Dunlap’s Pennsylvania Packet

January 23

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , , , ,

What was advertised in a colonial American newspaper 250 years ago this week?

Dunlap’s Pennsylvania Packet (January 17, 1774).

“WAS taken from a shop window … a SIGN of a bible.”

Joseph Crukshank ran a printing office and sold books at the “SIGN of a bible” in Philadelphia … some of the time.  According to an advertisement that he placed in the January 17, 1774, edition of Dunlap’s Pennsylvania Packet, his sign went missing sometime around the beginning of the year.  When he started in the trade, Crukshank did an apprenticeship with Andrew Steuart “at the Bible-in-Heart.”[1]  Perhaps he chose a similar device to mark his location as a means of encouraging an association in the minds of prospective customers familiar with his former master’s work.

“WAS taken from a shop window about two weeks ago,” Crukshank stated, “a SIGN of a bible.”  In that notice, the printer and bookseller provided information that testified to the visual culture of advertising that colonizers encountered when they traversed the streets of Philadelphia.  Although some eighteenth-century trade cards depict shop signs hanging from poles, presumably outside and perhaps perpendicular to the building so pedestrians could see them from a distance, Crukshank apparently positioned his sign in a window, facing into the street.  That gave it less visibility, but likely required less maintenance by protecting it from the weather.  Unfortunately, Crukshank did not indicate the size of the sign, though it must have been small enough for whoever took it to carry away without attracting notice.

The printer and bookseller did not believe that the culprit kept the sign but instead played a trick by abandoning it somewhere.  “It is supposed they who took it had no intention of detaining it,” he declared, “but left it where it may have been found by some person who does not know the owner.”  With that statement, Crukshank confessed the limits of deploying an image to represent his business.  Colonizers who lived in his neighborhood almost certainly recognized the “SIGN of a bible” that identified his shop, as did many others who had resided in the city for some time.  Yet he did not consider the image universally known among the denizens of the busy port.  His advertisement may have aided to establish a connection between Crukshank’s shop and his sign in the minds of those readers, a helpful bit of branding if he managed to recover the sign or replaced it.

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[1] Isaiah Thomas, The History of Printing in America: With a Bibliography of Printers and an Account of Newspapers (1810; New York: Weathervane Books, 1970), 386.

January 10

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , , , , ,

What was advertised in a colonial American newspaper 250 years ago today?

Dunlap’s Pennsylvania Packet (January 10, 1774).

“BOWEN’s SAGO … the only cure for the FLUX.”

Townsend Speakman and Christopher Carter, “CHEMISTS AND DRUGGISTS” in Philadelphia, took to the pages of Dunlap’s Pennsylvania Packet to advertise “BOWEN’s SAGO,” a medicine for preventing and curing scurvy.  The apothecaries did not, however, appear to generate their own copy.  Instead, they seemed to borrow heavily from advertisements that Zepheniah Kingsley placed in the South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal and other newspapers published in Charleston several months earlier.

The headline differed only slightly, “BOWEN’s patent SAGO” in the original shortened to “BOWEN’s SAGO” in Speakman and Carter’s advertisement.  The introductory remarks remained the same, describing the product as “So much and generally esteemed in the Royal navy, and in the African trade, as an anti-scorbutic, and the only cure for the FLUX.”  In the original, the retailer then announced, “SOLD By Z. KINGSLEY,” and directed customers to his store in Beadon’s Alley.  The apothecaries in Philadelphia altered that portion slightly, declaring that the medicine “is, by special appointment, SOLD by SPEAKMAN AND CARTER, CHEMISTS AND DRUGGISTS,” and then gave directions to their shop.  The main body of both advertisements included an overview of endorsements by “the Royal Society, the Royal College of Physicians, and the Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce.”  Speakman and Carter added additional endorsements: “by Dr. Fothergill, and several other persons of reputation.”  Another paragraph described how Captain James Cook and botanists who sailed with him during the Endeavour’s “voyage round the world” also “vouched” for the “good effects” of Bowen’s Sago in the report they published upon their return.  It appeared almost word-for-word, substituting “Joseph Banks, Esq” for “Mr. BANKES.”  A brief note appeared at the end, “SOLD at same Place, BOWEN’s patent SOY” in the original and “At the same place may be had, BOWEN’S PATENT SOY.”

Speakman and Carter created their advertisement at a time that most people thought little of reprinting what others had written or published, at least in certain contexts.  Colonial printers liberally reprinted content from one newspaper to another, often attributing their sources but sometimes not doing so.  Printers and booksellers who advertised books frequently copied the extensive subtitles or contents that appeared on the title page, treating those as advertising copy. Apothecaries, shopkeepers, and others who sold patent medicines sometimes published newspaper advertisements that drew heavily from the directions or promotional materials provided by the producers.  In this instance, Speakman and Carter may have used Kingsley’s advertisement as a model, revising it slightly for their purposes, or both the apothecaries in Philadelphia and the merchant in Charleston may have adapted handbills, newspaper advertisements, or other marketing materials sent to them by their suppliers.  Whatever the explanation, consumers in two major ports encountered nearly identical marketing for a product sold by local vendors.