It must be admitted that the demand for these extremely portable life-preservers has quite gone so far as advertisements are concerned, all that we have seen of modern years being in reference to cauls that the owners wished to part with. When these preventives were fully believed in, an ancient mariner must have been as much surprised as afraid when he went down to the bottom. Captain Marryat tells a rather funny story of a pair of canvas inexpressibles that refused to sink because they had a caul in one of the pockets; and in the days of Howe, Collingwood, and Nelson, a rare trade was driven in cauls, real and imitation, which then fetched fancy prices.

The motives will be apparent which prevent our entering on the merits and demerits of quacks and quack medicines of the present day. Some of the latter are doubtless concocted with skill, and, under peculiar circumstances, are productive of much good, while others are quite the reverse in all particulars. Into this subject we cannot go, as we have no wish to advertise any one nostrum at the expense of another, or to subject ourselves to the expense and unpleasantness which too often attends on outspokenness. We shall rest content with the facts that the most impudent empirics confine themselves to “certain diseases” and hole-and-corner advertisements, and that analytical chemists and comparatively recent legislation have provided for us remedies for any excess on the part of the patent-medicine manufacturers, any one of whom a single false step would irretrievably ruin. Besides, the curious need look no further than the current newspapers for any quantity of average specimens.

Graham and his Celestial Bed are worthy of a chapter to themselves, especially as we have already run to such length on the subject of quacks and quackery.

CHAPTER XV.
GRAHAM AND HIS CELESTIAL BED.

In the year 1775 there commenced practice in London one of the most extraordinary empirics of any time, whose name was Graham. He was the son of a saddler in the Cowgate, Edinburgh, where he was born in 1745. Having graduated as a doctor of medicine at the University of the modern Athens, he practised for some time at Pontefract. After a short residence in that town, Dr Graham went to America, where he figured as a philanthropic physician, travelling for the benefit of mankind, to administer relief in the most desperate diseases to patients whose cases had hitherto puzzled ordinary physicians. And here he picked up a deal of experience, which he put to the test on his return. Having the advantage of a handsome person, a polite address, an agreeable conversation, and great fluency of speech, he obtained admission into the first circles, particularly in New England, where, as he himself stated, he reaped “golden opinions.” Returning to England, he made an excursion through the country, and according to his own account, was eminently successful in curing many individuals whose cases had been considered desperate. In 1775 Graham settled in London, opening a house in Pall Mall, “nearly opposite the King’s Palace,” where he devoted his attention specially to disorders of the ear and eye, and inserted advertisements to that effect in the daily papers. These advertisements, though by no means couched in so bombastic a style as Graham’s later productions, still have an undeniable spice of quackery about them. They are, however, rather too lengthy for insertion. One of them which appeared on February 9, 1776, after stating that from motives of delicacy the Doctor made it an invariable rule never on any account to mention the cure, however extraordinary, of any person, poor or rich, gives the following particulars of his practice:—

After residing in London for some time, he visited Scotland, and was employed by people of the first quality, who were tempted to put themselves under his care by the fascination of his manner and the fame of his wondrous cures. So popular was he that he might have settled in Edinburgh to great advantage, but he preferred returning to England. He fixed his abode in London, where he set on foot one of the most original and extravagant institutions that could well be imagined, the object of which was, according to the ipsissima verba of one of the Doctor’s advertisements, “the propagation of a much more strong, beautiful, active, healthy, wise, and virtuous race of human beings, than the present puny, insignificant, foolish, peevish, vicious, and nonsensical race of Christians, who quarrel, fight, bite, devour, and cut one another’s throat about they know not what.” The idea was original and singular in the highest degree; but he founded his hopes on a perfect knowledge of human nature, and the success which attended his experiment proved that he had calculated with judgment. It has been assumed by some that he really believed in his own statements. That must have been the result of repeating them so often, and in this particular he was by no means singular. In May 1779 he opened what he called “The Temple of Health” in the Adelphi, the purposes of which may be best understood from one of his advertisements which appeared in the Morning Herald and other newspapers pretty constantly between 1778 and 1781:—

As a further attraction to his establishment, Graham secured the services of a beautiful young woman, whom he styled “Vestina, the Rosy Goddess of Health,” who presided over the evening lectures, and, according to the advertisements, assisted “at the display of the Celestial Meteors, and of that sacred Vital Fire over which she watches, and whose application in the cure of diseases, she daily has the honour of directing.” The lady who acted this part subsequently became notorious as the wife of Sir William Hamilton, ambassador to the Court of Naples. Her name was Emma Hart, and before she was raised to the dignity of Goddess of Health, she had officiated in the more humble capacity of nursery and lady’s maid in gentlemen’s families. Eventually, after having sat as model to Romney and other painters, and having lived under the protection of different gentlemen, she was finally married in 1791 at St George’s, Hanover Square, to Sir William Hamilton. Her subsequent connection with Lord Nelson, and her power over that great naval hero but weak human being, as well as the humiliating positions in which she placed her dotard of a husband, form part of the history of this country.

In another of his advertisements Graham offers to explain “the whole art of enjoying health and vigour of body and mind, and of preserving and exalting personal beauty and loveliness; or, in other words, of living with health, honour, and happiness in this world, for at least a hundred years.” One of the means for ensuring this end was the constant use of mud baths; and that the Doctor might be observed to practise what he preached, he was to be seen, on stated occasions, immersed in mud to the chin, accompanied by Vestina, who had only then recently left off nursing children and attending on ladies. Her beauty attracted general attention, and brought Graham a deal of practice. While she remained in the mud bath, she had her hair elaborately dressed in the prevailing fashion, with powder, flowers, feathers, and ropes of pearls; Graham appearing in an equally elaborate wig.

In the spring of 1781 the Temple of Health was removed to Schomberg House (now the Ordnance Office), Pall Mall, and the “Temple of Hymen” and “Celestial Bed” were exhibited to the gaze of the profane and the curious. Altogether the establishment was of a very extraordinary description. The front was ornamented with an enormous gilt sun, a statue of Hygieia, and other attractive emblems; the suites of rooms were superbly furnished, and the walls decorated with mirrors, so as to confer on the place an effect like that of an enchanted palace. All the exertions of the painter and sculptor, all the enchantments of vocal and instrumental music, all the powers of electricity and magnetism, were called into operation to enliven and heighten the scene. In a word, all that could delight the eye or ravish the ear, all that could please the smell, give poignancy to the taste, or gratify the touch, were combined to give effect to the whole—at least such was his own account. As a further means of attraction, he hired two men of extraordinary stature, two sons of Anak, whom he appareled in showy and startling liveries, and each of whom wore an enormous cocked-hat, whose business it was to distribute bills from house to house through the town. These handbills were curiously suggestive of the wonderful Doctor’s general bombastic style. Here is one of them:—

All went well for a time, and the Temple was nightly crowded with silly people who paid their half-guineas, for the shilling of the advertisements only just admitted to the “body of the hall.” Sometimes there were magnificent illuminations and Elysian promenades for both ladies and gentlemen, to which persons in masks were also admitted. “The enchanting glory of these seemingly magical scenes,” said the advertisements, “will break forth about seven, and die away about ten o’clock; during which time Oriental odours and ætherial essences will perfume the air, while the hymænal sopha blazes forth with the plenitude of the soft lambent celestial fire.” Having opened such scenes to the eyes of the wondering world, the Doctor thus addresses his contemporaries in another advertisement:—

TEMPLE OF HEALTH AND HYMEN,
PALL MALL,
Near the King’s Palace.

But the most important feature of Dr Graham’s establishment was the Celestial Bed. This wonder-working piece of furniture was made by one Denton,[39] a tinman, who lived in Coventry Street, and subsequently kept a bookseller’s shop in High Holborn, and it was said to have cost £12,000. It was beautifully carved and gilt, covered with silk damask, supported by twenty-eight glass pillars, and surmounted by a richly carved and gilt canopy, from which crimson silk curtains with fringe and tassels were suspended. Graham pretended that married couples without children might have heirs by sleeping in this bed, for which privilege he demanded one hundred pounds per night; and such is the folly of wealth, that persons of high rank were named who had acceded to these terms. This modern Æsculapius sold also for half a guinea a “Treatise on Health,” which was intended to render marriages happy, and entered into full particulars of the means to ensure this great and important object. After a long list of preliminary and necessary preparations, the principal of which was the utmost attention to cleanliness, the writer insisted on certain regulations. He recommended particularly the practice of early hours for rising and for retiring to rest. He advised that in bed-chambers the light, especially that of the moon, should not be excluded by curtains. He confessed he could give no sufficient reason for this predilection for the lunar rays, but observed that there are a thousand things in nature which exist without our being able to explain the reasons of their existence. He also advised married people to sing sometimes. “Music,” said he, “softens the mind of a happy couple, makes them all love, all harmony; their bodies, their souls unite, their existence is melted into a single being, which yields itself up with rapture to divine transports, and loses itself in an Elysium of bliss. In this state, this incessantly progressive enjoyment, the happy couple imagine themselves raised above this world, and become inhabitants of a superior region.” Thus he continued, till coming at last to the principal part of his discourse: “When the preliminary regimen which I have just described has been scrupulously observed and followed, and a new vigour has been acquired by drinking of the divine balm, which for the benefit of the human race, I have concocted with my own hand, and which, however, costs only a guinea a bottle, and when all these means have not proved sufficient for arriving at the end proposed, the last must then be absolutely applied to, that most extraordinary expedient which I alone possess, and which cannot fail. This agent is a most marvellous celestial bed, which I call magnetico-electric; it is the first, the only one in the world, or that ever existed. It is placed on the second floor, in a large and elegant hall, on the right hand of my orchestra, and immediately before my charming hermitage. In a neighbouring closet is placed a cylinder by which I communicate the celestial fire to the bed-chamber, that fluid which animates and vivifies all, and those cherishing vapours and Oriental perfumes, which I convey thither by means of tubes of glass. The celestial bed rests on six massy and transparent columns; coverings of purple, and curtains of celestial blue surround it, and the bed-clothes are perfumed with the most costly essences of Arabia: it is exactly similar to those that adorn the palaces in Persia, and to that of the favourite sultana in the seraglio of the Grand Turk. This bed is the fruit of the most laborious industry, and of the most indefatigable zeal. I will not mention the sums it has cost me: they are immense. I shall only add that I have omitted none of those precautions which decency and delicacy have a right to exact. Neither I, nor any of my people, are entitled to ask who are the persons that rest in this chamber, which I have denominated the Holy of Holies. This bed is never shown to those who come only to view the accessory parts. This precaution is as proper as it is delicate; for is there a being frigid enough to resist the influence of that pleasure, of those transports which this enchanting place inspires? It furnishes the grossest imagination with the means of refining its enjoyments, of multiplying its pleasures, and of carrying them to their highest degree. But the consequences are cruel; such dangerous refinements on the pleasures of the senses abridge the period of life, and relax the springs both of body and mind. Persons, however, who would penetrate to this throne of pleasure, are intreated to signify their desire to me in writing, and having appointed the night, and enclosed a bank-bill for fifty pounds, I shall furnish them with an admission ticket.” Ultimately, as the demand decreased, the price was reduced to twenty-five pounds, and it is said that even less was at times taken.

It is not to be supposed that Graham’s contemporaries, except the weakest and most idiotic, believed in the marvellous effects attributed to this bed, or supposed that the Doctor had any motive in making his statements other than those which generally actuate quacks, and lead them into exaggerations. He and certain rich voluptuaries worked very well together with regard to this couch, as may be gathered from various satirical allusions in newspapers of the time, caricatures, &c. It is certain that spendthrifts and men of pleasure were the most profitable customers of the great empiric. The more the “Holy of Holies” began to be visited, the more did Graham add to the luxury and magnificence of the place; but in the month of March 1784 the farce was played out, the Temple of Health was shut, and all the furniture and apparatus put up for public sale. All the paraphernalia which had cost so much money, and with which he was identified—the superb temple of Apollo, the immense electrical machine, the instruments of music which played incessantly, and even the famous celestial bed itself—all fell in one common ruin under the ruthless hammer of the auctioneer.

In a note which serves as a supplement to the description of the Celestial Bed, the Doctor adds: “Nothing is more surprising than the truly divine energy of this celestial and electric fire, which fills every part of the bed, as well as the magnetic fluid, both of them calculated to give the necessary degree of strength and exertion to the nerves. Besides the melodious tones of the harmonica, the soft sounds of a flute, the charms of an agreeable voice, and the harmonious notes of the organ, being all joined, how can the power and virtue of such a happy conjunction fail in raising sentiments of admiration and pleasure in the soul of the philosopher, and even of the physician?”

According to the advertisements, the descriptive exhibition of the apparatus in the daytime was conducted by an “officiating junior priest.” This office was filled by a young medical man named Mitford, afterwards well known as, among other things, father of the celebrated authoress. Graham’s expenses were very heavy, and when after a time his advertisements failed to draw he fell into poverty, and it is said died in very straitened circumstances near Glasgow.

CHAPTER XVI.
LOTTERIES AND LOTTERY INSURANCES.

There have been few things which in their time have had more intimate connection with advertising than Lotteries. In fact almost all we can now discover about them is by means of the notices which were published before and after a drawing, as the system of picturesque descriptive writing now applied to everything had not come into fashion during the existence of this legalised species of gambling, which was for generations most ruinous and demoralising in its effects, but which was continued mainly because it added to the revenue, and perhaps because it was considered unfair to stop the speculation of the people while gaming under so many forms and in so many varieties was indulged in by the higher classes. In these days the Legislature has got over any such squeamish feelings—even if it ever possessed them—for though gambling is carried on to as great lengths as ever under certain forms, though within the past few years great scandals have leaked out from clubs and private hells, and though on the turf many noble names have been dragged through the mire, the rank and file of the community are rigidly guarded from any chance of giving way to the temptations of gambling, either by means of the racehorse or the milder forms of speculation which up till recently were allowed in public-houses, and are very properly compelled to be virtuous whether they like it or no.

The origin of lotteries is involved in obscurity, but it is generally believed that the first of them was held in Italy early in the sixteenth century, and that in due course the plan found favour over here, and was gradually taken up by the State. From 1569 down to 1826 (except for a short time following upon an Act of the reign of Anne) lotteries continued to be a source of revenue to the English Government. Some interesting particulars are given by Hone and Chambers, the latter of whom says: “It seems strange that so glaringly immoral a project should have been kept up with such sanction so long. The younger people of the present day may be at a loss to believe that, in the days of their fathers, there were large and imposing offices in London, and pretentious agencies in the provinces, for the sale of lottery tickets; while flaming advertisements on walls, in new books, and in public journals, proclaimed the preferableness of such and such ‘lucky’ offices—this one having sold two-sixteenths of the last twenty-thousand-pounds prize; that one a half of the same; another having sold an entire thirty-thousand-pound ticket the year before; and so on. It was found possible to persuade the public, or a portion of it, that where a blessing had once lighted it was the more likely to light again. The State lottery was framed on the simple principle, that the State held forth a certain sum to be repaid by a larger. The transaction was usually managed thus. The Government gave £10 in prizes for every share taken on an average. A great many blanks or of prizes under £10, left, of course, a surplus for the creation of a few magnificent prizes wherewith to attract the unwary public. Certain firms in the City, known as lottery-office keepers, contracted for the lottery, each taking a certain number of shares; the sum paid by them was always more than £10 per share; and the excess constituted the Government profit. It was customary, for many years, for the contractors to give about £16 to the Government, and then to charge the public from £20 to £22. It was made lawful for the contractors to divide the shares into halves, quarters, eighths, and sixteenths; and the contractors always charged relatively more for these aliquot parts. A man with thirty shillings to spare could buy a sixteenth; and the contractors made a large portion of their profit out of such customers. The Government sometimes paid the prizes in terminable annuities instead of cash; and the loan system and the lottery system were occasionally combined in a very odd way. Thus in 1780, every subscriber of £1000 towards a loan of £12,000,000, at four per cent., received a bonus of four lottery tickets, the value of each of which was £10, and any one of which might be the fortunate number for a twenty or thirty thousand pounds prize. Among the lottery offices, the competition for business was intense. One firm, finding an old woman in the country named Goodluck, gave her £50 a year on condition that she would join them as a nominal partner, for the sake of the attractive effect of her name. In their advertisements each was sedulous to tell how many of the grand prizes had in former years fallen to the lot of persons who had bought at his shop. Woodcuts and copies of verses were abundant, suited to attract the uneducated.”

The first lottery in this country, so far as is known, took place in 1569. Dr Rawlinson, a distinguished antiquary of the last century, produced before the Antiquarian Society in 1748 the following:—

According to Stow the drawing of this lottery was commenced at the west door of St Paul’s Cathedral on the 11th of January 1569, and continued day and night until the 6th of May. It was originally intended to be drawn at Dericke’s house, but most likely, as preparations were made, it was discovered that a private establishment would be hardly the place for so continuous a piece of business. Maitland in his “London” says, “Whether this lottery was on account of the public, or the selfish views of private persons, my author[40] does not mention; but it is evident, by the time it took up in drawing, it must have been of great concern. This I have remarked as being the first of the kind I read in England.” By these remarks it would seem that neither Stow nor Maitland had seen the “Proposal” we have quoted above, which gives the reason for the lottery.

In 1586 there was another drawing, about which we are quaintly told: “A Lotterie, for marvellous rich and beautiful armor, was begunne to be drawn at London, in S. Paules churchyard, at the great west gate, (an house of timber and boord being there erected for that purpose) on St. Peter’s Day in the morning, which Lotterie continued in Drawing day and night for the space of two or three daies.”[41] Of this lottery Lord Burleigh says in his diary at the end of Munden’s State Papers: “June 1586, the Lottery of Armour under the charge of John Calthorp determined.” About the year 1612 James I., “in special favour for the plantation of English colonies in Virginia, granted a lottery to be held at the west end of St Paul’s; whereof one Thomas Sharplys, a taylor of London, had the chief prize, which was four thousand crowns in fair plate.”[42]

A correspondent of the Gentlemen’s Magazine in 1778 gives Mr Urban some particulars regarding a lottery “held in London for the present plantation of English colonies in Virginia” in 1619. The writer says: “It may be found, perhaps, upon strict enquiry that this mode of raising money was authorized in many wealthy towns, as well as in the capital; and that it was attended with beneficial effects, not only to the colony of Virginia, but likewise to the town itself where the lottery was held. In proof of this supposition I send you the following authentic extract from the Register of charitable Gifts to the Corporation of Reading:”—

The writer then concludes with the following somewhat puzzling sentence: “If it be asked what is become of it now? gone, it is supposed, where the chickens went before during the pious Protectorship of Cromwell.”

Hone in his “Everyday-Book” says that “in 1630, 6th Charles I., there was a project ‘for the conveying of certain springs of water into London and Westminster, from within a mile and a half of Hodsdon, in Hertfordshire, by the undertakers, Sir Edward Stradling and John Lyde.’ The author of this project was one Michael Parker. ‘For defraying the expenses whereof, King Charles grants them a special licence to erect and publish a lottery or lotteries; according,’ says this record, ‘to the course of other lotteries heretofore used or practised.’ This is the first mention of lotteries either in the Fœdera or Statute-book. ‘And for the sole privilege of bringing the said waters in aqueducts to London, they were to pay four thousand pounds per annum into the king’s exchequer: and, the better to enable them to make the said large annual payment, the king grants them leave to bring their aqueducts through any of his parks, chases, lands, &c., and to dig up the same gratis.’” In 1653 there was a lottery at Grocers’ Hall, which has escaped the observation of the earliest inquirers on this subject. In an old weekly paper, called Perfect Account of the Daily Intelligence, November 16-23, 1653, there is the following:—

After the Restoration, Charles, whose ideas of rewarding fidelity were always peculiar, granted plate lotteries “with a view to reward those adherents of the Crown who resided within the bills of mortality, and had served with fidelity during the interregnum.” By this is to be understood a gift of plate from the Crown to be disposed of by lot, certain persons—most likely those who had no claim whatever on the score of fidelity—having the privilege of selling tickets. The Gazette tells us that in 1669 Charles II., the Duke of York, and many of the nobility were present “at the grand plate lottery, which, by his Majesty’s command, was then opened at the sign of the Mermaid, over against the mews.” Even if this had been a proper way to reward the faithful, the faithfullest must have felt it had been left rather late. From this plate lottery sprang many successors, the most noticeable of which was the Royal Oak, whose title explains itself. The rapid growth of the institution may be judged by the following, which, according to Anderson in his “History of Commerce,” was published shortly after the drawing to which we have referred:—

It is stated that “the Crown exceeded its prerogative by issuing these patents, and the law was not put in motion to question them.” This was not the only point upon which the royal rights were extended, but the tide of loyalty had set in strongly, and Charles was not likely to miss any of the current’s strength. Book lotteries were before this time much in fashion, and with the kinds which came in afterwards, were drawn at the theatres. At Vere Street theatre, which stood in Bear Yard, to which there was an entrance through a passage at the south-west corner of Lincoln’s Inn Fields, another from Vere Street, and a third from Clare Market, Killigrew’s company performed during the seasons of 1661 and 1662, and part of 1663, when they removed to the newly-built theatre in Drury Lane; the Vere Street theatre was then probably unoccupied until Mr Ogilby, the author of the “Itinerarum Angliæ, or Book of Roads,” adopted it, as standing in a populous neighbourhood, for the temporary purpose of drawing a lottery of books, which took place in 1668. Books were often the species of property held out as a lure to adventurers, by way of lottery, for the benefit of the suffering Loyalists. In the Gazette of May 18, 1668, is the following advertisement:—

But the business being much better than was anticipated, the drawing had to be postponed, and so in the number of the Gazette for May 25 there is this:—

Ogilby had had a venture before this, about which there seems to have been some little difficulty, as in his “Proposal” for this same lottery he refers to aspersions which have been made. A correspondent of the Gentleman’s Magazine of nearly a hundred years ago gives as a curiosity even then a copy of this “Proposal,” which, though rather long, is very interesting, and so we subjoin it:—

Notwithstanding the positive promise given as to the date of the drawing, there seems, judging by the advertisements first quoted, to have been two alterations in the time. Mr Ogilby assorted his wares in the most tempting manner, and it is interesting to know what were considered the most marketable books, with their relative values, over two hundred years ago. Even then, and long before either became familiar to the bulk of English readers, the Iliad was worth a pound more than the Odyssey. Æsop was rated, entire, at more than the best of the Homeric books, but divided, he was inferior to either, and Virgil complete was worth exactly the same amount as the Iliad. A contributor to the Gentleman’s Magazine, about a hundred years back, states that he had seen a then very old but undated “Address to the Learned, or an advantageous lottery for books in quires; wherein each adventurer of a guinea is sure of a prize of two pounds value; and it is but four to one that he has a prize of three, six, eight, twelve, or fifty pounds.” The proposals for this lottery were, one thousand four hundred lots, at a guinea each, to be drawn with the lots out of two glasses, superintended by John Lilly and Edward Darrel, Esqs., Mr Deputy Collins, and Mr William Proctor, stationer; two lots of £50, ten of £12, twenty of £8, sixty-eight of £6, two hundred of £5, and one thousand two hundred of £3. Letters-patent on behalf of the promoters of Lotteries were from time to time renewed, and from the Gazette of October 11, 1675, it appears by those dated June 19 and December 17, 1674, there were granted for thirteen years to come, “all lotteries whatsoever invented or to be invented, to several truly loyal and indigent officers, in consideration of their many faithful services and sufferings, with prohibition to all others to use or set up the said lotteries.” These officers were also granted powers to give licences and name agents.

In the Examiner, about the time when Lotteries were suppressed, there is much information concerning them, and the writer among other things finds, from a copy of the London Gazette of May 17, 1688, that “Ogilby, the better to carry on his ‘Britannia,’ had a lottery of books at Garraway’s Coffeehouse in ’Change Alley.” Lotteries of various kinds seem to have been very general before this date; indeed so much so that Government issued a notice in the London Gazette, September 27, 1683, to prevent the drawing of any lotteries (and especially a newly-invented lottery under the name of the riffling, or raffling, lottery) “except those under his Majesty’s letters-patent, for thirteen years, granted to persons for their sufferings, and have their seal of office with this inscription, ‘Meliora Designavi.’” In 1683, Prince Rupert dying rather poor, a plan was devised to obtain money by disposing of all his jewels; but as the public were not satisfied with the mode of drawing the lotteries, on account of the many cheats practised on them, they would not listen to any proposals until the King himself guaranteed to see that all was fair, and also that Mr Francis Child, the goldsmith at Temple Bar, would be answerable for their several adventures, as appears by the London Gazette, October 1, 1683:—