I Will Take Some Opium to Go Please —The “Drug Dispensary” at the Chatterton House Hotel

More stories from the Desk Books of The Chatterton House Hotel (Queen’s Hotel) Carleton Place from the Carleton Place and Beckwith Heritage Museum

Part 1- Tales of the Chatteron House Corset — Queen’s Hotel in Carleton Place- can be found here.

Part 2- Hell on Wheels at Lady Chatterton’s Hotel in Carleton Place– can be found here.

Today it’s hard to believe, but in early and mid to late 1800’s it was possible to walk into a drugstore or a hotel and buy, without prescription, laudanum, cocaine, and even arsenic. Opium preparations were also sold freely in town, halls, and in the countryside by travelling hawkers. The travelling salesmen, which were many that frequented the Chatterton House Hotel in Carleton Place, often sold their wares through the front desk help for those who needed it.

Drugs were brought to town from every corner of the country and the amount of opium sales were particularly staggering. Dangerous drugs were commonly used for making home remedies, and less frequently as a recreation for the bored and alienated people. The recreational use of opiates was popular particularly with pre-Victorian and Victorian artists and writers.

There was no moral condemnation of the use of opiates, and their use was not regarded as addiction but rather as a habit in the Victorian period. Until the end of the nineteenth century few doctors and scientists warned about the dangers of drug addiction.

The most popular opium derivative was laudanum, a tincture of opium mixed with wine or water. Laudanum, called the ‘aspirin of the nineteenth century,’ was widely used in Victorian households as a painkiller, recommended for a broad range of ailments including cough, diarrhea, rheumatism, ‘women’s troubles’, cardiac disease and even delirium.

The first photo has a prescription for Milton Teskey. Here is a little background on him below.

Teskeyville At Apple Tree Falls

On the strength of attractive natural assets and the initial enterprise of three Teskey brothers, a small community developed in the next thirty years, known for a time as Teskeyville and as Appleton Falls.  With a population of about seventy five persons by the mid-fifties, it contained Joseph Teskey’s grist mill, Robert Teskey’s sawmill equipped with two upright saws and a public timber slide, Albert Teskey’s general store and post office, Peter and John F. Cram’s tannery, and two blacksmith shops, William Young’s tailor shop and a wagon shop.  A foundry and machine shop was added before 1860, when the village grew to have a population of three hundred.  Albert Teskey, a younger brother who lived to 1887, also engaged in lumbering and became reeve of Ramsay township.  A flour mill in a stone building erected in 1853 by Joseph Teskey below the east side of the Appleton Falls was operated after his death in 1865 by his son Milton.  It was sold in 1900 to H. Brown & Sons, Carleton Place flour millers and suppliers of electric power, and resold several years later to Thomas Boyd Caldwell (1856-1932) of Lanark, then Liberal member of Parliament for North Lanark, a son of the first Boyd Caldwell who had owned a large sawmill at Carleton Place.

Photos by Linda Seccaspina

Hell on Wheels at Lady Chatterton’s Hotel in Carleton Place

Part 1- Tales of the Chatteron House Corset — Queen’s Hotel in Carleton Place- can be found here.

Sensitive subject read at your own risk

During the Victorian era you had the medical and moral community who actually opposed the use of condoms as STDs were seen as punishment for having sex out of wedlock. On top of that, by the early 1800’s condoms cost $1 to buy. Remember that in that era a dollar was a lot of money, for some folks it could be a quarter of a days pay. Most items were valued in terms of cents, even by the time of the Old West. So a dollar was closer to what fifty dollars or even a hundred dollars is today. How would you like to pay $50 for just one condom? If you were paying a quarter of what you make in a day you weren’t going to just go and buy another each time you used one, you’d go bankrupt fast if you were sleeping around a lot. The rubber condom would drop the cost to six to twelve dollars during the last twenty-five years of the 19th century, making it more affordable but still, you had the moral crusaders of the day to contend with. 

Then there was douching, which had been around since before the 1830’s as newspaper ads from the 1830’s include ads for what was called a female syringe. This was made up of chemicals such as alum or sulfates of zinc or iron. .

Doctors used arsenic and mercury to treat syphilis before the introduction of penicillin in the 1940s.

One company sold heroin tablets to relieve asthma symptoms.

Old medicines and antique urinals? 

Cocaine drops for toothache came on the market after doctors discovered its pain-relieving qualities. One Belgian company even promoted cocaine throat lozenges as “indispensable for singers, teachers and orators.” Dentists and surgeons also used cocaine as an anesthetic.

While doctors of the late 1800’s considered these drugs legitimate, a whole range of shady patent medicines, sometimes called “nostrums,” also flourished during that period.! People bought nostrums from traveling medicine shows, and the cures beckoned boldly from billboards and newspaper and magazine ads. “You couldn’t get away from them,” Whorton says. “They were inescapable.”

Also, as the state of legitimate medicine evolved, new cures replaced the old. When doctors began treating syphilis with penicillin, a grateful generation was spared the toxic effects of arsenic and mercury, including inflammation of the gums, destruction of the teeth and jaws, and organ damage. Opium and other addictive drugs also fell by the wayside once scientists realized their pitfalls. Novocain replaced its predecessor, cocaine, as an anesthetic.WEB MD

The Photos are of actual prescriptions from The Chatterton House (Queen’s Hotel) Carleton Place. The majority are prescription forms or handwritten scraps issued by local physicians Richard F. Preston and Matthew A. McFarlane. Local druggists were: City Dispensary,W.S. Robertson, McEwen’s Drug Store and Muirhead’s Drug Store. When  Peter Prosser Salter was owner of The Chatterton Hotel for a few years and it appears Salter had hired a desk clerk who perhaps also engaged as well in the druggist field.

Photos from the The Chatteron House Register from The Carleton Place and Beckwith Heritage Museum

Dr.Preston Was in the House — The Case of the Severed Foot

Tales of the Chatteron House Corset — Queen’s Hotel in Carleton Place

In the mid 1880’s, as the story is told, Louise, Lilly, and Maud used to roller skate up and down Bridge Street in Carleton Place, ON. for exercise. They once had taken up rope jumping but stopped after they heard there was much danger in this violent exercise. It had been said that death or permanent injury had resulted from such foolish attempts from the indulgence of this exciting sport. Nerves of the limbs and foot had been reported paralyzed in Smiths Falls; so the girls decided to take up roller skating instead. Each day they would stop and rest their tired legs on a bench in front of the Queens Hotel and enjoy their daily dose of Beecham Pills for their nervous disorders.

As legend goes, Mrs. Mary Chatterton ran the “Chatterton House” in the Queen’s Hotel alleyway. It was well reputed that Mrs. Chatterton served more than alcohol to her clients! An advertisement for Chatterton House read: “the proprietress has spent a large portion of her time in catering to the wants of the traveling public and this house has become justly famous for its good cheer and pleasant associations.” 

Each day Louise, Lilly, and Maud gossiped on that very bench as they kept an eye out for Mrs. Chatteron’s “pleasant associations.”  One day as Maud chatted to the other two about her father allowing a guinea pig to wander the house to get rid of the rats they spotted a Chatteron girl prancing outside the hotel in a horse outfit. All of them exclaimed in unison:

“They’ve lost their heads!”

“No, they have lost their minds!”

With that they gathered up their skirts and roller skated down the street. After all, they didn’t want to be associated with these ladies because they appeared vulgar and very friendly with men. Of course friendship can exist between men and women but if they are too friendly they ought to be engaged. If anyone indulged in anything else they must all be vigorously put out of the pale of civilized society.

Mrs.Chatteron was the mistress of flirtation and also had rather a large appetite. When the girls made faces she told them quite loudly from the alleyway they should dress and adorn themselves only for the edification of the superior animal–Man.

“I can assure you that a well-dressed woman feels far more joy at a single look of admiration from a man than she does for a volume of flattering comments from your female rivals,” she said.

Louise, Lilly, and Maud shot her a look of disdain and chanted together:

“They’ve lost their heads!”

“No, they have lost their minds!”

In private the girls admitted to each other they had never heard such information. Their mothers never mentioned these words to them as they thought the most important thing they should know was about the marvels of Sunlight Soap.

“Happy is the bride who has been instructed in the matters of Sunlight Soap because it was the basis of simple household details as the future happiness and comfort of themselves and their future husbands must depend on.”

The next day at the hat store the girls mentioned the words of Mrs.Chatteron and asked if they had any merit. The women hushed them and told them not to pay mind as a man loves a woman who plays the piano and learn to make a happy home without a horse costume.

If they really wanted to have anything to do with a horse they might think of purchasing one of of the new horse exercise home units from Vigor’s Horse-Action Saddles. After all, one was personally ordered by H.R.H The Princess of Wales and the saddle had give her complete satisfaction. Not only did it promote health and invigorate the system, it brought all the vital organs into inspiriting action. They quietly mentioned in hush tones that if Mrs.Chatteron tried one of these home saddles it might be a complete cure for her hysteria, gout and obesity.

The girls shook their heads and said:

“They’ve lost their heads!”

“No, they have lost their minds!”

When the ground turned cold that year word spread quickly that Mrs.Chatteron had died. Details were hid from the public, but it was said her death was caused by her William Whitely smart french sewn corset. It was rumoured that it was tied so tightly that not even the smelling salts had not revived her. Or, had it been an argument with a favourite customer of hers who refused to buy her a poodle? Her working girls decided to go into mourning and the business was to be closed for awhile. After all, three months in deep mourning and three months slight was enough to drive the clients away from its business of ”pleasant associations.”

One evening Louise, Lilly, and Maud were deep in conversation on their usual bench. Maud had met a young mechanic of sober habits; industrious and of respectable connections. As they giggled they failed to notice a small gust of fog travelling near them. The fog seemed to stop right in front of them and as they looked closely they all screamed. There standing in front of them stood the ghost of Mrs.Chatteron with head in hand. Frozen in fear, they heard her sing:

Daddy wouldn’t buy me a bow-wow! bow wow!
Daddy wouldn’t buy me a bow-wow! bow wow!
I’ve got a little cat
And I’m very fond of that,

No I haven’t lost my mind,

But I have certainly lost my head!

So if you are walking down Bridge Street after midnight or you hear a creaky staircase on a stormy night, I guarantee you it is the ghost of Mrs Chatterton coming to visit you with her severed head along “with the haunting faces of her young prostitutes, in virginal white and vicarage embroidery.”

Chatterton House was located in what we now know as The Queen’s Hotel at 142 Bridge Street. Built in 1870 by Duncan McIntosh and operated as a hotel under the name of McIntosh House, it was bought in 1882 by the widow Mary J. Chatterton. By 1886 she has sold to Peter Salter, who ran it until about 1890.

Pictures are of innocent bystanders and some information came from research from:

“The Ruined Maid” by Geoffrey Eley -Modes and Manners of the Victorian Women.

Last quote by James Morris.

Queens Hotel

Address: 142 Bridge Street, Carleton Place, Ontario

Right near Moore House and the Town Hall –come and spend the day!!

 

Photos by Linda Seccaspina

Carleton Place & Beckwith Heritage Museum

The Carleton Place & Beckwith Heritage Museum

Email Us: cpbheritagemuseum@bellnet.ca
Call us at (613)253-7013
267 Edmund Street, Carleton Place ON
K7C 3E8

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