The Ward Lock Red Guides were once famous. Written for specific holiday areas around Britain, they described everything of interest for the holidaymaker wishing to learn about their chosen resort, and the area around. They were produced for decades, and were still on sale in the 1970s, but ceased to be published a long time ago. I have quite a few of them, mostly from the 1960s, but some are much older, going back to the early decades of the twentieth century.
They would in any event have fallen out of favour once a new generation of guide books arrived - the Rough Guides in our day, for instance. But they disappeared before then, when people began to forsake damp holidays at the British seaside and inland beauty spots for cheap package holidays in hot sunny places like Spain and Greece. The average sun-seeker of the 1970s onward didn't want to read the dull stuff in the Red Guides. No longer essential, they died. I don't have one published later than 1972.
The style and content of these little books remained much the same to the very end. Each Red Guide is a little time-capsule of how life was at the date of publication. The oldest in my possession dates from 1917, when conditions were as different to how they were in 1972 as that year is to 2020. Those oldest Red Guides are fascinating not only because they reveal how places used to be, with illustrations and photographs and maps of course; but also for the language they use, and the social customs and priorities they pay attention to (which seem hoarily old-fashioned by 2020 standards). And yet the resorts and attractions described are, to a surprising extent, still there today; and in many instances not greatly altered, despite the ravages of the Second World War and waves of redevelopment.
I am going to use material from three of my older Red Guides - the ones for Worthing and Hastings on the Sussex coast, and for Scarborough on the Yorkshire coast. Dating from 1917, 1937 and 1939 respectively.
Those dates are significant. By 1917 the First World War had been in progress for three years, with another year yet to run. And yet - according to the Worthing Red Guide of that year - it was business as usual for ordinary British holiday-making. There are references to the war in the book, but it seems that life was going on much as in peacetime. And indeed, nearly all the action, and nearly all of the horror, was in Flanders, across the channel. The 1937 Hastings Red Guide depicts a sunny south coast with almost twenty years of peace and progress to be thankful for. And yet memories of the previous war were still fresh, and most thinking people realised that with Hitler in power, and the Nazi machine in full swing, unavoidable trouble was brewing. That feeling of impending doom must have been even more obvious to any buyer of the 1939 Scarborough Red Guide. It must have been very difficult to get into a holiday mood by then.
All these little books carried advertisements, for all kinds of things. In this post I'm going to survey the ads for pills, creams and other nostrums of the time, the sort a person feeling off-colour (perhaps from typical guest-house fare?) might need. Starting with 1917.
'Liver Salts' were once a sovereign aid to vitality. When I was young there was still a preparation called Enos Salts, which you spooned into a glass of water. You watched it fizz, and then you drank the water down. I'm sure it did no harm. No doubt Buxton Hot-Spring Salts were just as effective!
Meat-flavoured lozenges? Like a lump of Bovril to suck? Hmm. The Pomeroy Day Cream - a 'toilet cream of rare distinction' - sounds much nicer.
Anybody needing a sure pick-me-up was steered towards Iron Jelloids, and all the family could take this remedy. There seems to have been a special version for men only, who needed a 'reliable tonic'. Probably cheaper than an actual gin and tonic.
Twenty years on. It's 1937, but little has changed.
Bumstead's is the table salt to go for! Not actually a medicine or a health potion, but I love the name.
Dr J Collis Browne's Chlorodyne was clearly a family nostrum like no other. I'm pretty certain it was still around in my giddy youth - a kind of thick tar-like brew, surely, with a whiff that would cure leprosy and rejuvenate the embalmed.
Moving forward to 1939, a cluster of ads that have a more modern ring. Such as this one for Nurona sun tan cream.
It was of course by now possible to depict relaxed men and women in semi-revealing beach wear, eyeing each other up, whereas that would have been improper in 1917. The cult of suntanning had taken hold, and a cream that not only gave you a lovely tan, but soothed your sunburn, must have been much in demand. Curiously, the manufacturers were in Manchester, and I wonder how their R&D department managed to perfect this product, in view of the smoke-darkened and rain-soaked skies that the great Northern city was well-known for.
Another sunbathing standby, apparently better-known as 'Rogers'. I think it's just ordinary Calamine lotion, which you can still get today.
Where there's sun there's annoying biting insects, and what better than Muscatol? Why use anything else? This too is confusingly known as 'Rogers' - perhaps it was the same stuff as Lotio Calaminae above, just in a different bottle. After all, even proper medicine prescribed by one's doctor (I can actually remember this) came in similar-looking bottles marked 'The Tablets' or 'The Lotion' or 'The Mixture', and it often seemed that the contents were indistinguishable from what someone else had been prescribed. But naturally the doctor knew best; and one obviously didn't need to know exactly what 'The Mixture' really was. Doctors never explained, and one couldn't ask.
What an odd thing to put in a holiday guide! But then, there might be an infestation at one's guest house, and this wasn't a topic one could raise with the proprietor, who was probably a fearsome no-nonsense battleaxe of a lady who wasn't going to hear complaints about her house without biting back. So if you had been laying in bed at night, watching roaches climb the wall, a discreet application of Blattis might be the answer. I must reveal my innocence: I've never seen a cockroach in my life. But I understand they are not nice, and not good for your health.
I'll end my post there. I have to say that these three Red Guides from yesteryear were carrying some quaint 'medical' advertisements! Those in the 1917 Guide seemed preoccupied with cures for feeling generally unwell or lacking in energy. That could be a symptom of the times - not enough food, or at least an unbalanced diet.
Next up: the ads that pricked the conscience of frivolous holiday-makers in a time before the NHS and Social Services.
