I just had to show you this - another odd little item of ephemera I salvaged from my late aunt and uncle's house when clearing it last year. How could I not take it home?! Inside it contains all the things you ever need to know, from a 'Cure For Drunkenness'
to how to make 'Curling Fluid For Hair'
and how 'To Cure Birds' Skins' (why?)
Even better, though, are the adverts for other booklets by the same publisher - I would have them all if I could - I'm particularly intrigued by 'Should A Woman Tell?' in which Rev. A J Waldron discusses 'Heterodox Suggestions' (I think that's just another word for kinky?) and 'The White Slave Trade and Flogging' (surely some kind of code?) Just what is 'The Woman's Question' and what is all this about 'telling'?*
Hopefully you can see/read more clearly if you want to by zooming in on this page or clicking on pics to view.
It's all delightfully tacky - I'd love to know how old it is but could find no reference to its issue date.
* UPDATE - I've discovered that 'Should A Woman Tell?' was a controversial play about the 'domestic morality problem' from the early 1900s - an advertising poster's strapline for it reads 'Should a man demand from woman that which he refuses to give?' So I'm still intrigued!
I need a lot of those publications.
ReplyDeleteParticularly Why Some Succeed & Others Fail and Character At A Glance. I'm also sure I'd approve of Grammar At A Glance.
I'd love to read them too. It seems everything can be improved 'at a glance'...
DeleteI cannot vouch for the the curling fluid but there's a water softener , a bleach , a pink dye,a glosser, and obviously a few things to try and make your hair smell better... I think the combination may have been disappointing in it's efficacy !
ReplyDeleteIndeed, some interesting ingredients there - the thought of them alone is probably enough to make my hair curl...
DeleteI'm off to read Why Some Succeed and others Fail
ReplyDeleteHopefully I'll learn a few tips
Fantastic stuff
It's all written in the stars apparently!
DeleteI think I've hit on something here - I too was going to make a comment about Why Some Success and others Fail. Here's a thought - The ones who succeed don't spend all their time blogging! (But it is fun.)
ReplyDeleteNo such thing as failure! I wonder if a more contemporary version of this would have included 'Successful Blogging (At A Glance)' though..
DeleteA cure for drunkeness? Why?
ReplyDeleteGood point, SA. Top-up?
DeleteWhy Some Succeed And Others Fail... doubtless worth a look.
ReplyDeleteI also like titles that end in question marks, as I like to imagine giving one word answers rather than reading them. To whit:
Should a woman tell? No.
Are you lucky? Sometimes.
Your destiny after life? Death.
The BBC news website has been doing this "question as headline" thing increasingly in recent months, so much so that I had thought of starting a new blog that consisted purely of their headline question with my one word answer. Then I realised that (a) I have enough trouble keeping my existing blogs going and (b) no-one would read one-word-answers-to-headline-questions.com
Great idea, haha! It would keep printing and production costs down....
DeleteI'll be on the lookout now for those kind of news headlines. If a website devoted to them would be too much, you could still do a series of occasional posts on NA perhaps?
Indeed, this is an idea that has crossed and recrossed my mind. Example: these are all from today's BBC News homepage:
Delete1. You v Neymar: How do your salaries compare?
2. Who was behind the terror attacks on the West?
3. Why was Houston not evacuated?
4. Can the world live with a nuclear North Korea?
5. What should schools put first? Discipline or creativity?
To which the answers must surely be:
1. Unfavourably.
2. Terrorists.
3. Where?
4. Just.
5. Creativity.
Hmm. Answered question 3 with another question. Could get myself into an infinite loop here...
I should add that I don't mean "where's Houston?" but more "where to?" Oh, the peril of the one-word answer!
DeleteHa, love those examples. And I knew what you meant by "where" :-)
DeleteDoes this idea have legs?
Yes.
Maybe it does! From today's BBC News homepage:
Delete1. Would you take a ride in a pilotless sky taxi?
2. Has voodoo been misjudged?
3. Could a new political party be on the way?
4. What is it like living in a squat?
Answers?
1. No
2. Probably
3. Unlikely
4. Chastening
Which illustrates that we'd have to be selective in choosing the headlines, perhaps limiting only to those that enable mildly humourous one-word answers.
Yep!
Delete;-)