Today's find: Baby Killer

Today Steven found some more treasures in our backyard dig. It is all very exciting to wash them off and then go online to research and see what we can find out about them.

Our first piece is a bottle that is stamped "Mrs. Winslow's" "Soothing Syrup" "Curtis & Perkins" "Proprietors" When I Googled these terms online I came up with all kinds of:
Ads Books and Intact Bottles for sale The information in the link to the books suggests that this bottle was pre 1906 when the company changed their name to "Curtis & Son" and began stamping that on the bottles.

Here's some info I found online: "Winslow's Soothing Syrup Remedy was sold by traveling salesman and in Drug stores. It's main use was for Teething, some sold it as a childrens cure-all. It was also advertised or supposed to clean and whiten teeth, sweeten breath, make the gums hard and healthy. They would advertise Mrs. Winslow's Soothing Syrup - a non-narcotic medicine for children used for indigestion, diarrhowe, constipation and colic.
An infamous bottle that contained a morphine based syrup that was alleged to have sent babies off to sleep never to wake up. Mrs. Charlotte N. Winslow, mother-inlaw of Jeremiah Curtis, for about 30 years was a physician and nurse, principally among children. She compounded a soothing syrup consisting of sulfate or morphia, sodium carbonate, spirits foeniculi, and aqua ammonia, likely to sooth any human or animal, regardless of age. In 1848, Curtis and Benjamin A. Perkins became partners in Bangor, Maine, and started bottling Winslow’s Soothing Syrup in 1849. In 1911, the American Medical Association put out a publication called Nostrums and Quackery. One section called “Baby Killers” and incriminated Mrs. Winslow’s Soothing Syrup, Monell’s Teething Syrup, and others. A fascinating bottle with a controversial history ."







Steven also found more of the same "transfer" dishware. This time the pieces were bigger and one even had the trademark stamp on the back! It turns out that this pattern was made by T.&R. Boote and is the Tournay-Brown pattern circa 1885. One of the peices is part of the Rectangular Serving Platter The others must be other miscellaneous dishes from the set.


















And last, but not least are a bunch of broken bottle necks and one striking corner of a thick small bottle (perhaps a perfume bottle?). (The stick wasn't found in the neck of that one bottle, I have since discovered... Steven was using it to clean out the dirt and it got stuck. For a moment I thought we had found an original stopper that hadn't rotted through the hundred-year nap in the ground... alas nature has worked as intended and whatever stopper was originally there... has since returned to dirt.)





OOh, oooh, just one more thing. (Yes he has finally stopped digging for the moment - it is time for lunch and he finally got a cut. It is teeny tiny and on the tip of his finger, but a good excuse to come in from the cold.)

This is a bolt... wait... a nut... I forgot which you call it. The thing that you screw onto a big pipe. It is probably lead (also not so good for babies) - a little smaller than the palm of my hand and weighs at almost a pound (I found this out by using a very scientific method... first hold a pound of butter in your hand, then hold the thing... switch back and forth several times, say "hmmmm", close your eyes and think really hard and then come up with the weight of the item.)