Primarily marketed to mothers to solve the problems associated with teething in infants, Mrs. Winslow’s Soothing Syrup made its formal debut sometime in 1845. What mother could honestly resist the patent medicine’s sales pitch during the mid to late 19th Century.
ADVICE TO MOTHERS! – Are you broken in your rest by a sick child suffering with the pain of cutting teeth? Go at once to a chemist and get a bottle of MRS. WINSLOW’S SOOTHING SYRUP. It will relieve the poor sufferer immediately. It is perfectly harmless and pleasant to taste, it produces natural quiet sleep by relieving the child from pain, and the little cherub awakes “bright as a button.” It soothes the child, softens the gums, allays all pain, relieves wind, regulates the bowels, and is the best known remedy for dysentery and diarrhea…
Certainly too good to be true, the syrup wasn’t “perfectly harmless,” as the “natural quiet sleep” it produced was the result of the syrup’s active ingredient, morphine sulphate, an ingredient that wasn’t removed from the formula until 1916 when the nation’s food and drug laws along with pressure from both the medical profession and the public forced the revision. The updated product remained on the market until at least the early 1950’s.
Repotedly the brainchild of a nurse named Mrs. Charlotte N. Winslow, the origins of her syrup were described quite elegantly in a story found in the January, 1928 edition of a publication called “Drug Markets.”
During Andrew Jackson’s second administration, in the days when William Lloyd Garrison was being mobbed in Boston for his anti-slavery speeches and Abraham Lincoln was a struggling young lawyer, the babies of Freedom, Maine, were ushered into this world with the kindly assistance of Mrs. Charlotte Winslow, who, in the absence of professional aid, officiated on almost all such interesting occasions. Her fame as a skillful nurse soon became widespread throughout that portion of Maine so that she became the oracle consulted by mothers of the neighborhood upon all matters concerning the baby’s health. The teething period, especially, was a trying one, and in 1935, out of the very considerable knowledge and experience she had gained, she mixed a preparation which soon gained wide favor for its soothing effect on babies that were teething.
At first glance, I suspected that our Mrs. Winslow, along with her story, were both fabricated in an effort to market the syrup; a scenario that occurred over and over again with the patent medicine industry of the mid to late 1800’s. However, according to the “New England Historical and Genealogical Register,” dated 1901, there was a Charlotte Newman Noyes born on January 17, 1789 in Falmouth, Maine, and on October 21, 1804 she married Joseph Winslow of Freedom, Maine. So, it’s certainly possible that Mrs. Charlotte N. Winslow was serving as a nurse in Freedom, Maine during the 1830’s and 1840’s. That being said, other than lending her name to the syrup, how much she actually contributed to its development is open to speculation.
What we do know is that beginning in 1845, Charlotte’s son-in-law, Jeremiah Curtis (he married her daughter, Lucy) began advertising a soothing syrup locally in Bangor, Maine under Mrs. Winslow’s name. These early ads, the first of which appeared in the April 4th edition of the “Bangor Daily Whig and Courier,”announced it was for sale by the drug firm of J. Curtis, Jr. & Co., located at 4 Strictland’s Block, at the west end of the Kenduskeag Bridge in Bangor.
J Curtis Jr & Co. was not listed in Bangor’s 1843 directory, suggesting that Curtis started the company around the same time he began advertising Mrs. Winslow’s Soothing Syrup. J. Curtis Jr. & Co. was short-lived, and by 1846 Curtis had partnered with Benjamin A. Perkins establishing the drug firm of Curtis and Perkins. The company was certainly open for business by May of that year when this advertisement referencing their drug store began appearing in the “Bangor Daily Whig and Courier.”
Curtis & Perkins remained on Strictland’s Block where they were sometimes listed with an address of No. 4 Kenduskeag Bridge in the late 1840’s and No.1 Kenduskeag Bridge in the early 1850’s. Their business card found in Bangor’s 1851 directory included the N0. 1 Kenduskeag Bridge address.
In addition to serving as a wholesale and retail drug store, it appears the location also served as the early manufactory for Mrs. Winslow’s Soothing Syrup as well as several other patent medicines associated with the business. They included their Cramp and Pain Killer (known for removing pain in all cases), American Vermifuge (effectual destroyer of worms of all descriptions) and Spruce Chewing Gum (for removing tar and preserving the teeth).
This advertisement for both Mrs. Winslow’s Soothing Syrup and their Cramp and Pain Killer appeared in the October 11, 1852 edition of the “Bangor Daily Whig and Courier.”
In 1853, Curtis & Perkins moved from Bangor to New York City where they were up and running as early as July of that year as evidenced by this advertisement that appeared in the July 1, 1853 edition of a Schenectady, New York newspaper called “The Reflector.” Sounding introductory in nature the last paragraph of the ad stated:
…CURTIS & PERKINS, Druggists, formerly of Bangor, Me., now at 40 Cortlandt Street, New York. Agents now being established in all the principal towns in the state of New York.
While the business moved to New York City, according to the 1928 “Drug Markets” story, Perkins never did.
The gigantic nature of this step can scarcely be adequately judged today. Some idea of the conflict which must have taken place in the hearts and minds of all those connected with the project may be gathered from the fact that Benjamin Perkins, the partner, after considerable inner struggle decided that he would not go to New York. Two years later, in 1855, he decided to retire from the business and sold all his rights to his partner.
After Perkins sold out the company was initially listed in the NYC directories as Jeremiah Curtis or sometimes Curtis & Co. Always located somewhere in lower Manhattan, Curtis & Co. initially listed their address as 343 Broadway. Then sometime in the late 1850’s, the company moved to 13 Cedar Street. Around the same time Jeremiah’s son, George N., joined the firm and by 1860 the firm was listed in the directories as Jeremiah Curtis & Son. About 1863 the company relocated to 44 Dey Street where they remained until 1866 when they moved to their long-time location at 215 Fulton Street. A year later, a second son, Jeremiah W., joined the firm changing its name again, this time to Jeremiah Curtis & Sons.
While the company’s office/drug store was certainly located in Manhattan, information pertaining to their manufacturing facilities is not as clear. The 1928 “Drug Markets” story suggests that the building shown below, located across the East River in Brooklyn, at Hoyt and Third Streets, was operating as their factory beginning in 1855.
That being said, the business was not listed at that location until 1866. Prior to that, between 1853 and 1858, the business listed a Brooklyn location at 48 Fulton Street, so it’s possible that was their first factory location. Between 1859 and 1865 there’s no Brooklyn listing for the company suggesting that they may have been using the Manhattan locations of 13 Cedar and/or 44 Dey Street for manufacturing purposes during this time, but that’s entirely conjecture on my part.
By 1867 production was certainly occurring at the Hoyt and Third Street location when, according to January, 1868 court records, “Curtis v. Bryan,” the factory employed close to 100 persons and was producing 1.5 million bottles a year, a far cry from the annual production of 20,000 bottles a year mentioned in the 1853 advertisement shown above.
The 1928 “Drug Markets” story attributed this exponential growth to a healthy dose of advertising.
The first days in New York were long, anxious ones. A huge burden had been placed upon the preparation, originated by a humble country nurse. Would it survive or were the plans made by Curtis conceived on too large scale for a simple homemade remedy for the ills of babyhood? Curtis’ answer was to increase his advertising in outlying newspapers, place his preparation on a consignment basis in the hands of stock agents – the present day jobbers – throughout the country and organize a corps of thirteen salesmen.
The thirteen-person sales force, established to extend the syrup’s reach to unsettled, out-of-the way places included a colorful character named “Daredevil Dawson.”
Each man was equipped with a wagon drawn by two well groomed black horses. On the sides of each wagon was the inscription “Mother Winslow’s Soothing Syrup.” These men were the detail or contact men for the drug and general stores in the outlying districts, and they covered the entire country as far west as the Dakotas. “Daredevil” Dawson covered the far-western territory and a stock part of his equipment was a pair of “forty-fours” which he wore strapped around his waist. During local indian wars or upon visiting the trade in the “bad lands,” he added an armed cowboy to his retinue. It took him just a year to call on his territory, although most of the other twelve salesman managed to make two or three calls a year. Each man worked from some designated point which he used as a base for supply, thus solving the warehousing problem.
In addition to newspaper advertising, during the 1860’s and 1870’s the company also produced an annual publication called “Mrs. Winslow’s Family Almanac and Domestic Receipt Book.”
Aimed at the housewife and mother, the book included recipes and household tips interspersed with advertising copy for a number of Curtis & Sons’ concoctions. This page from the 1874 edition mixed in recipes for blueberry cakes, wheat muffins and corn bread among others with items touting Mrs. Winslow’s Soothing Syrup and a worm medicine called Brown’s “Vermifuge Comfite.”
In 1880 the company changed its name to “The Anglo-American Drug Company,” with the announcement appearing in the July 13th edition of the “New York Herald.”
It was around this time, actually in the early 1870’s, that the presence of morphine in the syrup was beginning to draw the attention of the medical profession as evidenced by an April, 1872 article in the “Pacific Medical and Surgical Journal” that warned of the dangers of morphine. Written by W. F. McNutt, M. D., of San Francisco, it said, in part:
MRS. WINSLOW’S SOOTHING SYRUP – A POISON
My attention was first called to the baneful effects and the enormous consumption of this nostrum by an article in the November, ’69, number of the California Medical Gazette, by Dr. Murray, U.S.A. Dr. Murray had been called to see a child aged six months, apparently in a dying condition from the effects of some narcotic poison. He found that this soothing syrup was the only medicine which had been administered, and of it the child had taken two teaspoonfuls within ten hours. There was remaining in the vial from which the two teaspoonfuls had been taken, ten drachms, which yielded, on analysis by a skillful chemist, nearly one grain of morphia and other opium alkaloids to the ounce of syrup….
Dr. Murray, in the article already referred to, says: “I have ascertained that there are about one hundred thousand two-ounce bottles of it sold annually in this city, containing about one hundred and eighty thousand grains of morphia, which are given annually to the babies of this State.”
If the babies of this State consume two hundred thousand ounces of soothing syrup, it is but fair to assume that there is seventy-five times that amount used in the whole United States, which would make 15,000,000 ounces of syrup, or about 14,000,000 grains of morphia. Setting aside the direct cost of the nostrum, it would be scarcely possible to estimate the damages which the people of the United States sustain indirectly from it use.
Despite these early warnings it wasn’t until the nation’s food and drug laws were enacted in 1906 that the company was forced to admit on its label that the syrup contained morphine. A pharmaceutical publication called “The Druggist Circular” took some credit for this change in their May, 1907 edition.
Our warning as to the danger of using morphine-laden Mrs. Winslow’s Soothing Syrup has been often repeated since 1883. In the CIRCULAR for that year, page 27, is an account of the death of infants caused by this nostrum, and the editorial comment: “We think that the sale of poisonous secret compounds should be forbidden.” In the same volume, page 155, is an account of another fatal poisoning by Mrs. Winslow’s Soothing Syrup. It is possible that our showing (in July 1904, page 139) that in Great Britain this nostrum could not legally be sold without a poison label, had more than a little to do with the enactment of that portion of the federal pure food and drugs act which provides for the statement on the label of the quantity of morphine, etc., contained in the preparation of the package.
In New York City a ruling by the Board of Health took it a step further, prohibiting the sale of morphine laced products without a prescription. This advertisement run by the Riker drug chain included Mrs. Winslow’s Soothing Syrup on a list (6th from the bottom) of products that fell under this umbrella. The ad was published in the September 2, 1910 edition of the “Brooklyn Daily Eagle.”
That same year, The federal government put Mrs. Winslow’s Soothing Syrup first on a list under the heading “Baby Killers,” a list that was published in both medical as well as general publications. This version of the list, found in the January 7, 1911 edition of a weekly magazine called “La Follettes,” followed the list up with the following questions:
Readers, what do you think of a list like this? Are you using them, feeding the little ones opium, morphine, cloral hydrate and like products in order to stupefy and not help their suffering?
With both reputation and sales likely in a free-fall, the company finally reacted sometime in 1915 and resolved to remove the morphine from their syrup. The December, 1916 edition of the “Practical Druggist” picks up the story from there.
The new manager and treasurer of the Anglo-American Drug Co., manufacturers of Mrs. Winslow’s Soothing Syrup, is C. C. Schooley, an accountant and efficiency engineer of wide reputation. When he took charge about fifteen months ago, it was with the resolute determination to re-establish the old favorite as a modern favorite with the mothers of the land.
Mr. Schooley’s first step was to engage chemists to eliminate from the formula the narcotic and alcoholic contents of the old product, at the same time retaining the many virtues of the preparation. The intent of the new formula is to quiet the child through more normal processes than by opiates and stimulants. Mild laxatives, digestives and correctives, with aromatic oils, are among the medicinal qualities of the new product…
Uniformity of product is also assured under the new order of things, replacing the “haphazard” brewing methods of former days…About the only trace of former days is the name and buff label, which the management aim to put back on the map again with a great moral prestige to boot…
The new product was placed on the market January 1st…
A national advertising campaign aimed at promoting the new formula was implemented in September/October of 1916. This October 8, 1916 “Detroit Free Press” advertisement bragged:
IT IS ABSOLUTELY NON-NARCOTIC
and does not contain opium, morphine nor any of their derivatives.
The ad even named the ingredients of the re-worked formula, a formula that sans narcotics now focused more on issues related to bowel movements and less on teething.
The reasoning behind the eight month delay between the January release of the newly developed formula and the September/October national advertising campaign suggested that the company’s motives behind their new formula were not altogether altruistic. According to the September 28, 1916 edition of an advertising publication called “Printers Ink.”
This new product has been on the market since January 1st of this year. But the company has only started to advertise it. And here is the one flaw in its new course as we see it. No particular efforts have been made to take the old product off the market and replace it with the denatured goods. Rather an active eight-months campaign was made to move the old goods, to make way for the new. Where jobbers or dealers asked the replacement of the old with the new this has been done, but such action has not been courted deliberately.
After revamping the formula, by 1919 the company also eliminated the word “soothing” from the name, typically referring to it in advertisements as simply Mrs. Winslow’s Syrup. The change is reflected in this February 12, 1919 ad found in Oregon’s “Daily Astorian,” one of the earliest I could find.
Although the company was attempting to change the product’s image it appears that the country was apparently slow to come around. This is exemplified by a lawsuit that arose five plus years after the formula change. It was described in the June 1, 1921 edition of the “New York Tribune.”
Alleging that the integrity and reputation of that well known children’s pacifier, Mrs Winslow’s Soothing Syrup, is attacked in the motion picture “The Nut,” in which Douglas Fairbanks portrays the title part, the Anglo-American Drug Company, manufacturer of the syrup, filed a suit for $100,000 damages in the Supreme Court yesterday.
The United Artists’ Corporation, owned and controlled by Fairbanks, Mary Pickford and Charlie Chaplin, is the principal defendant, the individual motion picture stars also being named as defendants, along with D. W. Griffith and Hiram Abrams, the producers, and Kenneth Davenport, William Parker and Lotta Woods the authors of the picture that has aroused the ire of the guardians of Mrs. Winslow’s preparation.
The action is based on a leader or caption used in “The Nut” in a scene of an explosion of miniature shells fired by a character named Charlie Jackson. The explosion throws several people to the floor, and they are apparently rendered unconscious, whereupon there is flashed on the screen the caption: “As a sleep producer Charlie’s incense has it all over Winslow’s Soothing Syrup.”
According to the 1928 “Drug Markets” story, by the late teens changes to more than just the formula were taking place.
In 1918, due to fluctuations brought on by war conditions, the company decided to have its product manufactured by another and to confine itself to sales exclusively.
As far as I can tell the new manufacturer mentioned above was the Lafayette Drug Company of Jersey City, N. J., and their relationship with the Anglo-American Drug Company continued even after the war.
As late as 1939 the Anglo-American Drug Company, still located at 215 Fulton Street in Manhattan, remained focused on the sale of the syrup as evidenced by this advertisement that appeared that year in the November 4th edition of the “Hobart (Oklahoma) Saturday Newspaper.”
At the same time, according to a “History of Drug Containers and Their Labels,” by George Griffenhagen and Mary Bogard, published in 1999, the Lafayette Drug Company was still manufacturing Mrs Winslow’s Syrup as late as 1945.
It’s possible that sometime in the early 1940’s the Lafayette Drug Company actually took over the entire operation. While I can’t confirm this as fact, it’s certainly suggested by the labeled Mrs Winslow’s Syrup vial pictured below that appears on the Smithsonian Institution’s website. It names the Lafayette Drug Company as the product’s distributor and refers to them as :
Successors to Curtis & Perkins and Anglo-American Drug Company.
As late as 1951, Mrs. Wilson’s Syrup was occasionally listed in drug store price lists found in newspaper advertisements.
Over the years I’ve found two vials embossed MRS. WINSLOW’S SOOTHING SYRUP. Blown in a mold, they match this description found in the 1867 court case referenced previously.
The preparation is put up in glass bottles, about five inches in length, and one inch in diameter, with the words “Mrs Winslow’s Soothing Syrup” stamped upon them.
Also embossed on the subject bottles is the company name: CURTIS & PERKINS, PROPRIETORS.
At some point, embossing on the Winslow bottles was changed to include “Anglo American Drug Co., Successors to Curtis and Perkins.” This suggests that the subject vials date no later than 1880 when the company name was changed to the Anglo-American Drug Company.
On a Final Note:
It appears that the Brooklyn building at Hoyt and Third Streets that housed the Mrs. Winslow factory remains to this day. With the exception of a relocated front entrance (from the middle to the near-end) the current building matches identically (sans the air conditioners) with the photo of Curtis & Sons factory building pictured in the 1928 “Drug Markets” story.
