What a fascinating conversation! Thank you, David, for getting it started and thanks to the rest of you for helping him out and, in the course, providing the rest of us with education wrapped in entertainment.

Jeff

Jeffrey L. Boyer, RPA
Supervisory Archaeologist/Project Director
Office of Archaeological Studies, Museum of New Mexico

  *   The Center for New Mexico Archaeology
  *   7 Old Cochiti Road
  *   Santa Fe, New Mexico 87507
  *   tel: 505.476.4426
  *   e-mail: [log in to unmask]

"There comes a time in every rightly-constructed boy's life when he has a raging desire to go somewhere and dig for hidden treasure."  -- Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer


________________________________________
From: HISTORICAL ARCHAEOLOGY [[log in to unmask]] on behalf of David [[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Wednesday, February 12, 2014 12:04 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Help diagnosing "Aunt Hannah's" glass bottle

Bob,
Wow! That is very interesting. I have come across a lot of absurd ingredients, but 100% gasoline takes the cake. Certainly shipping it in glass bottles would be a bad idea. Pouring it on bedding to rid one's room of pests would be a much worse idea.

David



On Wednesday, February 12, 2014 2:00 PM, Bob Skiles <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

David,

It's likely that the U.S. government first got peeved at Aunt Hannah's
because large quantities of the stuff was being sold for use on military
installations during WWI and found to be totally ineffective. Complaints
from military commanders was the likely conduit to the Secretary of
Agriculture and his complaint against the "mislabeling" (deceptive
labeling). If the formula was anything like that of the contemporary Dr.
Baker's Liquid Death Drops (which was determined through multiple
analyses by U.S. government chemists to be 100% gasoline), then THAT
(danger of fires from shipping highly flammable liquids in breakable
glass bottles, thus higher insurance claims, and consequently higher
shipping rates) was the likely reason for shifting to cans /in lieu /of
bottles for out-of-state (interstate) shipping.

Bob Skiles



On 2/12/2014 12:44 PM, Bob Skiles wrote:
> David,
>
> You can view an advertising sign for AHLDD (from the National Bottle
> Museum in Ballston Spa, New York) here:
>
> http://farm5.staticflickr.com/4037/4548417698_94f7a671e1.jpg
>
> that confirms the address for the Aunt Hannah "firm" on Pulaski Street
> in Brooklyn.
>
> From reading bottle collectors' blogs, I believe that before AHLDD
> became a "nationally distributed" product (ca. late 1880s-1990s ...
> probably during the time it was operated as/by the founder "Aunt
> Hannah"), it was sold in bottles; later, after her death/retirement???
> her nephews operated the business perpetuating her name, but shifting
> from small-scale retail/local wholesale (in bottles) to
> bulk-production/national-distribution (in cans, that would withstand
> the rigors of shipping better).
>
> So, my belief is that your bottle is probably the same multi-purpose
> "insecticide" remedy (snake-oil) originally sold as "Aunt Hannah's" in
> bottles, meant primarily for bed bug control, later adding cans for
> bulk sales (thru such national chemical distributors such as McKesson
> & Robbins, whom I believe are still to this very day one of the biggies).
>
> Bob Skiles
>
>
> On 2/12/2014 12:18 PM, David L Cook wrote:
>> Thank you!
>>   I found this reference, but as I said before, it seems to be a
>> different product, although certainly from the same Jenkins Bros that
>> produced AH Pile Salve and AH Hair Tonic, but AHLDD came in cans, not
>> bottles. From your post: "...borne on the labels affixed to the cans
>> containing the article..."
>>
>> My main goal at the moment is simply to confirm that the contents of
>> this bottle were medicinal(not rat poison or pepper sauce). From
>> there it is certainly interesting that the same firm might be
>> producing pesticide, salves, and hair products.
>> This bottle is the only one out of nearly a hundred separate products
>> that I have not been able to confirm.
>>
>> Thanks to everyone for all of the suggestions!
>>
>> Best,
>> David L Cook
>>
>>> On Feb 12, 2014, at 12:55 PM, Bob Skiles <[log in to unmask]>
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>> borne on the labels affixed to the cans containing the article,
>