Jennie's Scrapbook: Lydia E. Pinkham trade card

In an earlier post I explained the two old scrapbooks that have been passed down to me that, long ago, belonged to distant relatives Mable and Jennie.

Jennie was my maternal grandmother's older sister. She was born in 1872 and died in 1885 at age 13. Her scrapbook and one photo of her with my then-toddler grandmother are all that remain of Jennie's short time here.









It was surprising to find a site with a photo of this same drawing plus information about it, including the fact that this is a trade card. The site providing this info belongs to the Museum of Menstruation and Women's Health -- mum.org (and I am not kidding). You could spend maybe a day reading everything that mum.org has to say about Lydia E. Pinkham, her compound, and her business. Click here to see the same card and also a link that features the back of the card, which intrigued me because Jennie did such a great job pasting the card into her scrapbook that the back would have remained a mystery. This text is from the site:

In 1875, after her husband went bankrupt, Lydia Estes Pinkham started probably the first widely successful business run by a woman in America. Her product was a medicine for "all those painful Complaints and Weaknesses so common to our best female population," meaning mostly menstruation. Even though Mrs. Pinkham had been in the temperance movement, as a student of phrenology she had studied human nature, and almost 20% of her concoction was alcohol, which she said acted "as [a] solvent and preservative," certainly solving many a problem and preserving not a few of her fellow citizens. Many similar medicines of the past used alcohol as the active ingredient, which was often the only way respectable women were able to enjoy the intoxicant. And during the banning of alcoholic beverages in America, especially in the 1920s, the Pinkham "medicine" enjoyed its greatest success.

The Brooklyn Bridge decorates a trade card (... 4" x 2.5", 5.1 x 6.4 cm), black and white) for her product. Companies advertised their products on these cards, which were available free in stores. Sometimes consumers collected them and even pasted them into albums. This card probably dates from the late nineteenth century (the Brooklyn Bridge was completed in 1883, the year she died). The sign hanging from the bridge is as imaginary as the claims she made for her compound, which are listed on the back of the card.....The words below the picture give some data about the bridge, a wonder of its day, which is perhaps what Mrs. Pinkham wanted Americans to believe about her cure.

Click here for a photo of Lydia E. Pinkham. The following information is from the site carrying the photo:

Lydia Estes Pinkham was famous for her proprietary medicine. She grew up in a circle of antislavery leaders and she participated in many reform movements. Pinkham married in 1843 and when her husband lost his money she decided to sell a home remedy to treat female complaints. Pinkham mixed vegetable roots with 19% alcohol. In 1876 she registered the label and trademark, with her soon-to-be-famous face on the label. The product did well in the 1880s thanks to Pinkham's innovative advertising copy and strategies. Although she died in 1883, her product reached its peak in 1925. The words underneath read "Yours for Health. Lydia E. Pinkham."

For much more information, probably more than you'd ever care to know, Wikipedia lists the ingredients in the original compound, as well as the ingredients in the current compound sold since 2004 under the name of Lydia Pinkham Herbal Compound by Numark Laboratories. It also includes the ingredients in a product called "Lydia's Secret" that is based on the original ingredients and sold by Time of Your Life Nutraceuticals (at lydiapinkham.org).

If you do visit the link at Wikipedia don't miss the drinking songs! ......introduced as follows:

Drinking songs that consist of numerous verses describing the humorous and ribald invigorating effects of some food or medicine form almost a small genre in themselves. Lydia and her "medicinal compound" are memorialized in the folk songs "The Ballad of Lydia Pinkham," and "Lily the Pink". A sanitized version of Lily the Pink was a number one hit for The Scaffold in the United Kingdom in 1968/69. This song was successfully adapted in French in 1969 by Richard Anthony, describing humorously the devastating effects of a so-called "panacée" (universal medicine). It should not pass without mention that the reason a humble women's tonic was the subject of such and sundry ribald drinking ballads and an increasing success in the twenties and early thirties was its availability, as a 40-proof patent eye-opener, during Prohibition. As folk songs, they have no definitive versions. Some representative samples will convey their flavor:

{Note: lyrics follow the lead paragraph....}

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