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| The Panic of 1873 Bank Run on the Fourth National Bank in New York City |
Lydia E. Pinkham’s Vegetable Compound made its commercial appearance in Lynn, Massachusetts in 1875 for $1 a bottle. She wrote handbills for her sons to distribute with slogans such as “Only a woman can understand a woman’s ills.”
Lydia initially made the remedy on her stove before its success enabled production to be transferred to a factory. Patented and mass-marketed from 1876 on, Lydia E. Pinkham's Vegetable Compound became one of the best known patent medicines of the 19th century. Descendants of this product are still available today. Lydia's skill was in marketing her product directly to women, and her company continued her shrewd marketing tactics after her death. Her own face was on the label and her company was particularly keen on the use of testimonials from grateful women. Advertising copy urged women to write to Mrs. Pinkham. They did, and they received answers.
“consumption” (tuberculosis). Lydia Pinkham died of a stroke in Lynn, Massachusetts on May 17, 1883, at the age of 64. She was buried in Pine Grove Cemetery in Lynn.
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| Lydia Pinkham's Grave |
At the time of her death, only eight years after first selling her "vegetable compound", the business was grossing about $300,000 per year. Labels and pamphlets were published in English, French and Spanish, and the product's popularity continued to grow, becoming a multi-million dollar business.
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| 1880s Advertisement for Lydia E. Pinkham's Vegetable Compound |
After the death of his brothers and mother, Charles H. Pinkham ran the company. Charles died in 1900 of kidney disease – a sad irony in light of the Compound’s claims to cure all kidney troubles.
Charles’ death triggered a power struggle within the family which raged intermittently for the next half-century or until the 1950s. Aroline Pinkham had married a lawyer named Will Gove, and while Charles was running the company, the Goves had little to do with the business. The Goves did little work and yet shared in the profits.
In 1900, after Charles’ death, Will and Aroline (Pinkham) Gove moved quickly to seize control of the company and drive out the Pinkham heirs, including Lydia’s grandchildren (Aroline’s cousins), Lucy and Marion Pinkham. Each side of the family held 56 shares in the
corporation. Because Will Gove was Secretary of the Board of Directors, after Charles’ death the Goves assumed control. Since each side of the family owned equal shares in the company,Jennie Pinkham, Charles’ widow, was elected to the board. The equal shares facilitated a stalemate on the board because control could not be taken back from the Goves.
Jennie Pinkham asked her son Arthur to drop out of college and help her protect her stake in the Lydia Pinkham Medicine Company. Arthur realized the law offered the Pinkhams no recourse and to regain some control of the company he would have to force the Goves to negotiate. Arthur also realized that the Pinkhams had two important assets – the Pinkham
name and his father, Charles’ reputation in the patent medicine industry.
His first move was to order the postmaster to deliver the thousands of letters addressed
to “Mrs. Pinkham” to his mother – Mrs. Jennie Pinkham – instead of the factory where the Goves had control.
Then he went into competition with the Lydia Pinkham Medicine Company – his mother’s own company; he began to manufacture "Vegetable Compound". Copyright protected the trademark “Lydia Pinkham’s Vegetable Compound,” but not the formula of the medicine. Arthur could legally duplicate the Pinkham Compound as long as he gave it a different name. Jennie Pinkham took the first letter of the names of each of her children and arrived at the
name “Delmac.” Early in 1901 Arthur ran a full-page ad in the local paper introducing the “Delmac Liver Regulator.” Its label featured a picture of his late father, Charles Pinkham, known by druggists across the country as the manufacturer of the Pinkham medicine. As a final touch, Jennie Pinkham wrote an enthusiastic endorsement which she signed “Mrs.
Pinkham.”
name “Delmac.” Early in 1901 Arthur ran a full-page ad in the local paper introducing the “Delmac Liver Regulator.” Its label featured a picture of his late father, Charles Pinkham, known by druggists across the country as the manufacturer of the Pinkham medicine. As a final touch, Jennie Pinkham wrote an enthusiastic endorsement which she signed “Mrs.
Pinkham.”
A few weeks after producing and advertising his new medicine, Arthur called on Will Gove and invited him to sample the Delmac Regulator. One taste and Gove capitulated – the medicine was indistinguishable from Lydia Pinkham’s Vegetable Compound. The Pinkhams and the Goves reached a compromise. In return for the written promise that she would refrain from marketing products that competed with those manufactured by the Lydia
Pinkham Medicine Company, Jennie gained a seat on the Board of Directors. The newly constituted Board then elected Arthur Pinkham vice-president and secretary of the company. Four months after the Goves’ takeover, the Pinkhams had regained a voice in the
company’s management.
company’s management.
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| 1910 letter from"Mrs. Pinkham" |
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| 1910 letter from"Mrs. Pinkham" |
Will Gove was president of the company from 1900 until 1920. He proved to be a poor
administrator. The ongoing family feud continued and the dispute was passed on
to the Pinkham and Gove children.
administrator. The ongoing family feud continued and the dispute was passed on
to the Pinkham and Gove children.
Women continued to write and receive answers for decades after Lydia Pinkham's death. These staff-written answers combined forthright talk about women's medical issues, advice, and, of course, recommendations for her product. In 1905, the Ladies' Home Journal published a photograph of Lydia Pinkham's tombstone and exposed the ruse. The Pinkham company insisted that it had never meant to imply that the letters were being answered by Lydia Pinkham, but by her daughter-in-law, Jennie Pinkham.
The Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906 forced makers of patent medicines to disclose on the label the product's alcohol content. For the first time, users of the compound--many of whom were adamant non-drinkers, and some of whom were Womens' Christian Temperance Union members--discovered that the Pinkham's was 15 percent alcohol. In fact, just before labeling was required, the formula had been changed: the old, undisclosed formula was closer to 20 percent alcohol.
The new law also forced manufacturers to scale back the claim for cures on the labels. No longer would purchasers of the compound be treated to claims such as:
"A sure cure for PROLAPSUS UTERI, or falling of the womb and all FEMALE WEAKNESSES including leucorrhoea, irregular and painful menstruation, inflammation and ulceration of the womb, flooding,...for all weaknesses of the generative organs of either sex, it is second to no remedy that has ever been before the public, and for all diseases of the kidneys it is the GREATEST REMEDY IN THE WORLD."
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| 1920 Advertisement for Lydia E. Pinkham's Vegetable Compound |
In 1922, Lydia's daughter Aroline Pinkham Chase Gove founded the Lydia E. Pinkham Memorial Clinic in Salem, Massachusetts to provide health services to young mothers and their children. The clinic is in operation as of 2012.
In 1925 annual profits peaked at $3.8 million.
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| 1926 Booklet, "Health Hints", with Lydia Pinkham and her Great Granddaughter |
The family feud finally ended up in court and stayed there for years, eventually going to the Massachusetts Supreme Court. In July of 1937, the Court granted the Pinkhams an injunction against the Goves to prevent them from interfering in the business. The final chapter of the Pinkham-Gove feud was recorded in Maine, before that state’s Supreme Judicial Court, where the Gove stockholders had filed for receivership. Aroline Gove died at the age of eighty-two before the final decision was made. Lydia Pinkham Gove herself was
the one responsible for losing the case in the Maine courts: under questioning from her own lawyer, she testified that absolute equality between the two families had always been intended and upheld by both sides until Arthur Pinkham sought to take control of the business.
Reminiscent of the irony of Charles Pinkham’s death in 1900 of kidney disease, and as if to once again mock claims of the Vegetable Compound’s efficacy, Lydia Pinkham Gove died in 1948 of ovarian cancer.
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| 1963 Advertisement in Ebony Magazine for Lydia E. Pinkham's Vegetable Compound |
successfully, for another decade or so. The family-owned business sold out to Cooper Laboratories in 1968. Cooper paid the Pinkhams over a million dollars for the firm and moved it to Puerto Rico. According to one of Lydia’s biographers, Sara Stage, “Cooper Labs, drawing on a residual demand created by past advertising, managed to gross over $700,000 annually on sales of the Vegetable Compound.”
Pills and a liquid bearing the name of Lydia Pinkham are still for sale. The ingredients are water, alcohol, vitamin B1, licorice, chamomile, pleurisy root, black cohosh, life root plant, true unicorn, false unicorn, gentian and dandelion root. The medicine has a bitter, nut-like flavor with a faint aftertaste of licorice. “Your initial reaction is to screw up your face,” according to a comment by Hermon E. Smith, one of Lydia’s great-grandsons whose job it was to taste every batch made in the early 1970s.
Although Pinkham's motives were partly self-serving, many modern-day feminists admire her for distributing information on menstruation and the "facts of life", and consider her to be a crusader for women's health issues in a day when women were poorly served by the medical establishment.
The Lydia Pinkham House located near her factory in Lynn, Massachusetts was placed on the National Register of Historic Places September 25, 2012.
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| The Lydia Pinkham House |
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