Haslett & Gladding, Druggists

[robertk]

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Bottle Vitals​

	Date	Color	Shape	Size (Height x Width x Depth)	Value*
Haslett & Gladding, Druggists	1876	Clear	Rectangular	5.75" x 2.25" x 1.25"	$20.00

Bottle Views (click to enlarge):

Front	Back	Side	Side	Bottom
Haslett & Gladding Druggists Constantine Mich

This bottle was from Haslett & Gladding chemists in Constantine, Michigan. The firm was started in or about 1875 by Charles Haslett and Benjamin Gladding, and set up shop in Constantine, Michigan. The only product I could find that they produced was a medicine known as the Great English Cough Remedy. That is probably what this bottle contained. The business must have done fairly well, because their revenue was estimated between $30,000 and $60,000 for 1875 -- which would be between $800,000 and $1.6 million in today's dollars.



Mr Haslett came from a merchant family, with his father John Haslett having owned a bookstore in Constantine, as noted on a map of the city from 1858 (click to enlarge).




The business advertised mostly in Michigan and a few surrounding states. All of the advertising mentioned the English Cough Remedy, which was touted as a cure for cough, asthma, bronchitis, and other respiratory annoyances. Here are some of the advertisements (click to enlarge).



If they were making $30,000 to $60,000 a year, they must have shipped a lot of bottles. Maybe some of them went by train. Here's a steam train pulling into Constantine around 1880.



I don't know what the Haslett & Gladding building looked like, but here is a building in Constantine that was supposedly a pharmacy during that time period. It has currently been converted into a sandwich shop (one with a sense of humor). Click to enlarge.



Haslett & Gladding operated under that name for several years, but changed it to just "B. O. Gladding, Druggist" when Mr. Haslett met an unfortunate end at the age of 40 in 1887. He went on business trip to Detroit to buy another pharmacy, and apparently while there, he got so drunk that he either jumped or fell out of his fourth floor hotel room window. He was killed instantly. Here is a newspaper report of that incident (click to enlarge).



Mr Gladding later moved to Chicago, and lived there until his death in 1919.

Here is the before and after cleaning on this bottle. It needed soap and water, brushes, and a wooden scraper. Click to enlarge.



* Value is a bit of a guess. I could only find one other example of this particular bottle, and it sold for $10 several years ago. Based on that one sale and inflation, I'm going to guess the value at $20. As always, that value would be for a bottle in good condition, and would vary.

 

[Blackfoot58]

Thanks for the historical account. Very interesting. I love these tidbits of American business. 👍🏼

 

[Limitool]

Wow Robert... a few of your postings got by me on the bottle collection. My hometown of Constantine is very small. I never knew we had a business there producing medicines back in the day. My sister owns the old railroad station you showed above. And that old building in the "downtown" area was a five and dime store when I was growing up. Gale (girlfriend) worked in the sandwich shop it became for awhile years ago.

But another great job on this bottles information. You do an excellent job on the project.

 

[robertk]

My sister owns the old railroad station you showed above. And that old building in the "downtown" area was a five and dime store when I was growing up. Gale (girlfriend) worked in the sandwich shop it became for awhile years ago.

That is so cool. Nice historic connections!