The Quack Doctor

Why would you visit The Quack Doctor to read about the famous Beecham’s Pills, when five seconds of Googling will give you more information than you could possibly read in a lifetime?

Well, obviously you wouldn’t, so that’s why I’ve never blogged about them. I just wanted to do a quick post, however, to show this advertisement from 1909, which is a fine example of a witty response to criticism, and far better PR than threatening to sue anyone who’s a bit of a meany.

 The Penny Illustrated Paper 11 December 1909

On 2 January 1909, the British Medical Journal published an analysis of Beecham’s Pills as part of its exposé of proprietary remedies. The verdict wasn’t that harsh compared with the damning reports on other medicines, but it revealed that the pills comprised just aloes (an ingredient of most bog-standard laxatives), ginger and soap. The formula had not been top secret before this, but when the Journal’s reports were published as Secret Remedies: What they Cost and What They Contain (1909), it was brought to wider public attention.

This advert forms part of Beecham’s public response, taking ownership of the term ‘secret remedy’ and presenting it as something honourable; a shared secret between the company and the loyal customers who knew best about their own health. The last paragraph of the following advertisement also appeals to people’s trust in their own judgement, and engenders suspicion of the critics’ motives.

It is perfectly reliable although it is “a Secret Remedy,” it has been tried by the Public for upwards of sixty years, and in spite of all opposition, and in the face of calumny prompted by jealousy caused by success, the voice of the people is practically unanimous in favour of Beecham’s Pills.

Lloyd’s Weekly Newspaper, 12 December 1909

Beecham’s Pills were pitched as a ‘Remedy for the People’, not for the establishment. Whatever some high-falutin BMA analyst might say, the advertising cleverly flattered potential punters that they – who knew what it was like to be ill – were the real experts.

P.S. I’m on Google+ now – feel free to add me.

Advertisement from The Pomeroy Herald, Iowa, 27 January 1910

Centuries after the figure of the ‘pisse-prophet’ had descended into the realms of quackery and ridicule, a modern kind of urine analyst popped up in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

In the early 20^th century, scientific urine tests were part of mainstream medical practice, so there was not necessarily anything dodgy about the activities of Antonius W. Van Bysterveld. As it turned out, however, he was every bit as dubious as Dr Cameron of a hundred years before.

There are several red flags in Van Bysterveld’s advertising. The 1910 ad above makes the arcane suggestion that his skills work even when the patient ‘tells nothing’. Other ads described his method as ‘a careful and secret process handed down generation after generation and most carefully guarded by the old families of Europe.’ There is some indication in the advertising that the analysis involved dripping chemicals into the urine sample, but beyond that it is kept under wraps. After diagnosis, the doctor would prescribe his own medicines at a cost of $1.25 a week.

Writers from the American Medical Association, in Nostrums and Quackery (1911) rather uncharitably passed comment on Van Bysterveld’s appearance:

Mr. Van B seems, from his picture, to be a man of mediocre intelligence who runs to naturally curled hair and an artificially curled mustache.

Van Bysterveld can’t have been the only fellow ever to have curled his ‘tache for a publicity pic, and however mediocre he might have appeared, he deserves some admiration for the sheer number of scrapes from which he managed to extricate himself.

In February 1903 he was prosecuted and fined for practising medicine without a licence, but went straight back into business with a dodgy but fully qualified medic, G. R. Adkins, who was permitted by law to write prescriptions. Within two months, Dr Adkins was arrested too, for writing a death certificate without ever having seen the deceased. Van Bysterveld bounced back and started seeing patients again, brazenly advertising himself as ‘The Wonder Doctor’ – though, if challenged, he would say that he was a chemist and did not claim to have medical qualifications. In March 1904, however, he discovered that quackery can be as dangerous for the quack as for the patient.

Fifteen-year-old Katie Bass had been consulting him for epilepsy for 3 months, when she alleged that he mistreated her. Although a report in the Chicago Tribune is coy about the details, a letter to Van Bysterveld from her furious father implies that it was a sexual assault:

You have laid the whole being of that pure, good girl, with all its enjoying capacities and angelic virtues, in ruin. You have converted all her life’s joys into sorrow; dressed all nature in mourning; hung her very sun and moon in gloom, and made her say with poor Charlotte Temple, and all others betrayed:

“Thou glorious orb, supremely bright,
Just rising from the sea
To clear all nature with thy light,
What are thy beams to me?”

I am only waiting for next Tuesday to meet you face to face.

John Bass applied for a warrant for Van Bysterveld’s arrest, but the judge refused to issue it unless Katie made a complaint in person. Katie, however, was too ill to go to the court, so Mr Bass took the matter into his own hands. He grabbed his revolver and set off in search of the doctor.

‘I am sorry I did not kill him,’ Bass later announced to the judge. ‘He laughed in my face when I upbraided him, told me she was crazy, and that no judge would believe the word of a lunatic. Then I shot him.’

Van Bysterveld sustained a gunshot wound to his leg but quickly recovered and does not appear to have been found guilty of the alleged assault, for he was soon back advertising his services. In 1906 he was again charged with practising medicine illegally, when a young woman died shortly after having taken medicine prescribed by him. And once again this had little effect on his business. He was still going strong in 1911 when the A.M.A. decided to test him out.

They made a mixture of water, ammonia, pepsin and anilin dye, and got three volunteers to send samples off to Van Bysterveld. Three different diagnoses came back, all consisting of a paragraph of vague analysis that could apply to anyone:

1. Careful examination of the urine shows there is too much acid in the blood, which will cause a rheumatic condition, the back is weak, and you will have a tired nervous feeling most of the time.

2. Careful examination of the urine shows the circulation of the blood to be very poor, the liver is not working properly, which will cause gas in the stomach and bowels and will effect (sic) the heart, you have caught a little cold which has settled in the back and stomach and you will have a nervous feeling.

3. Careful examination of the urine shows you are losing too much albumin in the urine, which will cause the back and kidneys to be weak, and there is a catarrhal condition of the stomach and bowels, and you will have a tired nervous feeling most of the time.

In an even more blatant test, the A.M.A sent in samples consisting of 95% water and 5% sugar. They got back two diagnoses using a mix of statements from the previous ones, and no mention at all of the dangerous glucose levels.

The A.M.A. unreservedly condemned Van Bysterveld’s practice as a ‘fraud and a swindle’ and a ‘picturesque, but vicious humbug’. As for the Wonder Doctor, however, he ignored them and cheerfully carried on treating his patients.

.

.

Source: Trewman’s Exeter Flying Post, 3 April 1823

Much of the evidence on this one is anecdotal, but the proprietor of the Balm of Zura, Dr A. Lamert, certainly sounds quite a character.

Lamert was the son of a London-based German quack who dabbled in ophthalmology before moving on to selling a Nervous and Rheumatic Balsam and treating venereal disease.

While Lamert senior worked solely from his Spitalfields address, his son branched out, setting up a dispensary in Bristol and travelling the country, announcing in each town’s newspaper that the lucky denizens were to be favoured with a visit. In the first four decades of the 19^th century he went far and wide, taking in Derby, Ipswich, Glasgow, Aberdeen, Newcastle, Falmouth, Exeter, Manchester and plenty of other places in between. While at Ipswich in 1811 he received some anonymous hate-mail with a Bury postmark. His dad advertised in the Bury and Norwich Post offering a 30 guinea reward for identifying the culprit, but the residents of Bury appear to have remained silent.

Lamert Jnr was the ostentatious variety of quack who flaunted his wealth and took every opportunity to publicise his miraculous cures. The Citizen (October 1 1829) described him as:

…a fearfully dashing gentleman, all powder, with a black servant, and drives a beautiful pair of greys. Vive la quackery!

…while the Medical Adviser in 1824 was typically indignant:

All Devonshire, and the next fifty counties, does not produce so arrant a humbugger as this: he is powdered from the occiput to the coccygis,—from one shoulder to the other —from the cape of his coat to the buttons of his waist,—a curricle a-la-Jordan, an eyeglass,—a bamboo, and a copper face. Thus he parades about, all outside, while if you tapped him upon the head it would sound like a drum, —so hollow, so empty, so brainless is the wight.

(‘a-la-Jordan’ refers to the proprietors of the Cordial Balm of Rakasiri.)

One of Lamert’s innovative ways of increasing his fame was to attend the theatre and, during the performance, instruct a servant to call out that he was wanted for some medical emergency.

‘These interruptions,’ grumbled the Medical Adviser, ‘always happen when some interesting part of the play is going on.’

Lamert’s theatrical connections, however, were not confined to sitting in the audience. In his youth he had sung at the Royalty Theatre in Whitechapel, but after being pelted with oranges, he changed his career path and went on to follow in his father’s footsteps as a quack.

His arrogance might have made him capable of drawing attention, but this was often from pranksters rather than admirers. In 1848, (after Lamert’s death) an anti-quackery lecturer called Mr Richardson told of a student going to consult the doctor, pretending to be deaf. Lamert, assuming he would not be heard, ‘made some very free remarks on the character of the student’, who soundly thrashed him and went on his way.

The Medical Adviser (who, once they had it in for a quack, didn’t tend to let up), tells the tale of a dissatisfied customer who – not quite literally – gave Lamert a taste of his own medicine. The patient had wasted £5 on the Balm of Zura and received no benefit, so he took the empty bottle along to a tavern where Lamert was regaling the drinkers with a song. When the doctor ‘had occasion to absent himself a short time from the company,’ the joker pissed in the bottle and topped it up with brandy and water. On Lamert’s return he complained to him that his last purchase of Zura had gone sour.

As the doctor tasted the mixture, a couple of the tavern-goers were ‘necessitated to quit the room, to give vent to their risible titillation.’ Then someone pretended to get angry that the sour mixture might be poisonous, so Dr Lamert drank the whole bottle in proof of its safety, to the hilarity of all concerned.

They let him in on the joke and the original prankster ‘prudently decamped’ in the face of his wrath.

.

.

Would you buy a homeopathic remedy from this man?

Source: The Morning Times (Washington D.C.) 13 December 1896

James Monroe Munyon’s pompadour hairstyle was a familiar feature of American newspapers around the turn of the 20^th century. Having tried his hand at teaching, law, social work, publishing and song-writing, he started his Homoeopathic Home Remedy Company in the early 1890s and hit pay dirt.

In 1897, Munyon opened a London head office and a depot in Liverpool. A massive advertising campaign promised free vials of the remedies and challenged the British public to test his new system of curing disease. Perhaps Munyon anticipated lasting fame in the UK, but he couldn’t have predicted what his company would be remembered for.

There was a separate remedy for every disease. To name but a few, there were…

Munyon’s Kidney Cure, which a 1907 analysis showed to be 100% sugar.
Munyon’s Asthma Cure (sugar and alcohol)
Munyon’s Blood Cure (sugar)
Munyon’s Special Liquid Blood Cure (sugar, potassium iodide and corrosive sublimate)
Munyon’s Catarrh Cure (sodium bicarbonate, salt, borax, phenol and gum)
Munyon’s Special Catarrh Cure (sugar)
Munyon’s Grippe Remedy (sugar and arsenic)
Munyon’s Pile Ointment (a farthing’s worth of soft paraffin).

At various times these products were declared misbranded in the US because of the claims that they could cure disease, and Munyon received fines – but he carried on his business regardless. One of the slogans he used in his advertising was:

There is no punishment too great for him who deceives the sick.

While his remedies were coming under scrutiny from the BMJ and the American Medical Association, 60-year-old Munyon was busy marrying his third wife, 24-year-old actress Pauline Neff Metzger. His fortune was not an effective enough remedy for their differences, and they divorced in 1913.

Munyon had bought an island off North Palm Beach, Florida, and opened a resort there in 1903, calling his luxury hotel the Hygeia and attracting wealthy invalids. One of the attractions of the place was the ready supply of Paw Paw Tonic, a cure-all made from papaya. The place burnt down in 1917 and Munyon died a year later of an apoplexy while having lunch at the Poinciana Hotel on the mainland. His obituary in the New York Times quoted him as having said he started out with:

virtually no capital except ambition and a belief in letting folks know about it.

The company continued, and as late as the 1940s, shipments of its products were still being seized by the government and condemned. In 1944, a batch of Paw Paw Tonic was found to contain strychnine.

Above: Munyon’s Catarrh Cure. Photo credit: Michael Till. This was part of an inhaler that would originally have had a stopper with a tube insertion, allowing the patient to snort the remedy.

Munyon’s Homoeopathic Home Remedy Company has a colourful enough history of its own, but is now chiefly remembered for its other claim to fame.

The London office’s first manager was an industrious employee who had spent the past few years as a Consulting Physician in the Philadelphia and then Toronto branches, impressing Munyon with his work ethic and ability to improve sales. Unfortunately, the London manager started having problems with his wife, who was still in the US trying to become a professional singer and openly having affairs.

When she moved to London in 1900, he made some attempt to support her in her music hall career, but the stormy relationship interfered with his work. He left Munyon’s and did the rounds of various other patent medicine companies, including the Sovereign Remedy Company, his own business the Yale Tooth Specialists, and the Aural Clinic, later returning to the advertising department of his original employer.

Dr Hawley Harvey Crippen eventually got the sack from Munyon’s. By then he had taken up with Ethel le Neve, his wife was still giving him trouble, and things kind of went downhill from there.

.

.

This noble composition was on sale for most of the first half of the 18^th century but enjoyed a moment of fame 200 years later when an American news editor stumbled on the advert and found it entertaining enough to fill a space in his paper. Other papers lifted the text and printed it as a curiosity from the funny olden days. If those early 20th-century reporters had gone back in time to Jacob’s Coffee House in 1739, however, they would not have found much spiritual enlightenment. The product name just meant it contained angelica.

Source: The Daily Post, 17 January 1739

Angelick Snuff

The most Noble COMPOSITION in the World, instantly removing all Manner of Disorder of the Head and Brain, easing the most excruciating Pain in a Moment; taking away all Swimming or Giddiness, proceeding from Vapours, or any other Cause; also Drowsiness, Sleepiness, all other Lethargick Effects; perfectly curing Deafness to Admiration, and all Humours or Soreness in the Eyes, wonderfully strengthening them when weak.

It certainly cures Catarrhs or Defluxions of Rheum, and remedies the most grievous Tooth-ach in an Instant; is excellently beneficial in Apoplectick Fits, and Falling Sickness, and assuredly prevents those Distempers; corroborates the Brain, comforts the Nerves, and revives the Spirits.

Its admirable Efficacy in all the above mention’d Cases, has been experienc’d above a thousand Times, and very justly causes it to be esteem’d the most beneficial Snuff in the World, being good for all sorts of Persons: And as most of the above Disorders are sudden, and the Remedy by this most noble Angelick Snuff as speedy, no Family ought to be without it, nor ever will, when they have once used it. Price One Shilling a Paper, with Directions; and is to be had only at Jacob’s Coffee-house against the Angel and Crown Tavern in Broad-street, behind the Royal Exchange.

Source: The Sporting Times, 28 January 1899.

Although this product isn’t solely medical, its advertising did claim that it could prevent chills, colds, rheumatism and lumbago, and alleviate toothache, neuralgia and sciatica.

Whether or not it could effectively combat these ailments is doubtful, but it nevertheless sounds like a useful gadget for the depths of winter.

The 12th Earl of Dundonald patented the Instra warmer in 1896, and soon developed a whole range of products under the motto ‘Warmth is Life’. The standard version was the pocket warmer, a slim contraption available in embossed German silver at 12s 6d or without the decoration for 7s 6d. Plebs need not miss out as there was a tin alternative at a bargain 3s 6d.

The Instra came with refills that you had to light with a match and place into the outer casing. They had to be put in non-burning end first, which sounds tricky. I don’t know what the fuel was, but the makers claimed it was lightweight and slow-burning. A single cartridge weighed only one seventh of an ounce and would give out heat for three to four hours. Surrounding the cartridge were layers of gauze padding to stop sparks getting through. The device could then be used in various ways:

To be warm, put in side pocket; to be warmer, hook up just behind and below the hip bone underneath the coat; if very chill, hook up on one or other side of the back bone between the shoulders; for railway travelling, get the anklet strap; to air a damp bed quickly, put a chair in the bed and the Instra inside.

The pocket warmer was only one part of the range – there was also an Instra Chest Stove to wear strapped to one’s bosom. Supposedly contoured to the shape of the chest, in pictures it looks decidedly uncomfortable, and not very accommodating for ladies of Rubenesque stature.

For cyclists, however, the Instra range was a boon. The pocket warmers could be strapped to the ankles on chilly days, and Instra Bicycle Handles were the ideal way of keeping the rider’s hands warm. For equestrians there was the Instra Horse Stove, a large rectangular warmer costing over a pound. It’s not clear whether this was for the horse’s or the rider’s benefit, but it looks like it could be worn on the rider’s back and would certainly prevent slouching.

Happy customers testified to the Instra’s usefulness. Mrs Stone from the Isle of Wight said:

Thanks for the Instra warmer, which I place in my muff and thus save my fingers from being half frozen.

while The Rev E.R. Burroughs commented on the product’s versatility:

I am much pleased with the pocket ‘Instra.’ Another use to which it can be put is that of drying clothes in a drawer, and airing them if they are likely to be damp.

All in all, an admirable product that would of great service in 21st-century winters. The health and safety concerns of carrying lit fuel in one’s clothing are put to rest by the advertising pamphlet:

To show their safety, INSTRAs have been habitually carried in the same pocket mixed up with gunpowder cartridges.

Lord Dundonald (right) also invented the Constra bicycle saddle, a design that departed from the solid bone-shaking norm and consisted of leather straps stretched over a frame. This met with a mixed reception – Cycling magazine was dismissive, while The Nursing Record and Hospital World approved, saying that:

There is no tendency to jerk off, as with some saddles, and there is no injurious vibration when riding over rough roads.

They did admit they hadn’t actually tried it though.

.

.

BARRETT’S Mandrake EMBROCATION
CURES {HEADACHE! EARACHE! TOOTHACHE!} INSTANTLY.
Unequalled for Sprains, Bruises, Overstraining of the Muscles, Cramp, Rheumatism, Sciatica, Lumbago, Gout, Neuralgia, Chilblains, Bronchitis. To be had retail of all Chemists, 1s. 1½d., 2s. 9d., and 4s. 6d., postage 3d. extra ; or direct from the Sole Proprietor, JOSHUA BARRETT, 21, Beresford Road, Highbury New Park, London, N. London Wholesale Agents—Messrs. Newberry and Sons, Barclay and Sons, Limited, and all wholesale houses. SPECIAL NOTICE.—For the convenience of those at a distance from Chemists, J.B. Will send Three Bottles, post free, on receipt of 8s. 4½d., stamps or P.O.
To Mr. Joshua Barrett.—Dear Sir,—About twelve months ago, I, in playing football, had the misfortune to break a large muscle of my leg, which prevented my being able to walk, much more to play again. I may say that I have been under no less than three doctors, all of whom have failed to cure me. I was recommended by a fellow athlete to try your MANDRAKE EMBROCATION, and, I am pleased to say, with good result. I am now playing and running again as if nothing had happened. I shall have exceedingly great pleasure in recommending same to my numerous friends. If you like to make use of this, by all means do so.—Yours faithfully, H. G. THOMPSON, Captain, Kent Rovers Football Club, Kent County, and Sydenham Athletic Association.

Source: The Sportsman, 30 March 1889

——————————————————————————————-

Go to a country show, craft fair or exhibition, and chances are you’ll see at least one stall flogging health products that ‘can help with’ whatever happens to be wrong with you.

In the 1880s and 90s, Joshua Barrett used the same method to sell his Mandrake Embrocation and subsidiary products such as Mandrake Liver Powders and Mandrake Tonic. He also seems to have entered the Embrocation for the competitions prevalent at such shows, winning medals and diplomas of honour.

Barrett didn’t advertise much in newspapers, preferring to meet punters in person and give out handbills and free samples. This independence from the press meant that he didn’t need to be based in London, and in the 1890s he relocated to Snaith in Yorkshire – a sensible move bearing in mind he had previously travelled as far afield as Edinburgh to exhibit his product.

The advert above pre-dates the 1889-1890 Russian flu pandemic, and as you can see it makes no mention of influenza. Once outbreaks reached the UK, however, the Embrocation suddenly became ‘Scientifically Proved and Practically Demonstrated’ as a cure. The handbills explained why flu had never been mentioned before:

This remedy has only just been discovered, and the following directions are not with the Thousands of Bottles now in the hands of the appreciative public.

To ward off the early symptoms of flu, one had to

…take a piece of sponge the size of an egg, damp with the Embrocation, and hold it to the open mouth, inhale steadily, then close the mouth, swallow the fumes, and return them through the nostrils: repeat often.

Although an egg-sized piece of sponge was adequate, there was also a special inhaler available – a simple glass tube to hold an embrocation-soaked piece of wadding, and it was cheap at only a shilling. In the more advanced stages of influenza, Barrett also advised rubbing the oil on all achey parts of the body.

The most unusual thing about the Mandrake Embrocation is the absolutely terrifying trademarked logo. This grotesque coalition of man and anatid does not inspire much confidence in the product, but it is certainly eye-catching – and rather appropriate too, as the Russian flu pandemic was an avian strain originating in ducks. The man’s head is supposed to be a likeness of Joshua Barrett himself.

Source: Country Life Illustrated, 8 Jan 1897 (this image from a later facsimile edition)

Unusually for anything involving exercise, this contraption looks almost fun. Although perhaps not completely  ‘a perfect substitute for a live horse’ – at least, not if you wanted to travel somewhere – it was well-received as an aid to fitness. The medical profession increasingly advocated taking exercise on purpose to improve the health, and this product (also called the Hercules Horse-Action Saddle) appears to have given a pretty good workout.

The machine was 4 ft high and about 30 inches square. The advert’s claims that it could trot, canter and gallop make it sound as though it moved independently like one of those fairground buckaroo things, but this wasn’t the case – the different paces were powered by the rider’s own exertions.

Within the mahogany frame was a mechanism that consisted of four platforms separated by springs. By turning the control on the front, one could adjust the distance between the platforms so that the more adventurous could experience a ‘bone-shaker’ feel, while a smoother ride was available for invalids. Ladies could buy a side-saddle version.

At 7 guineas for the cheapest one and 21 guineas if you went top-of-the-range, these were quite an investment – which can’t have paid off if they met the fate of every exercise machine ever bought and were consigned to a shed to gather dust.

Vigor also sold a rowing machine at 4 guineas, but this one looks a bit too much like hard work to me:

Source: Black and White, 14 March 1896

Bristol Mercury 16 June 1838

Baron Spolasco next moved on to Swansea, and celebrated the first anniversary of his rescue by paying for a whole ox to be distributed among the poor. He was, however, about to suffer a temporary reversal of his fortunes, for in 1839 he was arrested in connection with the death of a young woman.

Twenty-three-year-old Susannah Thomas consulted the Baron about abdominal pain. Her aunt’s statement at the inquest gives an insight into how he worked. The Baron allegedly

…told [Miss Thomas] he knew by her eyes, that she was very ill, and that he would cure her; afterwards she would have cause to bless the hour she saw the good Baron Spolasco. Witness was not allowed to relate the symptoms of the disorder of deceased to the Baron, as he said he could know them by her bold eye.

In return for 22s. 6d., he supplied two pills and some powder – the aunt noticed that this was exactly the same for all the other patients. Back home, Miss Thomas became worse, so her aunt sent for the Baron, who advised to try some castor oil and a gruel and turpentine clyster. A quarter of an hour after he left, Miss Thomas died. The autopsy revealed that her intestines were inflamed and her stomach ulcerated and gangrenous, with a hole in the stomach wall allowing the contents to escape into her abdominal cavity. The surgeon conducting the post mortem examination believed that the Baron’s medicines – composed of aloes and jalap – had hastened the patient’s death.

Baron Spolasco was charged with manslaughter and, furious about the ‘foul conspiracy got up against him’ was sent to gaol to await the next circuit court. When his trial came up, the surgeon could not say with certainty that the medicines were the cause of death and the Baron was found not guilty.

But it wasn’t long before he had another brush with the law. In March 1840 he was arrested for forging the government stamps on his pills. An undercover policeman went to the Baron’s house and was furnished with medicines whose stamps imitated a design discontinued in 1823. Spolasco’s defence was that the packets were intended for sale in Ireland, where stamps were not necessary. He again spent a few months in gaol waiting for the Assizes, and again was acquitted.

One might have expected him to lie low for a while after this troublesome time, but he was as ostentatious as ever and within a few months of getting out of gaol, he published a song (in both English and Welsh) lauding his genius.

I pledge unto Spolasco’s name,
A name in which we glory;
His splendid cures and healing fame
Recorded are in story.
Be mindful of Spolasco’s skill,
Ye patrons of his merit;
Save him from all impending ill.
And a relentless spirit.

It goes on in the same vein for ten verses.

Advertising token from the Baron's days in Cork.

(Thank you to Lucy Martin for the above photograph.)

The Baron remained in Swansea for several more years, and was mentioned in an inquest for the Rev. Edward Matthews Davies, who died of kidney disease in 1843. The Baron had  tried to get him to hand over 20 guineas for consultation. Mr Davies’ servant asked whether such a large amount of money would actually result in a cure, and Baron Spolasco allegedly replied:

Do you think I would take any man’s money if I could not cure him? It is not the money I want, it is a name; I can get money as fast as I can count it.

It proved clear that the Rev Mr Davies had died of natural causes, and this time the Baron was not charged with anything. The coroner observed that:

…however culpable it might be to extort money from the pockets of a person labouring under a deadly disease, by pretending to cure him, yet a coroner’s jury could not deal with the case, unless it were proved that death was caused by the medicine prescribed.

At some point over the next few years, Baron Spolasco moved to London, remaining there until a 16-year-old servant girl stole a diamond ring from him, saying in her defence that she had taken it in revenge after he criminally assaulted her. She quickly changed her story to state that he had ‘taken a little liberty’ but that she had pushed him away. The Baron denied her allegations but appears not to have pressed charges for the theft. Soon afterwards he departed these shores for New York.

He carried on there just the same as he had done everywhere else, trumpeting his miracles and charging hefty fees for his advice. But he gradually went to seed and became the subject of Walt Whitman’s merciless description in ‘Street Yarn’ (1856):

Somebody in an open barouche, driving daintily. He looks like a doll; is it alive? We’ll cross the street and so get close to him. Did you see? Fantastic hat, turned clear over in the rim above the ears; blue coat and shiny brass buttons; patent leathers; shirt-frill; gold specs; bright red cheeks, and singularly definite jetty black eyebrows, moustache, and imperial. You could see that from the sidewalk; but you saw, when you stood at his wheel, not only the twinkling diamond ring and breast-pin, but the heavy, slabby red paint; and even the substratum of grizzly gray under that jetty dye; and upon our word there’s a hair of the same straggling out under the jaunty oiled wig! How straight he sits, and how he simpers, and how he fingers the reins with a delicate white little finger stuck out, as if a mere touch were all — as if his whole hand might govern a team of elephants! The Baron Spolasco, with no end of medical diplomas from all sorts of universities across the ocean, who cures everything immediately; you may consult him confidentially, or by letter, if you choose. It would be worth money to see that old gentleman — they say he is nearly eighty — undress himself! Clothes, wig, calves, stays, moustache, teeth, complexion — what a bald, bare, wizened, shriveled old granny he would be!

Though ‘they’ might have said Spolasco was pushing eighty, he was more like a mere 56. His fortunes declined and he moved to increasingly less salubrious parts of the city, defaulting on his rent each time. He died in 1858, unable to find a miraculous cure for his own cancer – but  perhaps still mourning the death of his little son on the Cork coast twenty years before.

On 19 January 1838, the steamer Killarney set sail from Cork, bound for Bristol. On board were 37 people and 600 pigs, and ahead of them was the most violent storm in more than half a century. The steamer was forced to turn back, and anchored at Cove for a few hours, until the Captain made the ill-fated decision to continue. By the following evening, 21 survivors were clinging to a rock, fast losing hope of rescue.

One of these survivors was Baron Spolasco (above), a flamboyant character who had been fraudulently practising as a physician and surgeon in different parts of Ireland. Though he looks rather exotic, he was probably born in the north of England in about 1800, and his real name appears in different sources as John Williams, John Smith, or the slightly more impressive John William Adolphus Frederick Augustus Smith.

Spolasco did not specialise in particular ailments – he cured everything instantly. You can click to enlarge this handbill and see the extent of his claims. I am very grateful to Lucy Martin for the handbill and portrait photographs, which she took at the University of Cork Art Gallery.

One part of the handbill says:

Any individual who has lost his, or her nose, can be supplied with a REAL one, Grecian, Roman or Aquiline, perfect and natural as by nature

This was done by the Talicotian operation, an ancient and ingenious way of reconstructing a missing nose by bringing down a flap of skin from the patient’s forehead.

On that fateful Friday in January 1838, Spolasco was off to Bristol to meet the agent of a ‘high personage’ about a complicated surgical case (or perhaps the people in Cork were starting to get wise to him). All his belongings were loaded onto the Killarney but he, his eight-year-old son Robert and their two Newfoundland dogs were five minutes late. They had almost resolved to wait for the next week’s boat, when some locals offered to row them out to the steamer.

During the course of that night and the next morning, the storm and the terrified pigs put the steamer in peril and it perished in Renny Bay. The poor Newfoundlands rapidly joined the choir invisible, but the Baron and Robert were among the 21 people who reached a rock 200 yards from shore. Though so close to land, there were no rescue attempts until the Sunday, by which time little Robert was among those who succumbed to the waves. In his Narrative of the Wreck of the Steamer Killarney, Spolasco later described his feelings about the death of his son:

I pause one moment to offer up my most fervent supplications to my God, to spare such of you my kind readers, as are fathers, and mothers; to spare you ever, from having to go through, to witness, to feel, to suffer, even a thousandth part of what I did for my dear, my sweet, my beautiful boy. Alas ! he is now no more, he is as still as the grave ! yes he is quiet—he moves not—he breathes not—he no longer enchants me as he was wont to do, morning, noon and night, with his sweet prattling, his but too sensible conversation ! HE IS DEAD ! ! !

The Narrative is a gripping read and, while melodramatic (in a good way) and self-aggrandising, the Baron’s story concurs in most details with other reports of the wreck.

The image below is from the Narrative, and though there’s no doubt a bit of artistic licence, it does emphasise just how near and yet so far the stranded people were from the land. They could see the locals making off with the dead pigs washed up on the beach, but they could do nothing to get themselves there alive.

We had not the good fortune to reach the top of the rock; we only got to between one and two yards of it and that part faced the sea. We had to hold on all night by our fingers and toes – something like being suspended by our hands and toes from the sill of a window in one of the upper stories of a house, and at every moment the tremendous and fearful billows lashing at our backs terribly, we were not able to rest ourselves even for a moment.

Eventually they were spotted by some ‘respectable’ people who sent for a set of rescue apparatus, but this relied on getting a rope out to the rock, and attempts proved futile. The rescuers tried attaching ropes to ducks and setting them off across the waves, but only one duck made it, and the survivors couldn’t catch it. Next they tried using a howitzer to fire balls with ropes attached, but to no avail.

Then the chief coastguard’s brother, Edward Hull, had the idea of carrying a long rope round the bay so that it would stretch from one promontory to the other, with a second rope hanging down over the rock. The first attempt was late on Sunday afternoon and as darkness fell the rescuers almost left off, but in desperation two people grabbed the rope and shouted to be hauled in. According to the Baron:

…[the rescuers] immediately did so, upon which we heard a splash but could see nothing, it being at this time dark.

After this melancholy occurrence, the remaining survivors were abandoned to a second night without food, water or shelter. The next day, using the long rope and a basket, those on land were finally able to get the staples of life – wine, whiskey and bread – onto the rock. The Baron writes:

I cannot find words sufficiently strong to express how grateful the wine was to my parched lips. Each having partaken of this seasonable relief, we all huzza’d, and waved our hats and caps, in token of gratitude for what we had just had, and in the hope of being speedily relieved.

The equipment had a cot designed to transport human beings, and by this method the 14 survivors were removed, one by one. First was the only woman, Mary Leary, but Baron Spolasco managed to be second in line and was taken to a nearby house. One of the others subsequently died of exhaustion.

Only a month later he wrote his Narrative, and used it as a way of increasing his fame and spreading the word about his medical practice. He went through with his plan of going to Bristol and started up with the same wild claims about miraculous cures. But his adventures had only just begun.

In the next post, the intrepid Baron gets arrested for manslaughter, charged with forgery, and falls under the satirical eye of Walt Whitman in 1850s New York.