A Killer Collection... Poison Bottles

Glass containers from Egypt to Rome

No one can say exactly when glassmaking was discovered, but the evidence points back several thousand years. In Egypt, glass was used as part of the outer glaze on figurines and wares from about 5000 B.C. Solid glass beads were known centuries before hollow glass objects, which do not appear in the historical record until about 1500 B.C.

Early hollow vessels took a great deal of work. A ball of clay mixed with sand or dung was shaped like the cavity the maker wanted, fixed to a metal rod and dipped into molten glass. Another method wound strings of molten glass around a clay ball until it was covered in several layers. Either way, the vessel had to be cooled and reheated several times before it reached its final form.

The real breakthrough came in Syria in the 1st century B.C., when glassblowing was discovered. Glass could now be blown quickly into many shapes, and later into molds of wood or metal. The Romans used a great deal of it. Glass was so cheap that it became almost commonplace: Emperor Gallienus, who reigned from 260 to 268 A.D., refused to drink from it “because nothing was more common,” while Seneca praised it for making fruit look more beautiful. A first-century wall painting from a town near Pompeii shows fruit in a glass bowl.

Romans and other ancient peoples stored food, wine, perfume, spices, oils, sauces and medicines in glass because it did not taint them with odors. It also let people see what a jar held without opening it.

Why antique poison bottles were made to stand out

Most antique and vintage poison bottles that collectors find date from the 1870s to the 1930s. Many people at the time could not read, and accidental poisonings were a fact of life. On May 11, 1913, the New York Times reported that the superintendent of a Missouri hospital had ordered sleigh bells chained to the necks of poison bottles after an attendant gave a patient carbolic acid by mistake. The patient died.

Sleigh bells could not protect a whole industry’s customers. In the late 1800s England was booming from the Industrial Revolution, and local chemists and druggists found they could make cleaning compounds, insect killers and vermin poisons cheaply enough to sell far and wide. Glass bottles were inexpensive and ideal for shipping, so the poison trade took off, and so did the death rate.

The governments of the United States and England both passed laws to prevent accidental poisoning. The most direct action, though, came from the poison makers themselves, who wanted to protect a customer fumbling for medicine by candlelight from grabbing the bedbug poison instead. Their answer cut the number of accidental deaths and produced an almost irresistible collectible.

Poison bottle colors, textures and warnings

To set them apart from harmless products, poison bottles were made distinctive in color, texture and shape. Makers chose cobalt blue, honey amber, black, emerald and several other greens so the bottles would stand out on a shelf.

Texture warned the fingers when the eyes could not. Bottles were covered in latticework, raised ridges, dots, diamonds, horizontal or vertical ribbing or hobnails. Embossed lettering added the message in words: “DEATH,” “POISON,” “POISONOUS” or “NOT TO BE TAKEN INTERNALLY.” German bottles might read “Gift,” which means poison, or “Vorsicht,” meaning caution.

Coffin, submarine and other unusual poison bottle shapes

Shape gave a third warning. F.A. Thompson & Co. of Detroit made a coffin-shaped bottle embossed “POISON” on two sides. In 1999 a 3 1/8 inch example sold on eBay for $775, and a golden yellow amber Thompson coffin was priced at $750 in 2001.

In England, H.J.W. Martin and G.W.J. Walker invented the cobalt blue “subs” bottle, shaped like the fat cigar of a submarine, with a long vertical neck rising from the center of the top and “POISON” embossed on it. It came in three, four and five inch sizes, and in 2001 sold for several hundred dollars; one fetched $440 on eBay.

Another English oddity was the 10 1/2 inch, 20 ounce Martin’s Poison. It was large and aqua, a color most makers avoided because ordinary product bottles used it. It was made to lie on its side and had a U-shaped bend in the shoulder. Lying flat marked it at once as an unusual bottle, and so probably a poison, while the U bend prevented spills. Only one example in the 20 ounce size was known in 2001.

Owl Drug Company bottles: BIMAL or ABM

In America, the Owl Drug Company opened in San Francisco in 1892, selling medicine, soda, pills and poisons in its own bottles. It grew into a dozen states before Rexall Drugs bought it. It made cobalt blue and clear bottles embossed with its logo of an owl perched on a mortar bowl, and the cobalt ones are collector favorites. Variations include one-wing and two-wing owls, long tail, short tail, no tail and a potbelly owl.

Joan Cabaniss, who tracked poison bottle sales on eBay from 1999, explained in 2001 why Owl bottles are hard to value: “There are 10 sizes of the one-wing, cobalt, BIMAL Owl, from one-half ounce to a 32-ounce size. Those have sold for $48 to $64 for the one-half ounce size to $591 to $700 for the 32-ounce bottle. The two-wing ABM bottles are in eight sizes and have sold from $76 to $165.50.” A 9 1/2 inch triangular Owl bottle sold for $635 on eBay.

BIMAL stands for blown-in, mold-applied lip, meaning a handmade bottle. ABM bottles came from an automatic bottle machine, first introduced in the early 1900s. The seam tells them apart: on an ABM bottle it runs all the way through the lip, while a BIMAL lip has no seam because it was added later. Rexall stopped making Owl bottles after buying the company in 1920, not long after Owl had switched to machine bottles, so Owl ABMs may be somewhat harder to find. Even so, bottle author Digger O’Dell held that “the older bottles will bring more money,” and that only a few purists would value the rarer ABMs more. The same seam test works on other bottles, from the Codd bottle to the soda bottles of early soda pop.

The skull poison bottle and the value of labels

The skull and crossbones of the pirate flag began appearing on poison labels in the mid-1800s, and toward the end of the century it was embossed into the glass itself. The most famous poison bottle of all is shaped like a skull. Carlton Lewe patented it in 1894. It comes in three sizes, from under 3 inches to 4 1/2 inches tall, and in 2001 the very rare bottle sold in the $2,000 to $3,500 range. The nose, where the glass is thinnest, is often damaged.

Early companies used the same bottle for different poisons and labeled the contents, and some patented their shapes to stop competitors copying them, an early form of branding. An original label in good condition adds value, as do the original cork stopper and intact contents.

Poison tablets and poisons used as medicine

Poisons were more often sold as tablets or pills than as liquids, which made them easy to dispense and to mix to the right strength. The tablets were shaped as warnings too: a deep purple coffin with a skull imprint (mercuric chloride antiseptic, Sharp & Dohme), a triangle stamped “POISON” on two sides (mercury bichloride antiseptic, W.R. Warner & Co.), a white diamond (atropine sulfate, Eli Lilly & Co.) and a dark blue three-leaf clover inscribed “POISON” (mercuric oxycyanide, Sharp & Dohme).

Many poisons doubled as medicines: a small dose cured, too much killed. Strychnine was used as a stimulant and tonic, though the curing and killing doses were almost the same. Atropine relaxed intestinal muscles and eased asthma attacks, but too much caused confusion and a racing heart. Arsenic was used to treat syphilis and skin diseases. Collectors of 19th-century glass with telling details underfoot may also enjoy silvered mercury glass.