Victorian Double Ended Perfume and Salts Bottle c1860

Description

Heading : 19^th Century double-ended glass perfume and salts bottle
Date : c1860
Period : Victoria
Colour : Clear
Body : Slice cut barrel body with flower repousse embossed silver caps. One cap is hinged and reveals the original cut and ground glass stopper the other a screw thread and also has its orginal stopper.
Glass Type : Lead
Size : 14.5cm in length and approximately 3.2cm in diameter
Condition : Excellent. no chips or cracks
Restoration : None
Weight : 121 grams

Salt of hartshorne or smelling salts as they are known today were mixed with perfume and placed into a vinaigrette that one could hold close to the nose to mask the stenches of London. Birmingham. Glasgow. Auld Reekie and Manchester. With poor sanitation. little by way of regular refuse collection the cities of Britain were envelopped in a foul smelling miasma and suffered outbreaks of cholera. please read about the great stink of 1858. The engineer Joseph Bazalgette devised a solution whereby raw sewage was taken east from London before being pumped raw into the Thames away from the noses of the well to do parliamentarians. 

N. S Jenkins writing in 1854 attributes the development of such bottles to carry both smelling salts and perfume to the fashion for ladies to “have their waist constricted” which apparently gave rise to many ladies feeling faint. Corsetry was laced so tight and was so stiff with bone that it was difficult to breathe.