$1 in 1896 US dollars would be roughly $40 today, so this was not a particularly cheap product in its day. Empty bottles show up on various auction sites today.
Her cheeks are giving me Eraserhead-vibes
Found bottle photo:
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This is awesome
People in 1896: ‘WTF is hair? Always something new with these people’
It’s amazing what the human body can grow when you don’t have siphylis
In 1896 you could hire an unskilled laborer for $1.00/day, working 10 to 12 hours.
More like $75.00 today.
Inflation counters seldom reflect reality imho.
Found a history of this guy, from the Southborough Historical Society
Interesting points: He was the first person to create Vanilla extract, and had a whole business selling that and various other flavoring extracts. He supplied the anesthetic used at Massachusetts General Hospital to perform the first painless surgery in the USA. But his “best known product”, per the Historical Society, was in fact this cocaine hair treatment, which he developed in 1857. He also started a business called Deerfoot Farms, which sold a range of meat products, and - bizarrely - supplied a cow that went to the south pole and back with Admiral Byrd.
He died in 1894 in a carriage accident.
Did they believe cocaine actually did something for hair, or was this just a way to discreetly sell coke?
Not sure, but if the second, it would at least require some process to distill the coke out of the solution. The ad doesn’t mention it, but I’ll guess that like Coca-Cola and various other early cocaine containing products, it was very dilute.
Cocaine wasn’t illegal at the time and you could even buy it at your neighborhood drugstore. So for it to make sense as a way to obtain it, it would have to be cheaper through hair products, than just rocking up to a pharmacy and buying some. That probably moves my credence toward the first option: they thought it did something, or at least, they thought the advertisement would be effective in convincing customers of that.
“The problem is with all these weirdos trying to smell or lick my hair! One time a guy put a lighter to my hair and tried to smoke it. I mean it was good and I don’t do it as much anymore…” She said.
For the hair
