n'est-ce pas??

E. S. Wells: Another Documentary Printed Cancel

The pursuit of documentary printed cancels continues.  Today is presented a new cancel to me from the proprietary medicine firm E. S. Wells.  The term medicine here is used somewhat loosely, as the firm was well known for making a rat poison it called "Rough on Rats".

The firm used printed cancels on proprietary stamps, and used what appears to be the same canceling plate on 2 cent documentary stamps, likely for their use on checks.  Blocks that include the manuscript-style red printed cancel are illustrated here on the 5/8c proprietary and the 2c documentary.  In both cases it appears the 1898 plate was used.  But for the 2c, part of the second 8 has been removed so that the number more closely resembles a 9.  If anybody has an example of an E. S. Wells 2c documentary on a check, please write or send a scan of the check to 1898revenues@gmail.com.  We'll post the scan here.

1898

E. S. Wells

JUL  11

1899

E. S. Wells

The last 8 in 1898 has had the lower left portion of the number planed off to resemble a 9

Sheet music cover the E. S. Wells smash hit, Rough on Rats

From Matt Reynolds, in a comment at the East Carolina Digital Collection website:

"The Wells Company, based in Jersey City New Jersey, offered a wide range of products including Rough on Corns, Rough on Itch, Rough on Toothache, and Wells’ Health Renewer. Wells promoted all of the company products far and wide in both newspapers and via advertising cards. He even produced a Rough on Rats song touting the effectiveness of the poison, which included the chorus: “R-r-rats! Rats! Rats! Rough on Rats, Hang your dogs and drown your cats: We give a plan for every man to clear his house with Rough on Rats” Sadly, some purchasers of the product chose to misuse it both to take their own lives and to take the lives of others. The most notorious case of the latter was the poisoning of Ada Appelgate by her husband Everett Appelgate and his mistress Frances Creighton. Both were convicted of murder in 1936 and were sent to the electric chair at New York’s Sing-Sing prison shortly after.

Bank Check Tax Paid with 4 R162 Gray Half Cent Battleships

Dave Thompson has sent a recent barrage of interesting material to post on the site.  The most interesting is a check made out to a prominent maker of proprietary medicines, Gilbert Brothers & Company, based in Baltimore. 

Check front from November 22, 1899. 

The front of the check is unremarkable, though there might be an interesting story if I could make out the signature.  Whatever the case, the reverse side of the check is the special part:

R162 block of 4 to make up 2 cent check tax

Bob Hohertz, a co-blogger at this site, is an expert on checks of this period and beyond.  I would want to know what he could tell us about how scarce this usage might be.  Any help Bob?

Gilbert Brothers advertisement

At the time of the cancel above, the firm was located at 9 North Howard Street in Baltimore before moving to Lombard Street in 1913, as in the advertisement immediately above.  The company made a line of products named for someone named Yager, including Yager's Sarsaparilla, which was one it most popular products. 

Perhaps Malcolm might uncover an interesting story about this firm in a future On Beyond Holcombe post.

Pe-ru-na Issues a Merchant's Draft

The Peruna, or Pe-ru-na, Drug Manufacturing Company was big business at the turn of the twentieth century. The illustrated $259.00 draft called for payment on three days' sight, so was properly taxed at six cents - two cents for each hundred dollars or fraction thereof.

Peruna was located in Columbus and the Stein Vogeler Drug Company was located in Cleveland, but the Western German Bank apparently received the draft on the day it was written, February 23rd, and sent it by runner to Stein Vogeler, where it was accepted the same day and paid into the Peruna account at the bank promptly.

Many merchant's drafts did not allow extra time for the paying company to process them, expecting it to be done "on sight." By giving three days Peruna may have been exercising good business practices but it cost them four cents more in taxes to do so.

And what was Pe-ru-na? From Collier's Weekly, October 28, 1905: "Peruna, or, as its owner, Dr. S. B. Hartman, of Columbus, Ohio (once a physician in good standing), prefers to write it, Pe-ru-na, is at present the most prominent proprietary nostrum in the country." The following material is from the same source, liberally abridged:

"What does Peruna cure? Catarrh. That is the modest claim for it; nothing but catarrh. To be sure, a careful study of its literature will suggest its value as a tonic and a preventive of lassitude. But its reputation rests on catarrh. What is catarrh? Whatever ails you. No matter what you've got, you will be. not only enabled. but compelled, after reading Dr. Hartman's Peruna book 'The Ills of Life,' to diagnose your illness – as catarrh and to realize that Peruna alone will save you. Pneumomia is catarrh of the lungs; so is consumption. Dyspepsia is catarrh of the stomach. Enteritis is catarrh of the intestines. ... Bright's, disease is catarrh of the kidneys. Heart disease is catarrh of the heart. Canker sores are catarrh of the mouth. Measles is, perhaps. catarrh of the skin, since "a teaspoonful of Peruna thrice daily or oftener is In effectual Cure." ... Similarly, malaria, one may guess, is catarrh of the mosquito that bit you.

"Peruna is not a cure-all," virtuously disclaims Dr. Hartman, and grasps at a golden opportunity by advertising his nostrum as a preventive against yellow fever! That alcohol and water, with a little coloring matter and one-half of 1 per cent. of mild drugs, will cure all or any of the ills listed above is too ridiculous to need refutation. Nor does Dr. Hartman himself personally make that claim for his product. He stated to me specifically. and repeatedly that no drug or combination of drugs, with the possible exception of quinine for malaria, will cure disease. His claim is that the belief of the patient in Peruna, fostered as it is by the printed testimony, and aided by 'gentle stimulation,' produces good results.

"Any one wishing to make Peruna for home consumption may do so by mixing half a pint of cologne spirits, 190 proof, with a pint and a half of water, adding thereto a little cubeb for flavor and a little burned sugar for color." The article goes on to cite some lurid stories involving alcohol poisoning.

The Pure Food and Drug Act was not passed until 1906.

Cancel for December 15: Smith Brothers Cough Drops

The famous Smith Brothers trademark logo. 



S.B

12/15/1900

manuscript cancel

Smith Brothers trademark from bank check upper left

The complete check

You can still buy Smith Brothers Cough Drops by visiting the website for The Victory Old Time Candy Store.

RB20 1/8ct proprietary attached to Smith Brothers packaging.

Sente scan

From the current Wikipedia entry for Smith Brothers: 

William Wallace Smith I (1830-1913) and Andrew Smith (1836-1895) were the sons of James Smith (c1800-1866) of Poughkeepsie, New York. James' family had emigrated from Fife, Scotland, in 1831, and James had emigrated from St. Armand, Quebec in 1847. In New York, he opened a small restaurant, ice-cream parlor, and candy business, called "James Smith and Son". James Smith bought a cough drop recipe from a peddler named Sly Hawkins. In 1852, James developed lozenges and advertised them in the Poughkeepsie paper selling them to those "afflicted with hoarseness, cough or colds". William and Andrew inherited the business after their father died in 1866. The brand was then named "Smith Brothers Cough Drop". In 1872, to prevent drug stores from selling generic lozenges, they developed one of the first factory filled packages with trademark branding. On the packaging the word "Trade" appeared under the picture of William and the word "Mark" under that of Andrew, they were then incorrectly referred to as Trade Smith and Mark Smith. Andrew died in 1895, and William continued as president of the company almost up to his death in 1913. William was succeeded by his son, Arthur G. Smith (c1875-1936), who continued to expand the company by adding menthol drops (1922), cough syrup (1926) and wild cherry drops (1948). Arthur G. Smith had two sons: William Wallace Smith II (1888-1955) and Robert Lansing Smith (1891-1962). The trust funds that owned Smith Brothers stock in 1963 merged their company with Warner-Lambert. The last Smith Brothers Cough Drop manufactured in Poughkeepsie was made in 1972. They were thereafter manufactured by F & F Foods in Chicago, Illinois.

Cancel for March 17: McKesson and Robbins

McK.  &  R.

MAR  17  1899

McKesson and Robbins handstamp cancel on R164 2 cent documentary

McK.  &  R.

NOVEMBER,  1898.

McKesson and Robbins printed cancel on RB29 3 3/4 cent proprietary

McKesson and Robbins used printed cancels on many stamps of the proprietary series, on multiple values and with multiple dates.  An exploration of those cancels is pending on this site.

McKesson and Robbins is today known as the McKesson Corporation (NYSE: MCK) and is the largest health care company in the world.  2009 sales were $106.6 billion.  Today the firm's headquarters are in San Francisco.  The firm was founded in New York City in 1833 by Charles Olcott and John McKesson.  A third partner joined later and the firm's name was changed to McKesson and Robbins after Olcott died in 1853. 

McKesson experienced a scandal of Enron proportions in the 1930s.  The firm was taken over by a man named Phillip Musica operating under the alias F. Donald Coster.  He was a twice convicted felon who used his brothers to create a shell company to which he directed bogus payments.  By the time the fraud was discovered, $20 million of $87 million in assets on McKesson and Robbins' books were bogus.

Today McKesson is one of the oldest continually operating corporations in the United States.

Cancel for December 16: Joseph S. Angeny Jr. Apothecary

JOS. S. ANGENY JR. APOTHECARY

DEC 16

1899

AMBLER, PA

***

In an 1896 edition of the newspaper the Ambler Gazette there are several mentions of the J.S. Angeny pharmacy selling various patent medicines of the era including Chamberlain's cough medicine and H. E. Bucklin's New Life Pills, companies that used large quantities of battleship proprietaries and used printed cancellations.

H.  E.  B.  & CO.

JULY   1   1898

H. E. Bucklin printed cancel on eighth cent proprietary.  Cancel of July 1, 1898 marks the first day the tax was in effect. 

Herbert Bucklin’s Chicago-based company produced four patent medicines including:

1. Dr. King's New Discovery for Consumption, Coughs and Colds
2. Bucklin's Arnica Salve
3. Electric Bitters
4. Dr. King's New Life Pills.

And the company spent widely in the United States to advertise these products, which might explain the mention in Joseph Angeny's advertising in the Ambler Gazette.  Much more on Bucklin and his products will come later when company's printed cancels are examined in greater detail on this site.

Cancel for December 15: Johnson & Johnson

JOHNSON & JOHNSON.

DEC

15

1898

Much more common as a cancel on the proprietary series of stamps, this Johnson and Johnson date stamp was used on this 2 cent documentary.  Firms in the proprietary medicine business were regularly hit with both proprietary and documentary stamp taxes.  Johnson and Johnson used large numbers of handstamped proprietary battleships yet they also had their own private die made:

Johnson and Johsnon produced a private die proprietary stamp based on the basic design of the battleship revenue stamp.  More regarding Johnson and Johnson 1898s at rdhinstl's site (the private die image above is from that site).  On that site you'll see a CDS used on a proprietary stamp that is smilar to that used on the 2 cent documentary above.

Robert Wood Johnson, founder of Johnson and Johnson

His company is a corporate and health products icon today.

Pharmaceutical Cancels: H. K. Mulford

H. K. MULFORD CO.

PHILA.

Undated circular handstamp for the pharmaceutical firm of H.K. Mulford Co., an antecedent company to the current Merck Corporation.  H. K. Mulford developed diptheria anti-toxin in the United States in the late 1890s soon after its initial discovery and use in Germany.  They also developed an early small pox vaccine and kept its own cattle to do so.  Unlike many of the snake-oil firms of the time, H.K. Mulford developed some effective vaccines and medications, and is considered by many authorities to be one of the first firms in the United States to use scientific methods to develop and create medicines. 

H.K. Mulford developed the drug to combat the toxin secreted by the diptheria bacillus.  Diptheria's damaging effects come from that toxin.  Prior to the development of an effective vaccine against diptheria which would have promoted human immune response to diptheria and prevented a case of the disease, scientists discovered anti-toxin in the blood of animals exposed to diptheria and developed methods to extract effective doses of the anti-toxin.  In the early 20th century a vaccine would be developed against diptheria.  Antibiotics are used against active diptheria infections.  Diptheria anti-toxin is still made today but is rare.

H.K. Mulford would eventually be acquired by the firm of Sharpe and Dohme, which would in turn merge with Merk.  Mulford's early history would presage Merck's later success as a developer and manufacturer of vaccines.