Big Jugs in Barrie

What are you doing here? Tim asked defiantly.

I came to go digging. Didn't we say...?

'It's raining out bonehead!' Tim declared.

Well its not really raining - its just foggy.

'Get in the truck.' Tim doesn't need much convincing to go out looking for antiques, but on wet days in the winter months, he digs indoors.

On a foggy Friday afternoon I followed Timbits around the historic town of Barrie Ontario to look at rare and valuable early Canadian pottery.

Like a trapper out tending his trap line, Tim walks in a preordained pattern on each premises and keeps a pocket full of ready cash to buy any undervalued pieces he spots. Experience has taught him that most Southern Ontario antiques dealers don't know their local history or recognize the names of less prominent potters. If you want to track Tim down on eBay I believe his handle is 'Tim bottle digger' or some combination of those three words. He keeps a close eye on the newest dealer's booths in many local antiques malls, and seems to know the prices of most things without looking at the tags . Its fun to pick up something interesting and ask him what he would pay - its always less than the sticker price.

Tim is especially fond of the Barrie Antiques Centre; the high turnover inside this busy complex demands his frequent scrutiny - and the gregarious management here is also surprisingly helpful in discussing industry news, auction updates, and I suppose this friendly but informative banter is also part of Tim's search ritual.

I wish I had asked the proprietor his name. He was a nice guy, but Tim didn't want to say too much about the prices of the good pottery in front of him though... business and all.

In fact it's tough to get Tim to endorse anything expensive - for the most part he seems to reserve praise for items priced under ten dollars. But he does like salt glazed 'merchant crocks' and that place is packed full of them.

Salt glazed stoneware is created by adding common rock salt (sodium chloride) into the chamber of a hot kiln. Sodium as a flux and reacts with the silica in the clay. A typical salt glaze piece has a glassine finish, usually with a glossy and slightly orange-peel texture, enhancing the natural colour of the clay sealed beneath the glaze. I believe the process dates back to the 14th Century.

Tim likes stoneware jugs that are stamped with merchant's names and addresses from small towns in Ontario. This jug is from a wine merchant in Brantford, Ontario and that makes this piece a 'merchant's jug'. Yes this kind of detailed information on the stamp makes it possible to really accurately pinpoint the relic in time and place, and such pieces are therefore a welcome addition to any Canadian pottery collection.

If you click on and expand the image above you will more easily notice that this particular stoneware jug is 'spalding'. That means that this salt glazed pottery was carelessly stored in a damp basement, or perhaps outside in a garage or barn and, over the years, moisture has crept in under the finish. Those water molecules will over time, bubble up the glaze and ruin the skin of the ceramic. Restoration is difficult. A pottery collector could use a dehumidifier and maybe even a hairdryer to banish the moisture, but fixing the blemishes is a heart breaking exercise in futility.

I made sure I got my hands on a two gallon Flak and Van Arsdale from Cornwall, Ontario. This handsome kiln fired salt glazed beehive was made around 1874 and sold for a nickel; today's price is about $350 bucks!

At this point Timbits told me an interesting story about the blue floral designs that are always present on the early Canadian 'flower jugs' .

The potter, or in some famous cases here in Central Ontario the potter's most trusted assistant, would finger paint the same design on every piece! This primitive early branding was very important to consumers who grew to trust the vessels on which they could identify and recognize the flower. And when that proud potter retired, his son or his business partner took over the operation, and the company's signature image would change slightly... sometimes noticeably, but in many cases its still the same basic design, whether that was a flower or a bird or a horse. The new pattern would not be a significant departure from the earlier 'brand'. As I looked around the Barrie Antiques Centre, I saw many fine examples of this 'brand evoilution'. Tim pointed me toward a collection of crocks from Justin Morton & F.P. Goold. Behind them, I found a jug from a Hamilton potter named Robert Campbell. He had succeeded his father William in about 1875 - both men finger painted a flower pattern on their pieces, but Robert's decal was larger and friendlier.

A wonderful piece, this five gallon crock was made by W.E. Welding in Brantford Ontario in approx 1880. It has enjoyed a very long life as a handy storage container for a wide range of consumables such as water, soda, beer, meat, grain, jelly and pickled vegetables.

This crock could have been made from potters clay obtained in the Don river valley - there was a prolific clay pit there and its well known that Toronto teamsters would deliver that valuable white clay to potteries all over Ontario.

Tim is a true friend. He could see I was interested in learning about the history of Early Canadian Pottery and so he gave me his premier book on the subject by Donald Webster.

On page 78, I found the following census information that nicely details the rise and fall of Ontario potteries. In 1851 there were only thirty potteries in Upper Canada. But by 1861 there were forty potteries and eighty six potteries, and by 1871 there were 166 potters working eighty six potteries. The census of 1881 found seventy two potteries employed 182 potters. The decline, which was to start small and accelerate rapidly appeared first in the 1891 census where figures showed that 115 potters worked sixty potteries.

Early Canadian Pottery by Donald Webster was published in the USA in 1971 by the New York Graphic Society Limited, Greenwich Connecticut. Its broken into ten chapters:
EARLY CANADIAN POTTERY
1. The Production of Earthenware
2 Quebec - The French Period
3 Quebec - The Later 18th and 19th Centuries
4 Ontario Earthenware
5 Earthenware of the Maritimes
6 Miniatures, Toys and Whimseys
7 Salt-glazed Stoneware
8 Manufacturing - Rockingham and Yellow-ware
9 Whitewares and Porcelain
10 The Archeology of Potteries

The last chapter looks especially interesting, but I won't skip ahead to see where or how these guys are digging...

An Urban Gulch

It was an ugly, damp, fog covered morning in Toronto on Thursday 27^th September 2007, but that's ideal weather for digging up old dumps.
Marked by Timbits as a ‘sure thing’, the day’s secret location was tucked away behind some factories on the east side of the city near Lake Ontario. Tim had driven past the gully a few times earlier in the summer, and had wondered about its historic past; now he was sure it was an old dump.
I could see why. The prescribed dig zone was at the base of a small hill where a chain link fence had once kept animals and debris from emerging onto a busy road. The fence is gone, washed away, and the ever expanding washout now shows furnace ash peppered with glass and broken bits of pottery.

The grass on the surface of the site was littered with plastic water bottles and cursed with stinging nettles. These feisty weeds scratched my legs real bad before I donned my dirty pair of ‘dump pants’. Tim used his shovel to define the hole; together we would spend the day digging the 5x5 portal to early industrial Toronto.

Digging here was easy at first. The ash was like wheat flour and gave no resistance, but unfortunately, yielded no treasure. Only when Tim used a pick axe to expand the sides of hole, did anything interesting emerge... Tim recovered a small blue Bromo Seltzer and an unusual face cream jar. I found a medicinal vial that could have contained cosmetic oil or perhaps an exotic fragrance... or opium. All of this ‘crap’ was discarded to the right, and it was in that spot that our 'stash’ started to grow.

After crumbling the sides and digging straight down into the ash, we encountered a dark layer filled with charred metal. Underneath the heavy black strata the ash continued again, and below that, Tim spotted egg shells. This was a good sign.

White egg shells preserved in rust colored dust are all that’s left of century old kitchen trash. After Tim dredged up a clear Lydia Pinkham’s vegetable compound, he knew we were getting close to domestic refuse.

Minutes later, Tim’s shovel punctured a rich ‘goody vein’ filled with century old bottles – this was pay dirt at the bottom of the hole. One after another Timbits found three crown top Toronto soda pop bottles from approx 1910-15. In order, Tim found AMERICAN SODA COMPANY / TORONTO; JJ McLaughlin / Toronto; Union Soda Manufacturing / Toronto. All these bottles are relatively common, but the thrill of finding them encouraged us to continue our ash mining operation.

When it was my turn in the hole, I went even deeper – right down into a maelstrom of burnt bricks and cobble stones. These yellow red cobblestones were hand carved and imported from England in the late 1880s. Old English cobble stones are very valuable, ironically they’re probably worth more than all the bottles we had so far discovered… But who cares? Sure old cobble stones are highly prized by landscape decorators, sure they can sell for a thousand dollars a truck load, but who would dig all day for stones?

Tim pointed down into the hole. ‘What’s that beside your boot?’ I saw the top of an ink crock buried in the red ash clay - the fragile neck just inches away from my steel toed work boots.. Carefully I knelt down and excavated the relic – it was a four quart jug in absolute mint condition. Sadly, it contained no embossing.

When Tim got back down in the hole (getting in and out of the hole was becoming more and more of a problem) we started finding stuff again. Broken dishes gave way to broken milk bottles, and two came up intact. Fortunately, both were embossed. One very common milk bottle reads ACME DAIRY / TORONTO and the other, more valuable vessel has twenty or so half inch panels all around the circumference and is embossed with the words OAKLAND DAIRY / JOHNSON BROS / COLL. 638.

As we expanded the hole, we encountered more material in the carbonized layer – more evidence that the dump was burnt off early in its life and the buried garbage had reached high temperatures... The charcoal fossilized remains of wooden boxes, lamp shades and paper cups could easily be identified, but just one touch and these objects would crumble to dust. Tim stopped digging when he struck a block of burnt newspapers. These had been packed together and then perfectly incinerated. When I cracked the block open I could read the headlines (from the Globe and Empire) that was world news almost one hundred years ago. Have a look at December 12^th 1915 – Allied bombing exploits make the front page. On the other side of the block were Christmas ads for fur coats, and ‘well chosen blouses and shoes’. None of these items cost more than twelve dollars.

My favorite finds of the day must include the short square American drug bottle from the apothecary of Mary T Goldman / St. Paul Minn. and a near worthless Canadian drug bottle embossed NERVALINE / PREPARED BY THE CATARRBOZOHE CO / KINGSTON ONT which I like because its an old school Canadian patent medicine that succeeded in becoming world famous . In the future I’ll clean this bottle and write a piece on the history of the Catarrbozohe company.

At the end of the day, Timbits declared the entire stash to be worthless junk. He was disappointed that so much of the site was burnt. It's obvious that this gulch was a fire pit in 1915, and the tiny ribbon of household trash at the bottom of the crevice was just one or two family’s winter cleaning - it was just the old newspapers and bottles from one or two houses. Someone back there was taking Nervaline, and used Lydia Pinkham’s Vegetable Compound. Someone else enjoyed a variety of common soda pops, and another dumper tossed in a couple of milk bottles. Someone who lived around here in 1915 migrated from St Pauls Minneapolis. They brought their personal medicine. But it all ended up under a century of Toronto’s ashes.

When we photographed the hoard Tim acted disappointed, but I was proud of our work– it was trip back in time with a bucket full of glorious keepsakes. Monetarily, these relics are almost worthless. The Johnson Bros milk bottle would probably be the only bottle worth taking home, and I'm sure Timbits wouldn’t bother... He raised no objection when I stuffed the piece in my duffel bag along with the others. To me every relic is a word or a sentence in the story of that particular place, one hundred years ago.

Digging Dumps in Downtown Toronto, again.

On Sunday, August 26^th 2007 Timbit the Treasure Hunter took me dumpdigging in downtown Toronto. The dig master had a few spots lined up, and he let me choose a new situation in a dump he calls ‘Cherry Street.’ We had an immediate discussion (disagreement) about the concept of gentrification, which was just defined here on Wondercafe.ca this week. Tim denied the area around this dump is improving, but I contend that this region of Toronto is rapidly ‘gentrifying’ and that the contaminated grounds are being removed one by one as each properties’ market value escalates.

Tim is a veteran adventure conductor; he reasoned that the amount of digging required to hit pay dirt in this spot was just about equal to the amount of daylight remaining and the amount of bottled water in our bags.

Obscured from the curious glances of cyclists and passing automobiles in the thin shade of some soft maple trees, we sunk a new shaft beside an older hole.

Timbit had dug in this particular spot before, about ten years earlier, and now there were small trees growing up through the top of his old dirt piles. Tim noticed with mild amusement that the hole he had created in 1997 was now square in one end, where, no doubt, one of Toronto’s many homeless people had sheltered. I always find it ironice that if they had the time or the inclination they too could burrow for treasure in this sleepy hollow…

As Tim described his earlier escapade I listened carefully to the details… he had found a few crocks here and some whiskeys. I opened my ears as he related the history of the area, and I nodded in agreement when it felt appropriate - when he proposed the exact position in which we should expend our energies, I started digging,

Tim Braithwaite is a professional dumpdigger; he is a fulltime treasure hunter and an avid bottle collector. When other dumpdiggers share their stories he listens with patience and understanding; he has already seen everything once and dug everywhere twice.

I am a faithful servant, a documentarian who details his adventures, a soldier with a shovel who moves a lot of dirt.

A BENT HORSESHOE

More than a little superstitious, I marveled at a bent horseshoe I uncovered in my first shovel full of dump. This object was our dig’s first omen – was it good or bad? A bent horseshoe must signify something… “What would cause a horseshoe to bend like this?’ I wondered aloud.

“One hell of a traffic accident’ Tim replied and of course I then imagined a cart horse going too fast, cornering too hard, and upsetting his cargo… but that was nonsense – this horseshoe had been crushed by a machine. ‘That horse was eaten… ’ Tim said with conviction ‘and a glue factory worker removed that shoe after it was bent in some machine or plow or sledge.’ Anything was possible - we dumpdiggers could only speculate.

JAM CROCK

Early on our August 26^th dig in the Cherry St dump Timbits uncovered many broken jam crocks. The small white stoneware is an enduring icon to the pioneer age. This was locally manufactured kitchenware that allowed settlers to preserve native fruits and berries throughout the winter. In the summer months a 1800’s family might enjoy home baked bread, butter and jam, cucumber sandwiches and cold pork.

I’m sure the aboriginals taught the European settlers a thing or two about making jam in Canada. Both the Iroquois and the Huron peoples had been making some of North America’s best pemmican for ages, and had evolved a very sophisticated trade network – depending on the season and the territory, blueberries, cranberries, and wild currents were combined with dried deer meat, sunflower seeds and other nuts; all was thoroughly mixed in animal fats, and pounded into a mash before being dehydrated in the hot August sun. Timbits laughed when I suggested that blueberry pemmican and strawberry pemmican were no doubt crowd favorites.

TWO COMMON DRUG BOTTLES

In the next goody vein we hit Timbits dredged out some small medicines, blanks and a T Eaton Drug Company bottle. A small cobalt blue Bromo Seltzer bottle which, when recovered in absolute mint condition is only worth about five dollars.

THE REBAR RITUALS

Dumpdiggers are not wont to walk away without a fight and the rebar in the hole that prevented us from getting a good swing was really annoying.

OT SAUCE BOTTLE

Three feet beyond those finds there appeared in the hole a sheer top OT sauce bottle, this clear glass specimen featured a sharp embossing of a hot pepper. Imported sauce bottles were common in the early 1900’s. Timbits incidentally dismissed all of his discoveries so far as junk, and in his opinion nothing yet recovered was worth ‘cleaning time’- he is right of course. I found this LINK on Ebay to a Seller in Australia trying to merchandise a beautiful green antique OT sauce bottle that’s older than mine and better embossed with the words ‘Granny Sauce’ for five bucks and getting no buyers.

L.T. KIRKLAND SODAS

A pair of LT Kirkland pop bottles came up next – the two units appeared intact, they had been sitting beside each other for ninety five years. The aqua glass was stained and a little ‘sick’ but the embossing on the sides of each bottle was quite sharp. If cleaned and polished the units might fetch two dollars each – but I doubt anyone would buy them. Toronto soda pop collectors probably already have enough L.T Kirkland bottles.

One of the more interesting conversations that erupted that day was ‘when was the golden age of bottle collecting?’. I tendered the notion that perhaps the golden age was still in the future, and I pointed to all the new information resources and sales portals on the internet feeding a future collecting frenzy. Tim however shook his head - negative. In his mind the golden age was twenty years ago when many bottles were more common. People who found the bottles back then were more apt to try and collect more specimens – and they were more apt to go digging for them too…

TIM’S TREASURE

At the end of the dig Timbit recovered only one item worth keeping. I suppose this object, an amber crown top quart SANFORD INK & LIBRARY PASTE will be vended down in the USA among ink collectors as soon as Tim tumbles it clean...

In this photo the amber Sanford Ink and Library Paste bottle is on its side in front of the Kirkland sodas and the small medicines.

Click on the photos -- they expand.

Haunted Gold Mine

The smell of fresh cooked pork sausages filled the air as we loaded our provisions into two canoes alongside the long wooden pier at Bare Point Marina. The four of us had already drove half an hour west from Kenora, through an unkempt Indian reservation named Rat Portage, to the north east corner of the Lake of the Woods - it would be another hour or more before we stopped for anything to eat.

On this particular Saturday afternoon the world was bright and alive with the sound of children’s voices, dogs barking, and the ubiquitous hum of motor boat engines. None of us could fathom that our adventure would leave the land of living and descend into the darkness of the dead. There's no cell service on Lake of the Woods, and we travelled back in time as we paddled across Bald Indian Bay 

This is a true account of how we came to hear the ghostly voices of four dead miners at the bottom of the Number Two shaft on Sultana Island.

I'm Rob Campbell and I led the August 4^th 2007 expedition to uncover the history, and search for valuable relics in the bowels of Sultana Island. This is the story of a forgotten gold mine, and one that’s not completely abandoned. Accompanied by Trixie Blasé, Jasmine Edu and Chester Huff (and two four legged friends, Theo and Poncho) my intrepid crew or fortune hunters set out with the best intentions.

The plan was simple – by canoes it would take us forty minutes to cross the bay. We planned to explore Sultana Island all afternoon and then return before sunset. It was our objective to find the lost gold mine and rummage around through the remains of some of the original buildings. Trixie and I have been trained by the very best dumpdiggers on how to dig century old foundations to find important relics… It’s important to remember, this mission started as a treasure hunt, not a séance.

Sultana is one of the most famous gold mines on the Lake of the Woods. The original claim was staked in November 1888 by Henry Bulmer, who sold the 27 acre property to a group of fifteen men who called themselves the Ontario Mining Company. This group, who did not even bother to register the claim, hired a prospector and a mining engineer from New York to assay their purchase. Unfortunately this ‘expert’ wrote an adverse report in the summer of 1889 and because of this document a third party named John F. Caldwell of Winnipeg managed to pick up the claim for a very reasonable price. He ignored the expert. He had visited the site himself and truly believed there was gold in the greenbelt quartz - he was right.

Mining operations commenced in the summer of 1892 when three small veins were discovered in the rock. Caldwell must have found enormous profit in his first six months as he soon spent $30,000 erecting a five stamp mill on the island. This was a steam powered machine that crushed quartz to release gold nuggets from the ore. The machinery was imported from Chicago and its assembly was completed just before Christmas. The stamps weighed 850 lbs each and were dropped eight inches 92 times a minute in the standard order, namely 1,5,2,4,3.

When we arrived at Sultana we found the sandy beach deserted of all life and the shore absolutely full of driftwood. It was a Beachcomber’s paradise. Beyond the dunes there was long grass and a dense forest that obscured all signs of any previous development. Just beyond the trees we encountered a crumbling rock wall holding back a mass of rusty barrels that was bisected by a narrow trail that snaked its way up a steep incline. A set of stairs had been cut right into the rock.

Chester found a small chunk of dark red ore buried in the soil here – a crumb of some really heavy metallic mineral. When I dug down into the rocky soil I dredged up barrel hoops and bucket handles, thick square nails, and rusty hinges… There was corrugated steel roofing lying in the grass beside the trail - this was all that remained of some structure no doubt integral to the operation of the mine.

As we continued walking up the rise the rest of the island came into view. At the top of the hill we each stared open mouthed at a century old rock cut that was the throat of the number two shaft. In the jaws of this stone cavity we could see moss covered timbers set right into the rock. At one time these tree trunks had supported a sturdy platform on which miners might have worked the hoists. At one point I threw a stone down into the darkness and we listened as it ricocheted off the sides of the passage - we waited almost fifteen seconds to hear the splash.

Unaware of any danger I climbed down the rock wall to stand on the bed of timbers. Immediately I felt a blast of very cold air rising from the cave – although it was the heat of the summer there was still plenty of ice down there in the darkness. Trixie was the first to hear it – dripping water echoed up the shaft and between each drip there were other sounds, less natural.

In December 1899 Caldwell sold the mine – he’d made his fortune and was probably aware that further mining would not produce more bullion than he’d already liberated from the island. The new owners kept the staff; 12 miners, 1 blacksmith, 5 mill men, and 2 cooks were each employed at $3.00 day. The Sultana mine had been very profitable for many years and the new management was eager to maintain production – too eager.

When the gold seams faded away into the rock a few months later the organization hired explosive experts and ferried a mass of low grade dynamite to the site. As the TNT was lowered down into the pit there was an accident. History doesn’t record exactly what happened, but it does detail the deaths of four miners in 1901. Two men were buried in the rock at the bottom of the tunnel - it took a week’s digging to recover the bodies. Those are the two spirits who cries forever resonate in the darkness of the mine.

Trixie bade us all to shut up and listen. Just for a moment, as I peered into the darkness of the abyss I could hear the rope squeaking and then I too heard the faint echo of human voices… it sounded like two men whispering soft warnings to each other… The air grew even colder as their voices grew louder and every member of the expedition was paralyzed with fear – we slowly backed away from the rock cut and then quickly ran down the hill and back to the boats. It was seriously scary stuff – fear pervaded our very beings and it wasn’t until we were back in our canoes and well away from shore that we could discuss the experience. We laughed about it then, but I think it’s safe to say that each of us was overcome with fear.

When I researched the mine at the Lake of the Woods Museum in Kenora, I learned that although the Sultana property was worked off and on for another thirty years it was never as productive as it was before the accident. And it was riff with very spooky incidents that speak of supernatural phenomenon; on two occasions there were dynamite boxes mysteriously emptied of all explosive material before they could be deployed. Equipment was found broken at the bottom of the pit and many new miners reported hearing voices calling out to them, begging for help. When I read that a cold shiver climbed up my spine; I had been there and had heard those voices myself.

The Quest in Campbellford Ontario

About this time last summer a digger named Little Hole went looking for Campbellford's first municipal dump. He found it. And although it had been probed by other diggers, to his surprise it was still full of gingerbeers and early Canadian glass.

The survey map above was made in 1878 and shows Campbellford as a thriving settlement on both sides of the Trent River. Notice the black dashed line that bisects the image? That's the proposed railway line which was to be built two years later in 1880.... That railroad line was moved south and Little Hole used this map to help find the treasures documented in this article - finding the real railway line was the key to finding the 1885 town dump.

X marks the spot! Little Hole found the place outside anyone's thoughts or perception, but still inside the actual town of Campbellford. Here beneath his shovel was a (mostly) virgin dump and Little Hole could only imagine the historic treasures it might contain...

Little Hole immediately called for some help sinking a hole. And I of course embraced the challenge - like a borrowing rodent I moved dump.

We spent evenings and weekends at the site all summer long, and really came to know the place. The Campbellford 1885 town dump is in fact many dumps, spread out over about fifty years time. Under three feet of nondescript ash and dirt, there were about a dozen well stratified layers of trash. Each of these pockets is a period in time. Each can tell the story of the community, to anyone willing to listen. Every relic unearthed is another sentence in the chronology of Campbellford's existence.

The pearl ash in the stratigraphy is from two major sources - very hot fires both here at the dump, and the population of the town produces furnace ashes - which was also mixed with lime and used as road paving material. Some of this ash could be road paving that's been removed. Up until the early 1900's the streets in Campbellford were 'paved' in hard packed potash made by settlers burning hardwood trees while clearing their land.




Little Hole, who collects 1800's Ontario ginger beers bottles found this rare and special treasure on a hot night in late August. Here he is on site holding a mint James Thompson ginger beer bottle from nearby Hamilton Ontario.

August 17th 2006 was a very special day. On that day Little Hole and myself, Rob Campbell hit a big pocket of well preserved ginger beer bottles, and lots of rare whiskys and sodas. It was the mother-of-all goodie veins and we diggers chased it down, under a tree, right to the very bottom of the dump.

Before ‘flipping for picks’ (like most dumpdiggers we flip a coin to see keeps what) we lined up our symphony of dug relics to collectively admire the hoard.

Pic of the Picks The Quest in Campbellford Ontario culminated in the best cache to which I've ever contributed. Little Hole snapped this photo late in the afternoon and I love the patches of light on the trees in the swamp behind the dump.


The whiskeys, inks, medicines and ginger beer bottles recovered here were waiting in the earth for almost one hundred and twenty years.

Burdock Blood Bitters

Last week I went digging for treasure with Timbits at the bottom of a deep hole in downtown Toronto. In the fertile mud of the 1870 shoreline, I recovered a small Burdocks Blood Bitters bottle. Click on the picture.

Although I have seen this common proprietary medicine many times before, its memorable name always makes me smile. When I showed Tim my prize, he remarked at the bottle’s small size… His wisdom soon informed me that this small variation might actually be valuable because of its unusual small size.

‘It’s just a taster’ he explained, ‘this is what they sold for a penny at fall fairs and in promotions downtown.’ According to Tim this bottle was worth keeping. Apparently several Toronto medicine collectors are still looking for all of the T. Millburn Drug Co pieces and the small BBB is quite rare… And now I’m suddenly more curious about Burdock’s Blood Bitters.

Burdocks are those clinging weed balls that get matted into your pet’s fur, especially if they are dry. I’m sure you’ve all spent time brushing them out of a dog’s coat, and you’ve picked a few off your own jacket and pants too… But what you probably didn’t know was that burdock root has long held curative medicinal properties. Yes indeed one hundred years ago a lot of people really believed that dried and powdered burdock root was perfect cure for stomach cramps and constipation.

Called Arctium lappa by the Latin speaking monks of England, there is some history of this plant’s use in monastic life. It was mentioned in a medical text somewhere in the late 1700’s by either Hume or Locke and this inspired other writings which followed English doctors to North America in the early 1800’s. Doctors in Upper Canada were always searching for natural remedies to ease their patient’s pain and suffering. Upset stomachs and constipation were common ailments for which wealthy men could afford regular attention. Having watched all episodes of Deadwood on HBO I’ve seen the good doctor scour the woods looking for herbs to make compresses, or use his mortar and pestle to process dried plants into digestible pastes, tinctures and teas.

Researching Burdock on Wikipedia informed me that Burdock has been a favorite medicinal herb for centuries and is used for many ailments. Burdock root oil extract, also called Bur oil, was popular in Europe as a scalp treatment applied to improve hair strength, shine and body, help reverse scalp conditions, and combat hair loss. Folk herbalists consider dried burdock to be a diuretic, diaphoretic, and a blood purifying agent. The seeds of A. lappa are used in traditional Chinese medicine, under the name niupangzi.

Dried and powdered burdock root was a folk remedy for upset stomachs and constipation in late medieval England. Someone in the Milburn household must have, at one time or another dug up and dried and powdered the root of a burdock plant. A remedy was concocted for constipation, and the experiment must have succeeded... That's the story I've been looking for online, and of course that's the story I will never find.

The Acton Free Press archives page, describes the town in 1888, and features a detailed account of each building.
‘The drug and stationary store of Dr. N. McGarvin comes next. This being the only drug store in town it does a large and profitable trade. In these premises the immense proprietary medicine manufactory of Messrs. T. Milburn & Co., Toronto, originated, and here Mr. Milburn conducted the business for a number of years.'

There is no evidence that Milburn started making his Burdock’s Blood Bitters in the back of Dr. McGarvin’s druggist’s shop in Acton Ontario in 1867 however, it’s not until after he moved to Toronto five years later in 1873 that Burdocks Blood Bitters appears advertised for sale at his location on Jarvis street (near Adelaide).

Almanacs were the most popular medium used to advertise patent medicine product. These publications contained a calendar, weather forecasts, riddles, and stories. They were distributed annually and were especially popular in rural areas of the country where they were consulted throughout the year and then discarded when a new edition appeared. In the 1890s the Ayer Company, represented in Canada by Northrup and Lyman, distributed sixteen million copies in twenty-one languages throughout North America.
A classic T. Milburn & Co. advertisement for Burdock’s Blood Bitters in their 1890 Farmer’s almanac reads,

"CONSTIPATION! There is no medium through which disease so often attacks the system as by Constipation, and there is no other ill flesh is heir to more apt to be neglected, from the fact material inconvenience may not be immediately felt from the irregular action of the bowels. When there is not regular action the retention of decayed and effete matter, with its poisonous gases, soon poisons the whole system by being absorbed into it, causing piles, fistula, headache, impure blood and many other serious affections. BURDOCK BLOOD BITTERS will immediately relieve, and one bottle positively cure any case of Constipation."

Burdock’s Blood Bitters was a ‘Temperance Drink’. The most important part of the BBB story is probably its rise in popularity during the Temperance movement.

One hundred years ago there was a social movement, led predominantly by women and priests, to ban alcohol for sale in any public venue. The temperance movement eventually created prohibition and something less commonly talked about, temperance drinks. These are beverages, disguised as therapeutic medicines that contain very high amounts of alcohol.

Burdock’s Blood Bitters had almost twenty percent alcohol, yet the advertising shows women and children holding a large bottle of this healthy vegetable extract. I’m pretty sure most men and women who consumed the elixir probably knew there was alcohol present in the mixture.

JD GRANDY’s Inquiry

On May 10th 1937 the American Medical Association reported to a query by J.D. Grandy on the properties of Burdock’s Blood Bitters by quoting a 1914 report made by the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station which concluded

‘This ‘safe’ remedy contains over 19 percent alcohol and 4.86 percent solids (most of which is sugar) and alkaloids possibly derived from hydrastis. The amount of vegetable matter is small, certainly not enough to bring the results claimed.’

The T. Milburn Co. folded during the economic depression of the 1930’s, (just before prohibition was repealed in 1933). On a curious note, burdock is making a minor resurgence in popularity in England where it’s mixed with dandelion nectar in a popular new soft drink.

And Gwen Sutherland Kaiser, a famous American mixologist, is now having fun with burdock in a fashionable new cocktail he just created called ‘Burdock Bubbly’

This is a home-brewed burdock root infusion mixed with sparkling wine. Burdock has “a woodsy, earthy flavor” and that “in Britain the burdock/dandelion cordial is a best seller!” It’s also known as a blood purifier.

And believe it or not burdock is still being sold as medicine – acne medication!

So after a wee bit of digging, I know that my small Burdock’s Blood Bitters bottle is a unique piece of history - its a keeper.

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Some Lonely Place

As the sun sinks below high rise apartments in the west, Timbit and his team use their shovels to travel back in time. Their destination: Toronto 1885.

‘That’s the bottom of the lake there.’ Tim points to the line of black mud on top of gray clay that slopes down along the recently excavated walls of a huge square hole in the ground. This particular evening’s dig zone is at the bottom of a future parking garage in the bowels of what will someday be a very tall residential tower.

Myself and the other diggers marvel at how the excavation neatly bisects the mud of Toronto’s old shoreline. This particular place was once the lake bottom over which the region's indigenous people paddled canoes, and over which the Americans disembarked 1600 soldiers from twelve schooners on April 27th 1813 when they captured Fort York.

This lonely place was at least ten feet under water, and at the end of a long wooden pier in the 1840s. But as Toronto expanded in the 1850's, and the Grand Trunk Railroad consumed the shoreline, the wharves and fishing docks were pushed farther and farther out into the lake as new land was created by dumping the city's own rubbish into the mud on shore.

Today this black mud is full of industrial age relics – every scoop has metal shrapnel and broken pottery, bits of glass, ash, and bones. And today this century old trash is pay dirt for antiques collectors... like me.

Tim works a rich vein of undisturbed dump alone as the other diggers pick along the site walls. He tells me, 'It took an Act of Legislation in 1857 to transfer the land to the Grand Trunk Railroad and give it the right of way along the harbour.

The whole crew gets excited when Tim dredges up the first ginger beer bottle of the dig, a well preserved cream colored blank. The irony is that the blanks probably came from small micro breweries that used paper labels on generic stone bottles. It would have been one of the small brands competing for market share with the major players like Wilson's and Verner's. By the 1880s the big bottlers could afford to have the pottery works in Bristol England custom stencil their names on the sides of each vessel.

'Why are the blanks always in mint condition?'

The other diggers found a vein of small glass pill bottles of all shapes and sizes including cobalt blue specimens in fair condition. My favourite is a tiny clear glass bottle marked W.R. STEWARD / TORONTO.

Probably the best discovery of the entire dig was this rare toothpaste pot lid. Before toothpaste came in squeeze tubes it was made available in metal and pottery jars. Well decorated lids are very collectible.

This particular lid reads PARISIENNE TOOTHPASTE and it features lots of text detailing the product. An American dentist named Dr. Washington Wentworth Sheffield invented the squeeze tube in 1892, and his firm probably helped brush the Parisienne Toothpaste company out of business. Between 1892 and 1900, sales of Dr. Sheffield's Creme Dentifrice boomed at the expense of every other manufacturer. After revolutionizing the toothpaste market, Dr. Sheffield expanded operations to make squeeze tubes for dozens of other products.

This little bottle really sparked my curiosity. The cork still securely seals the vessel and its exterior is squeaky clean. Click on the picture; it expands to an enormous size! The embossed message, all in capitol letters, reads J.D. MATHESON /OPPOSITE ROSSIN HOUSE / TORONTO.


This very curious little chemist's bottle has some interesting mysteries... I know you all really want to know who was J.D. Matheson? And where and what exactly is this Rossin House? And as there is nobody alive and handy to tell us this information, I had to research it online.

First let's explore the mystery of J.D. Matheson, for its quite intriguing. The name is connected to the History of the Queens Plate , North America's oldest horse race. Believe it or not, their history records that two of J.D. Matheson's horses (Harry Cooper and Colonist) won the Queen’s Plate in 1888 and 1889 respectively - in both cases with the same jockey and trainer! Now I’m really curious. Could this same horse owner named J.D. Matheson also be a dispensing chemist in downtown Toronto? I'm thinking that perhaps he's a pharmacist that's maybe also a veterinarian with his own horse farm?

More research online at the Toronto Archives uncovers a man named Arthur James Matheson who was a Canadian politician. He served as a Conservative Member of the Legislative Assembly of Ontario for Lanark South from 1898 to 1914, and later, as provincial treasurer from 1905 to 1913. I think he might be the namesake for Matheson Blvd in Mississauga...

The best piece of information recovered centers on a man named Angus Matheson who was a druggist and chemist with a business on York Street at King St. The digital collections of the Toronto Public Library have reproduced several Toronto business directories, and a chemist named Angus Matheson can be seen at 65 York St in the year 1856, and then again in 1886 at 100 York Street, which is, if I'm not mistaken, across from Rossin House.

The Rossin House was a fabulous hotel, built in the age of fabulous hotels. It rivaled the Queen's Hotel on Front Street and the fire-proof King Edward Hotel built in 1873 on King Street east of Yonge St. The Rossin House was erected before them, in 1855-57 when the railroad dominated local politics. The late 1850s was an age of speculation which followed the economic depression of the 1840's.

The once famous and now almost forgotten Toronto hotel appears here and there in the history of great happenings in the city. I found this terrific reference in a musical archive of sorts here is the link that chronicles a night in 1888 when Governor General Lord Stanely watched the Toronto Fire Brigade from the balcony of the Rossin House.

'Dinner was at Government House and, on the balcony of Rossin House at midnight, their Excellencies enjoyed a dynamic demonstration by the engines and hosers of the fire brigade. They missed the genuine excitement. At the alarm, the hose-reel and the ladder truck charged out of the Lombard station and down Church Street. The hoser tried a wide sweep to turn onto King, got caught in the car-track and was rammed and flipped by the ladder, the poor horse being thrown onto the sidewalk on its back.'

This building was the first of a marvellous age of urban castles. The above image can be found in the Toronto Public Library, which also has more details about the hotel.

There's also lots of great information about Rossin House Hotel, 1855-7 on OurRoots.ca - they have reproduced a period publication with some exquisite details.

To the best of my reckoning the Rossin House hotel was demolished in the 1960s and the land was redeveloped into the Royal Bank Towers.

While digging I looked east at the skyline - a traffic helicopter was idling overhead reporting conditions on the Gardiner Expressway. I suddenly wondered what a colonist would think if he could behold Toronto now...