DEATH OF SIR JOSEPH BEECHAM.

Press, Volume LII, Issue 15767, 7 December 1916, Page 4

DEATH OF SIR JOSEPH BEECHAM.

THE MAN WHO MADE A FORTUNE

BY ADVERTISING

The death took place at his Hampstead residence, on October 22nd, of Sir Joseph Becchnm, who was undoubtedly the most striking example in our day— perhaps in any day—of the man who owed n mammoth fortune to advertising (says a London paper). The tame of "Beecham's Pills" was world-wide. '.'Worth a guinea a box" was th c terse and apparently convincing declaration of their merits that met the eye of every reader of countless newspapers and magazines throughout tho world. Concise and comforting, it pleased the reader even if he never became a purchaser himselr. Hc felt at hopie wherever ho found it, and that was virtually everywhere. From Pimlico to Palestine, from Sydenham to Sydney, from the Cape to the northernmost Hebrides, Beecham's Pills advertisements persisted en taking first place in the .traveller's attentions or in the attention of the man who stayed at home. Sir Joseph Beecbain realised to tho full the wisdom of the teaching of the patent medicine man in Mr H. G. Wells's "TonO-Bungay"— to make the most of a good thing and to "keep it before the public everywhere and at all times. He had his reward. If he made Beecham Pills a household word throughout the English-speaking world and showed incidentally how advertising is the road 'to wealth, he could claim credit, too, for having brought even prominent politicians to show that they knew of the famous cure-all like mere ordinary mortals. When he gave evidence bcfor n the Select Committee on Patent Medicines, iSir Joseph Beecham, in answer to Sir Heni-y Norman, who asked if he had a box of his pills he could give thc Committee, at onco handed over a large box and a small o'je, both of them bought, h e explained, at a shop near bv as he came along to the House of Commons.