Bottles

[jscott]

Hi all

On a recent trip to Pozieres I was walking past the chalk pit (which is now a rubbish dump) and noticed a few large mounds of earth by the side of the road. There were a few glass bottles sitting on the mound and I picked them up. I wasn't sure whether they were WW1 era, however a cursory look revealed a number of broken SRD jars and ... an intact mills bomb. At this point I decided to move along, but as I understand it there would have been a number of casualty clearing stations near the chalk pit so I was wondering whether the bottles are WW1-era medical bottles?

Purely guesswork but I was wondering if anyone had a more informed opinion?

Thanks, Jonathan

[centurion]

One of those appears to be a "pop" bottle for carbonated drinks and another (the big squarish one) is typical of medicine bottles used from before 1900 to the 1960s (the NHS for example used to dispense cough mixture in ones like that) but this would include "over the counter" proprietary stuff (like 'medicinal compound' much loved by 'Lilly the pink'). In general some of these bottles could easily be of WW1 vintage but equally be from much later

[johnboy]

If the bottles are machine made I think they might be 1920+. The hand blown ones had sometimes irregular threads.

There are plenty of bottle info websites with pics and explanations about screw tops but some of the dating is hard to follow.

[Khaki]

I might be wrong, but the big round one in the front with a threaded collar looks to me like a lamp base.

khaki

[Oz Ubique]

I would suggest these are 1930's to 1950's (I have a small collection myself). It would be very unusual for a WWI medicine bottle not to have a corked top.

The round one possibly a ladies perfume fitted with squeeze bulb fitting.

You need a lot of 'bottle' to be digging up live mills bombs.

Oz

[jscott]

Thanks all. I would note that they are all very small - the largest is still only a few inches high. But I guess the threaded tops are a good pointer towards a later era. I think the one at the front with a brass top is actually an inkwell as the top of the glass and the brass were stained with blue ink when I found them.

Oh and I definitely wasn't digging - I lifted up a bottle and the (until then unseen) mills bomb rolled a few inches down the side of the mound...

(but i do appreciate the pun)!

[Amnon]

hello

I am not an expert, but I have some experience. In my place, Southern Israel, we have a lot of remnants from WW1, All the bottles or the broken bottles from WW1 that I found in the rubbish pits has a mushroom like corks or crown corks for a beer bottles. I never found a screw top expet one little flask that is raer. Otherwise, almost all the bottles from that time has an oxidation coating and your's not.I believe your's are maybe from the 1940s according to the SRD jars that were in use also in WW2

Amnon

[centurion]

The use of screw tops will have increased in WW1 as there was a cork shortage. Before WW1 most of Europe's cork production was centred on Spain and Portugal and was mainly for the wine trade. However during the war the demand for cork for other purposes mushroomed. These other purposes included sun helmets, industrial seals (cork washers, blanking disks grommets etc), floats (including life jackets), parts of some gas masks and so on. At the same time the demand for cork for traditional uses (bungs) grew as an enormous variety of liquids (from rum to sodium) had to be contained in glass or ceramic containers and corks were wanted. Cork production depends on the harvesting of bark from mature trees (that take years to grow) and so cannot be accelerated overnight. For the Allies, which included a major cork producer - Portugal, supplies were relatively secure but shortages inevitably increased as demand increased and wherever possible substitutes were sought (rubber bungs, seals etc for example). Screw top bottles and jars would fall into this category. For Germany the situation was much worse but that's a subject for a different post.

[Fattyowls]

I fear I may still have a proprietary medicine bottle like that at the back of the cupboard in the bathroom; indeed it may contain 'medicinal compound'. Worse still since I read Centurion's post two I've had the Scaffold's one and only hit in my head and I can't shake it off. The Germans call such tunes earworms and for good reason.

Pete.

[centurion]

I fear I may still have a proprietary medicine bottle like that at the back of the cupboard in the bathroom; indeed it may contain 'medicinal compound'. Worse still since I read Centurion's post two I've had the Scaffold's one and only hit in my head and I can't shake it off. The Germans call such tunes earworms and for good reason.

Pete.

Well Thank-you very very much - they had at least two hits

[Fattyowls]

Centurion

You can tell how deeply I've buried these memories, but you are so right: Thank You very very very very very very very very very very much. Perhaps I should even change my forum name to Liverpool Lou as a penance. I used to live around the corner from the Aintree Iron too. I'll go and get the service revolver, fill one chamber and go and do the decent thing.

Pete.

[jscott]

Thanks all, some very helpful comments here. So in summary, its pretty likely these bottles are post WW1.

It looks like I may have to check out youtube to make sense of the last few posts!

[Fattyowls]

J, apologies for taking it off topic. Wikipedia has a good entry on the Scaffold; it was a three piece Liverpool performance group consisting of Mike McCartney, brother of Paul (who was in a small time beat combo, can't for the life of me remember their name), the poet Roger McGough and a comedian John Gorman. As Centurion pointed out they had three hits in the sixties all of which I now can't get out of my head. I was only half joking when I said that I had a bottle of medicinal compound (the key ingredient of the Scaffold song "Lily the Pink") in the cupboard. When I had a clear out there were bottles of unidentified liquids which came from my parents' house which might be contemporary with your Pozieres finds.

[centurion]

Lily Pinkenham was a maker of patent medicines both before and after WW1 so the bottle in question could well have contained the infamous compound (which I seem to remember reading originally contained opiates)

[Fattyowls]

As our pharmacutical correspondent points out there were many bottled cure all concoctions which contained what are now called controlled substances and I seem to remember some even radioactive elements. I'm sure I've seen ads from 1914-18 which recommend them for the boys in the trenches.

The theme of the song "Lily the Pink" was the psycological effect of the opiates; so a verse goes "Ebeneezer - thought he was Julius Caesar - so they put him in a home - where they gave him - medicinal compound - now he's Emperor of Rome".

[centurion]

As recently as the late 50s the NHS had two 'standard' prescriptions, one for coughs and the other for what was called - the runs. These were found to be made up respectively of mixtures containing Liquorice, Alcohol and Laudenam - and Chalk, Clay, Alcohol and Laudenam. They were often referred to as the Black stuff and the White stuff "Go down the doctors and ask for a bottle of the Black stuff for our Alberts cough and a bottle of the White stuff for Aunty Eidie" There was also some Pink stuff but I've no idea what that was for or what poisons it contained. All came in bottles similar to one of those in the OP. The White stuff was sometimes referred to , quite accurately it seems, as Kaolin and Morphine