Turlington's Balsam started life in London in the early 1740s and was still being marketed, in North America, 180 years later. For most of that long and international lifetime it was sold in bottles of a very distinctive shape, first introduced in 1754.
Between the 1750s and early 20th century a huge number of variations arose on the basic 1754 shape, and on the original embossing, with histories of British and North American bottles that diverged noticeably during the 19th century. This page provides an introduction and overview to both, although the main focus is on British bottles.
A British Turlington's Balsam bottle of the 1754 design, embossed "BY / THE / KING's / ROYALL / PATENT / GRANTED / TO // IANy 26 1754. // ROBT / TURLINGTON / FOR / HIS / INVENTED / BALSAM / OF / LIFE. // LONDON. "
On the 18th of January 1744 (1) Robert Turlington of London, by profession a weaver (1697 - 1766) was granted a patent for a "Specific Balsam, called the Balsam of Life". Made from a complex recipe with 27 ingredients, the Balsam was described in a newspaper advertisement the following year as "a specific Remedy for the Stone, Gravel, Cholick, Vomitting and Spitting of Blood, and other inward Weaknesses and Decays ; Which hath been happily experienced (by numbers of people of undeniable Credit and Integrity) to be so very efficacious in easing and curing the following (amongst many other) Disorders" (2):
Turlington had apparently been selling his Balsam for at least a few years before receiving his patent (3). Until 1746 it was probably bottled in plain, cylindrical phials similar to these early to mid-18th century examples. The largest is 110mm (4.5 inches) tall and the smallest 45mm (1.75 inches). The glass is pale green and the iridescent patina, which is a result of many years of burial, would not have been present when they were in use.
Turlington's medicine must have quickly became successful because, just a couple of years after the patent date, and in an effort to deter imitators and counterfeiters, he introduced a distinctive embossed, mould blown, bottle of his own design. This is the earliest known, accurately datable, embossed patent medicine bottle, but so far is only 'known' from written descriptions accompanying woodcut illustrations, such as this one redrawn from an advertisement of March 1747 (4):
The bottle was embossed on one face with the Royal coat of arms above Turlington's own, unofficial, personal device of three leopards heads. According to the advertisements it was embossed on the reverse with "R. Turlington By The King's Patent", but unlike later bottles there was no embossed date, and no embossing on either of the narrower sides (5).
Three further changes in shape. Turlington changed the design of his bottles three more times, in 1748, 1750, and 1754, each time to try to keep one step ahead of imitators who were bottling their own concoctions in genuine but re-used Turlington's bottles, or "causing [ ... ] bottles to be made resembling the patentee's". Jones and Vegotsky (3) provide an account of these changes to the bottles, and detailed drawings of the 1748, 1750, and 1754 types.
Robert Turlington may have been one of the first to use highly distinctive bottles in his fight to protect his brand, but he was by no means alone in having numerous others making and selling imitations of his medicine: his struggle against 'imposters' and 'counterfeiters' was a common one. In extreme cases, including Turlington's, medicines that were originally proprietary (i.e. private intellectual or commercial property) gradually became patent medicine versions of modern generic drugs, with formulae widely available in chemists and druggists recipe books, and anyone with the necessary resources able to make, bottle and vend them. It was these 'imitators' and, later on, more legitimate makers and bottlers (6), who formed the greater part of the market for many 'branded' patent medicine bottles, including Turlington's Balsam bottles, over a period of decades or centuries. This will be a recurring feature in future posts.
The 1754 bottle.
Turlington's efforts to keep ahead of his imitators through changes to his bottle shape were clearly only partially successful. The 1754 design was his last, perhaps in recognition of the fact that changes to the bottle shape were only partially successful at protecting his interests. The shape remained in use, with numerous variations, for over 150 years, and was eventually manufactured in large numbers on both sides of the Atlantic.
Until about the 1820s it seems that the great majority of all Turlington's Balsam bottles, including most - but not all - of those used throughout North America, were manufactured in Britain in heavy, colourless, flint glass (3). This was at least in part due to British tax incentives that encouraged the export of glass (7), and so enabled parts of the British glass industry to out-compete the American glass industry in it's own country.
There were two sizes of Turlington's bottle: 1 ounce and ½ ounce.
Large and small Turlington's Balsam bottles, British made, blown in heavy flint glass. From around the 1770s onwards two sizes of Turlington's bottles were advertised by British glass makers, something which continued until the middle to late 19th century. The larger sizes held approximately 1 fluid ounce, the smaller bottles half an ounce. Minor stylistic features suggest that while the larger bottle in this picture is likely to be 18th century the smaller one may be early to mid-19th century (8). Both were blown in 2 part open-and-shut moulds (hinge moulds) and both are pontilled, with small circular glass-tipped pontil scars on their bases:
The pontil scar on the larger bottle in the previous photograph. The scar is the roughly circular area of broken or chipped-looking glass slightly off-centre on the base. The diagonal line passing through the centre of the scar is the seam where the two halves of the open-and-shut 'hinge mould' joined across the bottle base. The tools that made this type of mark (the pontil rod, or punty) went out of use around 1850 for the manufacture of this general class of small utilitiarian bottle in Britain, making pontil scars a useful rough dating aid (with caveats - see note 6).
Variations in the form of the 1754 bottle.
During the 100 years after 1754 variations on the basic form were common. These silhouette profiles give an indication of the amount of shape variation among British made pre-1850s Turlington's bottles of both sizes (The tapered bottle on the left is a Dalby's Carminative, which will be used with all bottle profiles on this website to provide a standardised size comparison. It is 95mm, or 3 ¾ inches, tall).
Perhaps the two most obvious variables are, firstly, the degree of curvature of the sides on the top part of the bottle, ranging from almost straight (the first, second and third Turlington's bottles from the left) to almost circular (the 4th, 5th, 6th and 8th bottles). Second is the prominence or otherwise of the widened lower part of the bottle, below the 'waist'. For example, contrast the bottle on the far right with the one fourth from the right. The original Turlington's bottles, used by Robert Turlington himself and his immediate, post 1766, successors, probably most closely matched the straight-sided examples on the left.
Variations in embossing on British 1754 bottles.
Variations in embossing on British-made bottles seem to be limited to fewer than half a dozen variables, some more common and more obvious than others.
BALSAM vs BALSOM. One of the most obvious variations is the spelling of Balsam / Balsom. Balsom seems to be a very uncommon spelling in British written sources of the time, and is also less common on the bottles, but it does appear in three of the six main embossing variants I've so far recorded on British Turlington's bottles. It appears to be more common on American-made bottles.
"An Original Bottle of Turlington's Balsam". Redrawn from a photograph (9). Found in London - perhaps amongst items associated with the long-lived London patent medicine business of John Newbery - and reported in the Chemist and Druggist magazine in 1905. This is an example of a 'Balsom' spelling on a large (76mm tall) Turlington's bottle. The earliest 1754 Turlington's bottles probably used the 'Balsam' spelling.
ROYALL vs ROYAL. The two types appear to be approximately equally common, but that may have changed over time. Possibly the "ROYALL" version tends to be earlier (and it will only be a tendency, because the double-L also occurs on late 19th century bottles), but we can't tell without a - probably unobtainable - accurate set of dates for a wide range of individual bottles.
Reversed side embossing. The position of the side embossing is reversed relative to the front and rear embossing.
BY / THE vs BY THE. Not so obvious, but the version with these two words on the same line occurs on two of the six British variants, one Balsam and one Balsom (10).
Others. An uncommon variation is a missing raised 'T' in 'Robt', and there are several variations in punctuation, for example dots vs dashes vs nothing below the raised 'T', and below the 'Y' of 'IANY' (January).
The figure below shows some of the main British embossing variants recorded so far, but is very unlikely to be comprehensive. The groupings I've used ignore minor variations in styles of embossing on the sides of the bottles ('I' vs 'J', and the presence or absence of a 'Y', in Jany), and punctuation.
A proliferation of American Turlington's Balsam bottles.
The dominant position of British glass bottle imports to the United States in the early 19th century, which was responsible for the large proportion of Turlington's bottles used there being British made (3), came to an end in 1824 when the United States introduced import taxes, a move that made British imports less competitive. During the 2nd quarter of the 19th century, perhaps as a result of the 1824 tariffs, and while British-made Turlington's Balsam bottles continued to be manufactured using materials and styles more or less unchanged since the mid-18th century, the American market became far less conservative. Pale green and pale blue / aqua glass bottles of very obvious American manufacture became common in the United States, as did more decorative and often abbreviated embossing.
Five pre-1860s Turlington's bottles, two of them British (far left, and centre) and the other three American. All are pontilled. Characteristics visible in this photo that help to distinguish the American made bottles include: pale blue / aqua glass (second from left), small inward-rolled lips (second from left, and far right), and decoratively curved embossing (second from right). Other characteristics not visible here, but obvious when handling the bottles, include embossing variations (see figure, below), the weight and thickness of the glass (all three of the American bottles), and the styles of the pontil scars (second from left, far right).
No single one of these characteristics is usually enough, on it's own, to be certain of an American origin, but two or three or more probably will be. This is at least in part because potentially confusing similarities sometimes crop up between British bottles and some American bottles. For example, the lip style and pontil on the - almost certainly American - bottle second from the right are indistinguishable from those on 18th and early 19th century British made bottles. Inward-rolled lips also occur on some types of British made bottles of this period, but generally only on wide-mouthed bottles of the types used for powders rather than liquids, and they are rarely as delicately made as these American examples. There's also a 'feel' to early bottles that can be important when trying to identify country of origin. It's something that can't easily be described, and that can probably only be learned by handling as many of the things as possible, in person. The American bottles here probably all date to the second quarter of the 19th century.
Abbreviated embossing is common on later American Turlington's bottles. This little bottle is smooth based (without a pontil scar) and dates to about the 1860s. Embossed simply THE / KINGS / PATENT // - // TUR / LING / TONS / BALSAM // - //, it's a good example of the way that American Turlington's bottles, but apparently not British ones, often have abbreviated embossing. This pale green example has an opalescent patina from burial. 61mm (2 1/2 inches) tall.
Here's another figure showing some embossing variants, this time American. This is far from comprehensive and is only intended to give an indication of the range of variation to be found, and to show the contrast between the conservative British types and some of the less inhibited North American variants. The last four of these are, so far as I know, only found on smooth based bottles from the later 19th century and early 20th century. The first, with arched embossing on one side, might only be found on earlier, pontilled, examples.
Turlington's bottles seem to have gone out of use in Britain a few decades before they did in North America. According to Jones and Vegotsky, advertising of Turlington's bottles by British glassmakers ended around 1870. If they were made in Britain until 1870 then the latest British examples should be smooth base, but in 40 years of bottle digging and 20 years of collecting British patent medicine bottles I have yet to see one. So, given that the vast majority of British bottle digging takes place on sites dating to after 1870, an approximately 1870 end-date makes sense. Furthermore, the use of the bottles would probably have fallen off dramatically towards the end, making them rare items even before their manufacture in Britain finally ended.
In the United States in contrast, where late 19th century examples are quite common, and Canada, their use continued into the 20th century:
Four late 19th or early 20th century Turlington's Balsam bottles. All were found in the US and are almost certainly American made. They all have more or less complete 1754 type embossing front and back, but with varied side embossing. The pale green bottle on the left is plain on the sides, the middle bottles are both embossed LONDON on one side but only JANY on the other. The colourless bottle on the right has the complete date-and-London side embossing. I have not yet recorded any British-made Turlington's bottles as late as these. Do they even exist? I'm not sure that they do, but I'd be very happy to be proved wrong.
Notes and References.
1. 1744 according to the Gregorian calendar, which was adopted in Britain in 1752 and is still in use. At the time the patent was granted, however, the Julian calendar was used, in which the first day of the year is 25th March, so the year of the patent according to the calendar in use at the time was 1743. Potential confusion about this is sometimes resolved by referring to pre-1752 dates in the overlapping period (1st January - 24th March) as being in both years, using the format 1743/44. There's a good description of this in Jones & Vegotsky (2016), page 3. For simplicity any pre-1752 dates referred to in this blog will conform to the Gregorian calendar, so for Turlington's patent the year is 1744.
2. The Stamford Mercury, 5th September 1745. From thebritishnewspaperarchive.com, accessed 29th September 2013.
3. Jones, O. R. and Vegotsky, A. (2016). Turlington's Balsam of Life. Northeast Historical Archaeology 45. pp1 - 61. This paper provides the definitive account of Turlington's life and business, the continued story of the medicine beyond Turlington's 1766 death, and information about all of Turlington's bottle designs.
4. The Ipswich Journal, 28th March 1747. From thebritishnewspaperarchive.com, accesssed 20th December 2013.
5. London Evening Post, 17–19 April 1746, cited in Jones & Vegotsky (2016).
6. The nominal protection provided by Turlington's patent expired after 14 years anyway, after which time anyone with access to his, non-secret, original patent specification was within their rights to manufacture and sell the Balsam of Life according to that recipe. The publication of details that was required by the patenting process was, for this reason, a deterrent to patenting for some.
7. From 1745 to 1845 the British glass industry was subject to a complex system of taxation (about which more, another time). Under this system glass made in Britain for domestic use was taxed at the point of production, but at various times during the lifetime of the glass tax a drawback, or rebate, was granted to glass manufacturers for any glass exported. At times this drawback was larger than the tax initially paid, making it possible to sell British made glass overseas for close to, or even less than, the cost of manufacture and transport. The advantages of this to the British glass industry were substantial, enabling it in America, for example, to out-compete the local industry. The 1824 American import tariffs helped to rebalance this situation.
8. Dating of pre-1850s flint glass bottles used for long-lived products is an art rather than a science. Precise dating of any pontilled, flint glass Turlington's bottle with high confidence is, in practice, very problematic for several reasons. These include relatively unchanged manufacturing methods for the 100 years from the 1740s onwards, and non-linear evolution of styles over that same period. For example, many collectors assume that 'crude = early' when, while that is sometimes true, in many cases the exact opposite is the case. It's also the case that the end-date for pontil use on bottles varied according to type of bottle: early round-based soda water bottles made in Britain were probably made without the use of a pontil rod from as early as 1830, but other types such as non-standard shapes (e.g. figural bottles) continued to be pontilled into the 20th century. So when I say, in the absence of any contextual information about the place of their discovery, that one of these bottles is 'likely' to be 18th century and the other 'may' be 19th century, the emphasis is on uncertainty rather than certainty. General questions of dating will be revisited in future posts.
9. The Chemist and Druggist. September 23rd 1905. p525.
10. In transcriptions of embossing a single forward slash ( / ) denotes a line break that does not cross over between sides of a bottle. A double forward slash ( // ) indicates a line break where writing moves from one side of a bottle to another.
© Jeremy Kemp, 2020.