Perth Amboy Bath

June 16

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , , ,

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

Pennsylvania Journal (June 16, 1773).

“The CONVENIENT BATH [and] The MINERAL SPRING (similar to the German Spaw).”

Newspaper advertisements promoted a nascent leisure and tourism industry in the late eighteenth century.  For instance, an advertisement for the “CONVENIENT BATH” at Perth Amboy, New Jersey, intended to run for two months during the summer of 1773 made its first appearance in the Pennsylvania Gazette and the Pennsylvania Journal on June 16.  The proprietors informed prospective guests that their facilities were “put in very good order for the reception of such as incline to BATH in SEA WATER.”  In addition, they also opened the “MINERAL SPRING (similar to the German Spaw).”  Visitors to the bath and mineral spring could arrange for “Genteel Lodgings” with “private families” in the town.

To entice colonizers in Philadelphia to travel to Perth Amboy, the proprietors confided that “several persons last year received great benefit” from bathing in sea water.  In addition, a combination of bath and spa “proved efficatious to scorbutic, and other disorders.”  They expected that prospective clients might remember advertisements published the previous summer, notices that went into greater detail about the health benefits associated with partaking in the services offered at their facilities.  In an advertisement in the New York Journal, for instance, the proprietors explained that their “Bath will be more beneficial, as at about two Miles Distance is a Mineral Water” and “its proper Distance procuring moderate Exercise after bathing, has proved in many Instances very assistant to the Medicinal Quality of the Waters.” They also asserted that the regimen had been “well examined by several Physicians of Ability, and frequently recommended by them” after observing “great Success” among those who visited the bath and “spaw.”

The proprietors did not provide as many details in the advertisement they ran in the summer of 1773 compared to the one that announced their inaugural season in 1772.  Perhaps they believed that word-of-mouth recommendations helped to enhance the reputation of the facility among the cohort of consumers with the leisure time and resources that would allow them to visit the shore during the summer, making it unnecessary to go into more specifics in their latest advertisement.  They may have considered the weekly repetition of the shorter advertisement over two months sufficient to create a buzz among the better sorts most likely to avail themselves of the bath and spa services in Perth Amboy.

July 12

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , , ,

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

New-York Journal (July 9, 1772).

“A NEW and CONVENIENT BATH.”

Readers of the New-York Journal encountered an advertisement for “DOCTOR HILL’s GENUINE AMERICAN BALSAM” in the June 9, 1772, edition.  Michael Hoffman informed them that he received a “fresh Supply” of the “truly excellent medicine” responsible for “great numbers of cures” of all sorts of maladies.  In another advertisement, however, readers learned of an alternative to the patent medicines hawked by so many apothecaries, merchants, and shopkeepers.  That notice announced that a “NEW and CONVENIENT BATH” had been “LATELY ERECTED, And now opened” in nearby Perth Amboy, New Jersey.

The advertisement described what visitors could expect to experience if they visited the bath.  They had access to a “Room properly constructed to undress and dress in, with a Stair-Case leading into the Bathing Room, where Persons of wither Sex may bathe in Salt-Water, in the Salt-Water, in the greatest Privacy.”  In addition, “a Door is so placed in the Bath” that “those that choose to swim off into deeper Water … can conveniently go out and return.”  The notice suggested that visitors also take advantage of a “Mineral Water, similar to the German Spaw” about two miles from the bath, declaring that “its proper Distance procuring moderate Exercise after bathing, has proved in many Instances very assistant to the Medicinal Quality of the Waters.”  Furthermore, “bathing in Sea Water” enhanced the efficacy of the mineral waters at the spa.  In case that description did not entice prospective visitors, the advertisement also reported that “several Physicians of Ability” examined the “Qualities of this Spaw” and “frequently recommended” partaking in the experience.  A nota bene indicated that visitors from New York and other places could procure “Genteel Lodgings” from any of “several private Families” in Perth Amboy.”

A nascent tourism industry emerged in the second half of the eighteenth century, sometimes connected to the medicinal benefits of visiting baths and spas.  In the decade before the American Revolution, the proprietors of “JACKSON’S Mineral-Well in Boston,”  the “Bath and House” at Chalybeat Springs in Bristol, Pennsylvania, and the “BATH” near the “Mineral Water, similar to the German Spaw” in Perth Amboy all placed newspapers advertisements to encourage colonizers to visit their facilities and partake in the amenities they provided.