RIGO Poison Bottles - The Historical Truth and the Owl Drug Collectors Blog

[mctaggart67]

Hello Everyone:

First off, I'm sorry to bring David Levine's Owl Drug Collectors blog back to the fore on this site, but I believe it's necessary to offer an alternative to Levine's most recent posting, in which he plays loose with the historical facts to impugn the character of Ebay seller clancy_kid. Since Mr. Levine has a habit of editing his posts to suit his purposes as events unfold, for the record I've cut-and-pasted the very words of Levine's latest missive as follows:

http://owldrugcollectors.wordpress.com/2013/01/29/false-and-misrepresentation-ebay/

FALSE AND MISREPRESENTATION / EBAY

January 29, 2013

The second of these announcements deals with the subject of the misrepresentation on Ebay. Several years the blog discussed an item on Ebay the so-called Canadian “Rigo†Owl Drug connection. At that time the seller on Ebay misrepresented the item as an Owl Drug item connected to the Owl Drug Company of San Francisco. In the blog discussion of this bottle it was determined that the bottle was not associated with the Owl Drug Company of San Francisco, was not produced by the Richards Glass company “Rigo†in Canada but was instead produced in China. The label that appeared on the bottle was not an antique label but according to the manufacturer’s representative the label was a new label produced overseas and glued to the bottle with modern glue.

Today the Clancy kid has a similar bottle on sale on Ebay. This bottle is not produced by the Richards Glass Company (RIGO) nor is the label an authentic Owl Drug label. If, in fact, this bottle or an identical one was determined the last time it appeared on Ebay to be a total misrepresentation, then why would the seller put this same type of bottle up for sale? Did he believe that people would not see the falsehood and forget what was done before? Is he deliberately trying to mislead any buyer again just for the purpose of monetary gain? Buyer beware –don’t be fooled just because he has an Ebay store and a lot of feedbacks. It is obvious that despite the fact that the seller has been involved in bottle collecting for over 40 years, he has not learned a thing about the Owl Drug Company of San Francisco or other Canadian bottles. Does he thinks that by putting a so-called Canadian bottle with a false Owl Drug label on the bottle will get his item sold? Or does he even care?

---------------------------------

Mr. Levine also includes three bottle pictures that the clancy_kid has posted with the ebay listing in question. Below is one of the three pictures:

 

[mctaggart67]

Okay, now here's the link to clancy_kid's ebay listing:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Deep-COBALT-BLUE-Canadian-OWL-DRUG-Co-Rigo-POISON-bottle-w-label-KI-7-/370744227583?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item565213f6ff

Now, I wish to declare that I, in no way, have any financial interest in defending clancy_kid. In fact, I've never had any dealings with him, though by his feedback record, he is clearly a reputable seller. The following postings include images of historical sources to refute David Levine's contentions about RIGO poison bottles. I would have preferred to have saved their secondary publication for a bottle book I'm working on, but I feel it's too important not to offer an evidentiary alternative to Levine's unhelpful diatribes. Naturally, of course, I hope all bottle collectors learn from and enjoy the research results which appear in the next postings.

 

[mctaggart67]

We'll begin with some quick historical details behind the Richards Glass Company of Toronto:

1) incorporated in 1912 by James Richards, formerly a commercial traveller (salesman) with Toronto's Beaver Flint Glass Company -- as a commercial traveller for Beaver Flint, Richards would have had his hand on the pulse of what glass products were needed by Canadian druggists at the time, and Richards would have put this knowledge to good use running his own company

2) Richards Glass did not make its own bottles, rather the company was a wholesale jobber for acutally bottle manufacturers, chiefly Canada's Dominion Glass Company; however, Richard Glass seems to have designed some of the bottles it sold

3) Richards Glass Company, from its inception onwards, used the trade name RIGO, an acronym of the first letters in the first three words of the company's name

4) Richards Glass dominated the market for embossed prescription and poison bottles during the 1910s and beyond

5) Richard Glass is still in business today

 

[mctaggart67]

Now for direct information about RIGO poison bottles:

Around the time Richards Glass was formed, the Ontario College of Pharmacy had formalized the regulation that druggists in the province had to put up certain poisonous compounds in specially marked bottles. Before that poisons only had to be labelled as such. Nevertheless, Richards Glass capitalized on the new legal requirement for specially designed poison bottles and by early 1914 had introduced the RIGO line of poison bottles. Below is an article from the April 1914 issue of The Retail Druggist of Canada puffing the introduction of RIGO poison bottles. Note the illustration. It is for the same type of bottle in clancy_kid's Ebay listing and for pictures of RIGO bottles I've posted elsewhere on this forum.

 

[mctaggart67]

Whoops, forgot to mention in the posting immediate above that the other two illustrations in the news article depict a bottle that closely resemble the Lewis and Towers English poison bottle. The Beaver Flint Glass Company produced its own bottles based on the Lewis and Towers design during the early 1900s. Richards either cribbed the design from Beaver or had permission to do so. My guess -- an it's just a guess at this point -- is that Richards had permission, since it appears that there was some sort of tri-partite networking amongst Dominion, Beaver and Richards. Anyhow, the RIGO poisons are a distinct generation of Canadian poison bottle, with an ancestral "basic-style" pedigree.

 

[mctaggart67]

RIGO poisons were clearly a hit with druggists under the new poison bottle regulations in Ontario. By 1915, these poison bottles were a regular part of the overall RIGO line. Although Richards Glass focussed upon Canada's most populous market of the provinces of Quebec (explains the French on the bottles) and Ontario, the company also marketed its RIGO poisons across Canada, including British Columbia, home of the Owl Drug Company of Victoria and Vancouver. Below is an advertisement for the entire RIGO line which appeared in several 1915 issues of The Retail Druggist of Canada. I've highlighted in a red box the listing for RIGO poison bottles:

 

[mctaggart67]

There's one other important point about RIGO poisons. Although Richard Glass marketed them, Dominion Glass, as previously mentioned, made them at whatever glass house was given the responsibility of maintaining a cobalt tank. As far as I know, most cobalt production was at Wallaceburg, but Hamilton and Montreal also had cobalt tanks from time to time.

So, there you have it, a brief historical backgrounder on RIGO poison bottles. These bottles are Canadian-made, period. China does not come into play at all, even in the realm of reproductions (there are none of RIGOs). I know Mr. Levine once wrote that RIGO poisons were never made by Richards Glass and that he asserted this because someone at the modern Richards Glass informed him that Richards Glass did not make cobalt poison bottles. This modern statement is historically erroneous, given the documentary record about RIGO poison bottles. However, it's unfair to fault an employee today for not being up on historical facts. On the other hand, those who present themselves as historians should know better.

 

[cowseatmaize]

Good info, thanks. I don't collect them but I'm always wanting to learn something new.

though by his feedback record, he is clearly a reputable seller.

As for cancy kid, or as I call him the nuking kid, I'm not crazy about him. He notes the process but buries it way down in fine print.
I wonder if the owl/RIGO would turn pea soup puke green?

 

[deenodean]

Great info , well written!!

 

[jerry2143]

If you have any doubts if clancy_kid knows about OWL DRUG bottles just go to his ME section under his ebay name. Go down to the section entitled TROUT FISHING LEADS TOO OLD OWL BOTTLES. Look in the second paragraph of this section and he tells you he has had A LIFE LONG DESIRE FOR OWL DRUG bottles and is looking for them. You be the judge if he shoud know about the RIGO poison bottle with the owl drug label on it.i