This is a bit long, but it's a great story. . . .
I removed an old brick chimney in my 116 year old frame house to put in a laundry chute. When I had the stack out, there was a dead space behind where the chimney was above a closet on the first floor. (The closet has a “roof” that was part of the original house--plaster and lath.) It’s pretty inaccessible even with the chimney out. I hung down from the hole in the attic floor to clean the dust and crud off that spot. I mostly reached down with a broom and pushed it all into the hole.
Soon I discovered a bunch of old hand bills. They’re very fragile, so I ended up destroying most of them before I realized they were there. There were also a bunch of business cards for a painter/decorator that survived in very good condition.
The handbill was a guy advertising a sure-fire get-rich-quick scheme—what they called an agency business. It was written and presumably printed the same year my house was built: 1892. He’s offering salesmen kits for some product that he sells. They go door to door and leave a free gift soap sample along with a circular describing the product and a coupon for the product. They come back the next day, and if the lady of the house wants to buy (and he claims 80% of them do), they will give the salesman a dollar to sign the coupon and make it valid. They then mail the coupon in with another dollar to my address and they receive the product and a book explaining how to use it.
The only description on the handbill was that the product was a rubber good for ladies only.
Here is a scan of the handbill front and back.
Read this thing first. It’s hilarious. Sounds just like the Mason shoes or seed-selling ads I used to see in the back of comic books and such. The guy also had some pretty bad grammar problems!
I finally dug around and found just one copy of the coupon. It was in horrible shape—partly burned and covered in dirt and soot. I cleaned it enough to read it.
You'll never guess what the product was!
“It is a Protector for Ladies” also called a “French Protector”. It’s either a condom or a diaphragm!
It mentions that you could try various herbal extract pills, but they are worthless. This is the only thing that actually does what it promises! So my house was the home of rational thinking in the 19th century!
It’s interesting enough to know that a guy who lived in my house (presumably the first owner) had a business selling contraceptives in Victorian Era St. Louis. . . .but the next part of the story is even better.
In 1873, the U.S. passed the Comstock Laws which prohibited the manufacture, sale, distribution and use of contraceptives. It also declared any printed matter about contraceptives to be obscene and prohibited its sale or shipping via the Post Office.
Many states had similar laws prior to the federal law, which makes the stuff the guy says in the handbill about selling his product in various states sound very funny! (He had to make a lot sales in a hurry and leave town before they had him tarred and feathered!)
So his business had to have folded almost as soon as it started. The Comstock Laws remained in effect until 1939.
Oh—the business cards are another story. I found a letter addressed to the guy on the card dated 1933 (the worst part of the Depression—banks failed in ’33 following the second big stock market crash in ’32. FDR’s “bank holiday” happened in ’33) from the Construction Industry Credit Bureau hounding the guy for an outstanding debt of $5.50 to a paint store. The business cards and the letter are to 2 different addresses for that guy—neither one was this address. Poor guy. I can imagine a painter in hard times having to move often and struggling with debt when there’s no work.
I also found a clip on bowtie (and some other miscellaneous junk) in that space. It was probably from a later time, but I like to imagine the contraceptive salesman wearing it when he went door-to-door.
Susan Jacoby’s history of secularism has several pages about the Comstock Laws (and the demented, dirty-minded individual Comstock). These laws were also used to repress the dissemination of free thought publications.
Also, on the history of contraceptives:
1844
Charles Goodyear patents vulcanization of rubber. Soon, rubber condoms are mass produced. Unlike modern condoms -- made to be used once and thrown away -- early condoms were washed, anointed with petroleum jelly, and put away in special wooden boxes for later reuse. British playwright and essayist George Bernard Shaw called the rubber condom the “greatest invention of the nineteenth century.”1844-1873
The U.S. contraceptive industry flourishes. In addition to condoms (immediately known as “rubbers”), there’s widespread sale and use of intrauterine devices or IUDs, douching syringes, vaginal sponges, diaphragms and cervical caps (then called “womb veils”), and “male caps” that covered only the tip of the penis.1873
The U.S. Congress passes the Comstock laws. Written by dry goods merchant and anti-obscenity crusader Anthony Comstock, the law makes all forms of contraception illegal. The contraceptive industry continues to flourish — but the devices are now sold to promote “feminine hygiene.”1880s
Penniless New York City immigrant Julius Schmid gets extra sausage casings from butcher shops and makes them into skin condoms. It becomes a big business by 1890. By the 1930s, his condom empire is making millions. His Ramses and Sheik brands are still popular.1898
Nineteen-year-old Margaret Sanger’s mother dies at age 50, exhausted from giving birth to 11 children. Sanger becomes a nurse and aids survivors of botched abortions. Later she turns her attention to the development of better contraceptives. Her dream: A birth control pill.
I’m certain now that what the guy was selling were rubber diaphragms. They were also called “Wife’s Protectors” and “womb veils”.
I might even have an idea of the actual maker:
One early entrepreneur was Edward Bliss Foote, a medical college graduate who believed in the then-radical notion that women should control their reproduction. Mr. Foote made a one-size-fits-all womb veil in the 1860’s and sold it for $6 at clinics and through mail order.
That quote was from a review of a book on the history of contraception. I've just ordered that book.
That $6 price is similar to the $5 retail my guy says to compare to. (He sells them for basically $2 each to the customer. One dollar goes to the salesman and one dollar goes to my address. He also makes a bit of money off the salesmen for the price of their “outfits”.)
Edward Bliss Foote is also my kind of person. He was a physician who took on the Comstock Laws. He was also a supporter of Susan B. Anthony and women’s suffrage.
And further:
Foote was a member of the Federation of Freethought, the Secular Union, the Manhattan Liberal Club, the Institute of Heredity, and the Constitutional Liberty League. His son Edward Bond Foote also became a physician and freethinker.
