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Lydia Pinkham

by Jen Ratliff on 2022-03-01T13:04:00-05:00 | 0 Comments

One of the most recognizable faces in advertising, Lydia E. Pinkham became a household name after she began selling her self-titled herbal “women’s tonic” in 1875.

Lydia (Estes) Pinkham was born in 1819 in Lynn, Massachusetts to a large, Quaker family. The Estes were well-established in New England and part of the area's social reform movement that advocated for women’s rights, temperance, and abolition. The family was friendly with movement leaders, including Susan B. Anthony, Frederick Douglas, and William Garrison. As a young adult, Lydia left the Quaker faith, believing it to not be firm enough in opposition to slavery. She became a schoolteacher and at age 24, married Isaac Pinkham of Portsmouth, who worked as a shoe manufacturer. Lydia left teaching to raise her four children with Isaac and while doing so became well-known in her community for her homemade remedies, which were said to cure the  discomforts of pregnancy, menstruation, and menopause.  

Soon ladies were traveling to Lynn to see her and in 1875 she began commercially selling her Vegetable Compound. The original formula contained unicorn root, life root, black cohosh, pleurisy root, and fenugreek seed, all preserved in 19% alcohol. Patent medicines like this were common in the late 19th century, when many feared hospitals and women were more comfortable turning to other women for advice and home remedies. Alcohol was a common ingredient in these elixirs and provided temporary relief, making it difficult to discern what products worked and which didn’t.

Pinkham believed in the woman-to-woman appeal of her Vegetable Compound and wrote the company’s first piece of advertising, a four-page health guide titled “Guide for Women.” This type of literature would become a staple for the company. Lydia’s sons, Dan and Will took charge of the company’s marketing, choosing to put their mother’s portrait on the bottle. They embarked on a large and successful campaign to make Lydia Pinkham a household name, but it was cut short in 1881 when the brothers both died of tuberculosis only two months apart. Lydia died two years later following a stroke.

The family endured and continued the Lydia E. Pinkham Medicine Company, even signing correspondence in Lydia’s name long after her death. Pinkham siblings, Aroline and Charles along with their spouses assumed control of the business and despite questions surrounding the Vegetable Compound’s potency, they expanded their offerings, with products ranging from mouthwash to liver pills.

 

In 1922, Aroline (Pinkham) Gove erected the Lydia E. Pinkham Memorial building on Derby Street in Salem in memory of her late mother. The building continues to operate as a baby clinic, “dedicated to nursing mothers, hygiene, and promoting public health.”

The Vegetable Compound’s formula and label were altered following the creation of the FDA and the company was sold by the family in 1968 to Cooper Laboratories for $1 million. As now named, the Lydia Pinkham Herbal Supplement still lives on store shelves and retains her trademark portrait on the label.

View our newly digitized booklet Pinkham Pioneers from 1926. 
 

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Digitized Archives
Pinkham Pioneers, 1926

 


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