Mother’s Friend

In honour of the birth of The Quack Doctor’s new baby niece, who arrived early Saturday morning in the car park of Harlow Hospital, this post looks at a liniment that claimed to make labour a doddle.

The Daily Times, Portsmouth, Ohio 4 May 1899
The Daily Times, Portsmouth, Ohio 4 May 1899

Mother’s Friend was on sale in the US and Canada by the mid-1880s, though some adverts said it had been around for longer. During the last couple of decades of the 19th century and into the 20th, the advertising made some far-fetched claims.

The packaging stated that the liniment would ‘cause an unusually easy and quick delivery’ and that it would ‘alleviate in a most magical way the pains, horrors and risks of labor’. Used early in pregnancy, it would also cure morning sickness.

Some of the advertising went further and suggested that the use of Mother’s Friend would make the resulting baby clever and good-looking. In this 1901 ad, for example, an anonymous father sets up a potential fratricide situation by describing the youngest of his three children as the ‘healthiest, prettiest and finest-looking of them all’.

The Alamance Gleaner, 13 June 1901
The Alamance Gleaner, 13 June 1901

The advert below  rings a few alarm bells by insisting that there is no opium, morphine or strychnine – but in fact this was true. Twice in 1909, consignments of Mother’s Friend were seized under the Food and Drugs Act (1906) and deemed misbranded because of the claims made. Analysis showed them to be a mixture of oil and soap (the type of oil is not specified in the misbranding reports but presumably it was a vegetable oil).

The Rock Hill Herald 19 April 1902
The Rock Hill Herald 19 April 1902

The Bradfield Regulator Company was allowed to continuing selling the product provided it did not make unrealistic claims, so from then on Mother’s Friend was marketed as a massage oil to help with dry skin and the aches and pains of pregnancy. Later, under ownership of the S.S.S. Company, it became a body lotion, firmly in the category of toiletries rather than medicines.

The Reading Eagle 11 March 1941
The Reading Eagle 11 March 1941

The bolder claims of the early advertising, however, were not without some merit – for pregnant women, accustomed to having to listen to everyone else’s birth horror stories, the positive outlook of Mother’s Friend must have been a welcome change.

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3 thoughts on “Mother’s Friend

  1. Congrats to both Aunty Caroline and the new mum!

    😀

    I’m always amazed that people actually believed the claims on some of these products!

    E

    1. I suspect relatively few people completely believed in such claims, but instead saw the products as being ‘worth a try’.

      Then again, my mum just forwarded me an email that says it’s possible to unlock a car by phoning someone who has the remote control key fob and getting them to press it next to the phone, so you never know what people will fall for.

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