A little bit of history in the back garden ……. “Scrubbs Cloudy Ammonia”

Two bottles ..... with Scrubbs to the left, 2023

It is a given that if you have a garden at some point something will turn up, and if you are lucky it will have a story.

In ours we have unearthed heaps of animal bones, most of which belonged to Joe and Mary Ann Scott who lived in our house for 58 years and were so keen on their pets that they left bits of them in the garden and the property to the P.D.S.A.

That said in our 46 years of living here, we too have added two dead cats, and a a Superman toy which we bought in Greece and buried in the garden after his head parted from his body.

The reverse of the two bottles, 2023

These I have never gone looking for, but like many I have come across fragments of porcelain with those blue figures of Chinese pagodas and elegant bridges, to which there was the bowl of a clay pipe.

Not a great haul I must admit, and pale when compared to what a builder on Wilton Road has come across.

These include a bottle with the imprint of Mason and Burrows who sold beer, wine, and groceries and had a branch on Beech Road from 1892.*

To these according to Declan can be added, “an old ashtray, a broken wine glass & two more bottles. One is completely free of markings, but very thick glass coloured dark blue, so presumably medicine or poisonous!

The other has a raised glass ‘label’; “Scrubbs Cloudy Ammonia”, so I reckon that wouldn’t have been for drinking either!”

And Declan is right. A trawl of the internet threw up plenty of adverts for the product, all of which seem to have had a battery of uses.

In 1927 one advert suggested “After A Strenuous Game of [golf] a refreshing bath with SCRUBB’S CLOUDY AMONNIA  It also ALLAYS IRRITATION FROM MOSQUITO BITES", while the full range of its uses can be attested by another advert which promised it was 

Scrubb and Co, Southwark Street, London, 2009

“Refreshing as a Turkish bath, Invaluable for toilet purposes, Splendid Cleansing Preparation for the Hair, Removes Stains and Grease Spots from Clothing, Allays Irritation from Mosquito Bites, Invigorating in Hot Climates, Restores the Colour of Carpets, Cleans Plate and Jewellery”.

After which I guess you would be a fool not to slip down to your local grocery store where you could buy it in two sizes confident that one bottle would do for 10 baths.

And keep a stock in for that special time of the year when you would want to “CLEAN UP FOR CHRISTMAS [with] SCRUBB’S CLOUDY AMMONIA IN ONE BOTTLE All cleaning needs two sizes 10d and 1/4d”

John Williams & Son, Beech Road, 1932

Scrubb & Co were variously at 32 Southwark Street in Southwark in southeast London.  The building is still there, and id bounded by the main railway viaduct and stretched along Red Cross Way. 

Today it is a swish Portuguese restaurant but back in 2009 its origins are still very much there to see.

All of which just leaves me the thought of where our bottle would have been bought.

I guess it would be from a shop on Beech Road which might have been Mason and Burrows or perhaps John Williams and Son on the corner of Beech and Wilton, which was a chain of shops across the south of the city and were here by 1932.

John Williams & Co, 2015

For the curious their tiled name is till there in the present Launderette.

And that is it.

Location. Wilton Road

Pictures; the bottles from Wilton Road, 2023, courtesy of Declan McGuire,Scrubb & Co former works, Southwark Street, London, 2009,  John Williams and Son, Beech Road, 1932 from the Lloyd Collection, and Joth Williams & Co tiled sign, 2015 from the collection of Andrew Simpson

*A lost Chorlton bottle ….. the Beech Road offi ……… and a trip back to a Dickensian Manchester, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/2023/08/a-lost-chorlton-bottle-beech-road-offi.html