WARES AND SNARES.

Auckland Star, Volume LX, Issue 164, 13 July 1929, Page 15 (Supplement)

WARES AND SNARES.

LOOKING BACKWARD.

HTTMOUIt IN ADVERTISEMENTS

Tin; EIDERDOWN PETTICOAT.

In these days of highly specialised progress, when the business of advertising call to its aid all the available resources of the arts and crafts, it is interesting to recall that the first advertisements were more in the nature of proclamations than deliberately devised mediums to encourage trade. Early examples, some 300 years ago, often took the form of verse; as, for example, the heroic poem of congratulation on Cromwell's victories in Ireland, to be found in the "Mercurius Politicus for January, 1652. In a general sense advertisement then denoted; any information publicly communicated. It was not long, however, before this narrowed towards the particularity we know to-day. Thus in the "Domestic Intelligence" for January, 1679, we find J*?,, crroeer's advertisement: —* William Deval, at the Angel and Stilliards, m o . Ann's Lane, near Aldersgate, London, maketh Castle (Castille) Marble and White Sope as good as any Marseilles Sope; Tryed and Proved and sold at yery Reasonable Rates." You perceive that Mr. Deval is no whit behind his modern fellows in modest estimates of the wares to be sold. The reference to the Sope of Marseilles has to do with the fact that soap, wax, tallow and similar .articles were then part of the merchandise in which the Hanse merchants dealt.

Here, perMps, we have the forerunner of the agony column and the Missing Friends columns of It is from the London "Gazette" of January, 1697:— ' > ~ > "George Tunbridge, . aged about 16, a short, thickset Lad, with a little dark brown hair, a scar in his leffc . u ° d his eye, wears a canvas jacket lined with red, and canvas breeches, with a red cap; run away from lis instant. Whoever secures iimjnd give* Notice to i Mr. Henry _Daris, Wax chandler, at, the Cow's Face, m Mdes Lane, in/Canon Street, shall have a guinea reward .and reasonable charges. One /wonders if Master Georger was returned,to the worthy waxAan^e r , and if so whether lis. canvas gaye him any advantage over the cloth breeched delinquent of y* charity bids us hope so. One of the moat striking the early advertisement wM, : lts &VOUJ ; of politeness. How opposed ,0 the curt

announcement of a sale of unredeemed pledges in the current newspapers is the following from a London pawnbroker in the year 1711: — "All persons that have any Household Goods, Plate, Rings, Watches, Jewels, Wearing Apparel, etc., in the hands of Thomas Bastin, at the Three Cccks, in St. John's Lane, Pawnbroker, which were pledged to him before the 25th of December, 1709, are desired to fetch them away by the 25th March next, or they will be disposed of."

Pawnbrokers in those days, by the way, did not always adhere to the sign of the Three Balls. Often the pawnbroker was goldsmith as well, and in that capacity used any Bign that he fancied. The first - theatrical advertisements w.ere no' more distinguished for modesty than they are to-day. In 1722 a playbill announced the following in large letters:—

"Miller is not with Pinkethman, but by himself, at the Angel Tavern, next door to the King's Bench, who acts a new Droll, called the Faithful Couple or the Royal Shepherdess, with a very pleasant entertainment between Old Hob and his Wife, and the comical humours of Mopsey and Collin, with a variety- ;of singing and .dancii'tg. The only Com-' median now that dare vie with the world and challenge the Fair."

Jemmy Wright's "Cut." Here is a barber's advertisement of the 18th century:— '

"Here lives Jemmie Wright, , •Shaves almost as well as any mail in '• England, 7 Almost—not quite."

Wright's windows were broken, so he mended them with paper, on which was scrawled the above, and the sign "Shave for a penny." It is related that Foote, the dramatist, who delighted in eccentricity of any kind, on seeing this inscription, thrust his head through the paper into the shop and called: "Is Jimnr* Wright at home?" The barber at once •' thrust his own head outwards through another pane, replying .••"No, sir, he has just popt out." t

An advertising sign penned for a barber, it is said, by Dean Swift, was as follows: —"Rove not from pole to pole but step in here, where naught excels the shaving but the beer." The reference here is to the barber-publican, who flourished in those times. The amalgamation of the two trades would appear to have lad to numerous jests in adver-

tising." . About 1866 a public house in Philadelphia, with the sign of the lion, displayed this advertising slogan: The lion roars, but do not fear, cakes and beer sold here." An inn at Stockport, England, declared elegantly: "The lion is strong, the cat is vicious, my ale is strong and bo is my liquors/ But these'instances, strictly speaking, belong rather io a history of Bignboards. Tlie vendor of patent nostrums was

among the first to 6ee the value of advertising. Here is an early attempt lauding the virtues of a "Cock Water for a Consumption and Cough in the Lunges." The recipe runs: "Take a running cock and pull him alive, then kill him and cutte him in pieces, and take out his intralles, and wipe him clsane, break© the bones, then put him in any ordinary still with a pottle of sack and a pottle of Red Cow's Milk," etc., Red Cow's milk being the nostrum in the case. Just after the great fire of London one Edward Barlet, Oxford carrier, in advertising his removal to new premises added ingenuously: "His coaches and waggons going forth on their usual days, Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. He hath also a hearse with all thihgs convenient to carry a corpse to any part of England.'* This advertisement appeared in the "London Gazette," March 12, 1672. The Flamboyant Style. Coming closer to our own times the "Illustrated London News" of 1864 provides a number of quaintly-distinguished advertisements. A Professor Anderson thus heralds his appearance at St. James' Hall: "Professor Anderson, Great Wizard of the North, cosmopolitan monarch of magicians, prestidigitator, illusionist, physicist and traveller round the world. . " With him is his daughter, "Miss Anderson, the Modern Mnemosyne and; Retro-Reminiscent Orthographist." Together they promise; a "Soiree Fantastique to contain all the known sciences on a scale of splendour, totally eclipsing all that has ever been, done in the metropolis."

M. Boissonneau, 'who describes himself as senior oculist to the French army, begins engagingly thus: "Everyone has marked the unpleasant, dirty appearance of a Glass Eye which can ahvay be detected by the disagreeable expression on the psysiognomy. . M. Boissonneau's own patented glass eye of course is the. very reverse of all this. It "combines the attributes of lightness, solidity and comfort with the expressive motion of visual organs." It is, in short, "a little chef d'oeuvre in enamel."

■Further on we read of "Eiderdown petticoats not to be surpassed for elegance, lightness and comfort, as honoured for many years by Royal and distinguished patronage?' Here is an advertisement of a crinoline: "The patent Ondina, or waved Jupon, does away with ±he unsightly results of. the ordinary hoops, and so perfect are the wavelike bands that a lady may ascend a steep stair, lean against a table, throw herself into an armchair, pass to her stall at the opera or occupy a fourth seat in a carriage, without inconvenience to herself or others, or provoking the rude remarks of the observers, thus modifying in an important degree all those peculiarities fATiding to destroy the modesty of Eng-; lishwomen.""

This advertisement appeared on July 9. On August 20, under the column heading, Echoes of the Week, the journal itself comments thus pithily on the matter of crinolines: "Crinoline, which slays our women as war slays our men, has of course' given its th?ee or four ■ victims during the week to death by fire. Talk about Juggernaut or Suttee — what are they to the idol Fashion?" Whereupon, doubtless, the proprietors of the Pateift Ondina or waved Jupon, threatened to discontinue their advt.

In these old advertisements is a treasure ground of humour and interest well worth prospecting. Incidentally, also, an opportunity is afforded to study the remarkable growth resulting in the amazingly complete equipment of the best modern advertisements.