Lydia E. Pinkham

American business leader

• Born: February 9, 1819
• Birthplace: Lynn, Massachusetts
• Died: May 17, 1883
• Place of death: Lynn, Massachusetts

Through extensive advertising of a patent medicine bearing her name and image, Pinkham became one of the most widely known American women of the nineteenth century. Although the claims her company made for the medical benefits that her product offered were dubious, she and her family made a substantial contribution to changing the nature of marketing retail products.

Early Life

Lydia Estes Pinkham was born Lydia Estes into a New England Quaker family, the tenth of twelve children. Her father, William Estes, was a shoemaker who took up farming. Her mother, Rebecca Estes, became a follower of Emanuel Swedenborg, an eighteenth century Swedish scientist and theologian who claimed special knowledge of the afterlife. Followers of Swedenborg were typically abolitionists, and Lydia seems to have taken that cause to heart, as at the age of sixteen she joined the Lynn Female Anti-Slavery Society.

Lydia attended Lynn Academy and after graduation became a teacher. In 1843, she met Isaac Pinkham, a young widower whom she married that same year. In addition to a daughter from his previous marriage, the Pinkhams had several more children over the years, and Lydia spent the next thirty years as a homemaker. Her husband found it hard to settle down to one job and frequently spent more money than he earned. In 1857, they moved to Bedford, Massachusetts, where Isaac tried farming. After three years he gave up farming, and they returned to Lynn, where they remained through the rest of their marriage.

Life’s Work

Lydia’s entry into the business world was the culmination of several forces. As a result of land investments Isaac made over the years, the family gradually reached a moderate level of financial security. However, due to several bank failures in 1873, their finances deteriorated to the point that Isaac was sued and almost jailed for debts he was unable to pay. The family managed somehow to remain solvent, but their situation was precarious.

Several years earlier, Isaac had been given the formula for an herbal concoction that Lydia used as an herbal medicine for female complaints. Lydia had experimented with adding new herbs to the mixture and had tested it on members of the family and friends, many of whom believed it helped them. Lydia herself had never considered advertising and selling her medicine, but with the financial difficulties the family was facing, her son Daniel suggested that she try selling it.

In 1875, Lydia began selling her herbal medicine, which she called Lydia E. Pinkham’s Vegetable Compound. It was made up of several different ground herbs and had an ethyl alcohol content of roughly 20 percent, which made it the equivalent of forty-proof liquor. The alcohol was justified, according to the product’s label, because it was “used solely as a solvent and preservative.” Each bottle contained 14.5 ounces of liquid and was sold for one dollar. Lydia also prepared a four-page pamphlet, titled Guide for Women, that gave health tips, including the recommendation to take Lydia E. Pinkham’s Vegetable Compound.

In 1876, the family incorporated the Lydia E. Pinkham Medicine Company. One of Lydia’s sons, Will Pinkham, was listed as the company’s proprietor, rather than Lydia’s husband, because Will had no outstanding debts. Daniel and Will proceeded to market their product on the road, persuading druggists in a variety of cities and towns to stock the compound. Sales were initially small, so the family experimented with different types of advertising and distributing pamphlets. In an effort to attract a broader clientele, Daniel suggested that Lydia claim that her product benefited other organs of the body, in addition to the female uterus.

The first glimmers of success came when Daniel placed his mother’s entire pamphlet as an advertisement in the Boston Herald. At first, the rest of the family considered it a foolish expense; however, the ad increased sales enough to encourage the family to put more effort and funds into advertising. They soon hired T. C. Evans to create newspaper ads.

The real turning point in sales came when Daniel suggested that the label for their medicine needed improvement. He decided that putting the picture of a young, healthy woman on the label would help increase sales. Although Lydia herself was sixty years old by that time, she did have a healthy appearance, so she posed for the photograph that began to appear on compound labels. Her image then became the trademark for Lydia E. Pinkham’s Vegetable Compound. Who would not trust the advice of the grandmotherly figure on her products’ labels?

Lydia’s picture also appeared in newspaper and magazine ads. The ads became so widespread that Lydia E. Pinkham’s name soon was known by almost all American women and by many men. Sales increased so quickly that the family was offered a large sum for their company and the trademark that went with it, but the family expected sales to continue to grow and refused the offer.

In 1879, Lydia’s company began inviting people who read their ads to write to Lydia with their medical questions, promising that Lydia herself would answer the letters. For example, a woman with a prolapsed uterus wrote,

Dr. tells me I can have the trouble removed but thought I would write and ask you if the compound would do it before I submitted to an operation with Doctor’s tools, a thing I have not much faith in.

Lydia’s reply:

By all means avoid instrumental treatment for your trouble. Use the compound as you have been using it—faithfully and patiently—and it will eventually work a cure.

As this response suggests, the Pinkhams claimed that their compound could cure a broad range of ailments. They originally advertised the compound primarily as a cure for “female weakness,” a euphemism for any number of “female problems.” However, as time passed, the family broadened their claims for the product to encompass cures for a long list of medical ailments. Moreover, their advertising became increasingly elaborate, describing medical symptoms in subtle ways that encouraged readers to diagnose their own problems—always with the cure being the compound. Many “sufferers” were likely healthy, but because of Lydia E. Pinkham’s ads they considered themselves sick and in need of her product.

By 1881, the Pinkhams’ business was strong, but personal tragedy struck Lydia. After fighting tuberculosis for two years, Daniel Pinkham died at the age of thirty-two. Later during the same year, twenty-eight-year-old Will died from lung disease. Late in the following year, Lydia herself suffered a stroke from which she never recovered. On May 17, 1883, she died in Lynn at the age of sixty-four.

Sales of Lydia’s compound at the time of her death totaled $300,000 per year. Her company continued on without her for many years, but so far as the public knew, she was still alive, as the company continued to use her image as its trademark, while inviting readers to write letters to her. In 1905, this minor fraud was finally revealed when Mark Sullivan, who was hired to investigate patent medicine claims, published a photograph of Lydia’s gravestone.

Significance

Lydia Pinkham is best known for the picture on the labels of her products and in the many ads placed in newspapers and magazines. However, her greater significance lies in her innovations in marketing. Advertising was in its infancy when she began selling her compound. The success her company had through extensive, almost ubiquitous, advertising showed the power of this new medium. Moreover, her company’s use of her picture as a trademark was a bold, successful move that has continued to be improved upon ever since.

Although Pinkham did not make a significant mark in the woman suffrage movement, she was concerned with women’s issues. She also had strong convictions about other social problems such as slavery. Her contribution to woman suffrage was her success in the business world. Business was a man’s world in her day, and she led the way to change that. The fact that her legacy long lived on in the company bearing her name also shows her business sense.

The Lydia E. Pinkham Medicine Company continued to sell products until the 1950’s. Lydia’s picture remained their trademark, but other things changed. In response to government concerns about alcohol content in patent medicines, the company finally removed alcohol from its compound in 1914. Over the ensuing years, sales of the compound gradually diminished as more laws were enacted to restrict claims made on patent medicine labels.

Bibliography

Applegate, Edd. Personalities and Products: A Historical Perspective on Advertising in America. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1998. Contains a chapter on Lydia Pinkham focusing on her role in improving nineteenth century advertising methods.

Fite, Gilbert C. The Southern Country Editor. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1991. Contains a chapter concerning Lydia Pinkham and the company she founded.

Fox, Stephen. The Mirror Makers: A History of American Advertising and Its Creators. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1997. Contains a chapter about Lydia Pinkham and pinpoints her role in innovations in advertising.

Stage, Sarah. Female Complaints: Lydia Pinkham and the Business of Women’s Medicine. New York: W. W. Norton, 1979. A thorough historical analysis of Lydia Pinkham and her times.

Wasburn, Robert C. Life and Times of Lydia E. Pinkham. Manchester, N.H.: Ayer, 1976. A biographical account of Lydia Pinkham’s life and the times in which she lived.