Adam Dowdall‎–Adam Dowdall’s Metal Detecting Group Photo

Found this the other day at the notorious poop fields. It’s an antique breath freshener package. Apparently people use to chew violet leaves to freshen bad breath. Very interesting find if I say so myself.

Victorians had a deep love for violets. Violet scents were incredibly popular in Victorian toiletries. They ate violets, candied, in cakes and pastries, and violets were at the heart of the cut flower boom: violet-sellers would stand on street corners, selling nosegays and bunches which women pinned to their dresses, or men tucked in their hat brims or wore on their lapels. And Victorian women – who were big on that so-feminine hobby of flower-pressing – pressed violets into scrapbooks, picked on leisurely country walks through woods where violets flourished.

The Carleton Place Poop Fields– Photo Carleton Place and Beckwith Heritage Museum–What Was a Honey Wagon?- The Job of a Night Soil Scavenger

In Europe and the U.S., tins of breath fresheners, called cachous, became a must-have item in the 1800s. The candies (sucked or chewed to “disguise a stinking breath,” according to one 1850 self-help book) were made from cardamom, ambergris, musk, essence of violet, essence of rose, licorice or oil of cinnamon. Oil from plants in the potent mint family later became commonly adopted as a way to freshen breath.

Adam Dowdall’s Metal Detecting Group- FACEBOOK PAGE