Oddity of the Week: The h2g2 Post of 1903
Created | Updated Aug 27, 2012
This week's Oddity asks the question: What changes?
The h2g2 Post of 1903: Advertising Then and Now
The adverts are from Black Cat in 1903. It was sort of like the h2g2 Post: full of fiction and maybe-fact. Pretty cool stuff. One story kept me interested – it concerned a diver, intent on salvage, who found a shipwreck survivor who had been trapped for days inside an airtight compartment. Thrilling stuff, but I don't know if it was true. This gem is preserved for us in the 'pulp magazine' section of www.archive.org. I recommend this website. You never know what you're going to find.
Black Cat is family-friendly, unlike most of the pulp. I wanted to show you the cover of the girlie magazine from 1936, but I was afraid 2legs would get too excited. The interesting bit is that – just like our websites today – the magazine was full of adverts. Did you notice that hat? You could have it from Sears for $1.75. By mail order, almost as good as online shopping.
According to the adverts, concerns in 1903 weren't much different from those in 2012. Real estate: 'I can sell your farm' rather than 'time-share'. (A lot of people in the US were moving to town around then.) Fashion: the scrumptious hat. Kitchenware, cheap carpets. High-tech devices, such as a fan that runs on water from the faucet. (I want one.)
Other adverts in the volume show that there's not much new in the mass-marketing world. At least two adverts touted ways to lose weight. Mind you, they used the word 'fat', which is a no-no these days, and there was another advert for people who were 'too thin. I can't remember when somebody last complained about being too thin. There was a bust enhancer for ladies, and a smoking-cessation aid, plus a cure for alcoholism. A fortune-teller with a psychic 'hot line', by mail, of course. Pretty much what ends up in your spam folder.
Vanity presses to snare the would-be author? They had 'em, a whole pageful. Work-from-home scams? You betcha – you could use your typewriter, or hand-write letters and invitations. The money would roll in.
You could order whiskey for $3.20 for four full quarts, express paid. Or shell out $3.60 for 36 packets of bluing (ask your great-grandmother, it was a laundry thing), and get absolutely free, a 'high grade talking machine', guaranteed to play BOTH Victor and Columbia records. In other words, your rather heavy MP3 player was compatible.
Insurance, investment 'opportunities', hair-loss prevention. . . as the Romans used to say, there's nothing new under the sun. Or in advertising, apparently.
I did spot two things you won't see advertised online – at least, not anywhere the police can find them. One is on our page: that advert is offering people a chance to get into the ginseng business. Ginseng poaching is illegal in some parts today. The other is opiates. Seeing 'opium' or 'morphine' in large, unfriendly letters, accompanied by the offer to mail you a free sample, is sort of unnerving.
In short, plus ça change. Doesn't that hat just scream, 'Lady Gaga'?
