Nineteenth and early twentieth century Australia were perpetually short of medicine bottles. Even though Felton and Grimwade, who were originally a specialist medicine bottle importer, started bottle manufacturing in the early 1870’s, Australia was always short of bottles.

This is why quite a few early pharmaceutical bottles were embossed with something like

‘This bottle remains the property R J Higgs, Pharmaceutical Supplier’

And others would have paper labels saying that a deposit was payable if they were not returned after use.

It’s also why there was a steady trade in used bottles, or recycling as we would now call it, and indeed why during world war one and two organisations such as the boy scouts were encouraged to collect old medicine bottles for re-use.

What I didn’t realise, until recently, was that the trade in imported patent medicine bottles continued well after bottle manufacturing began in Australia.

For example, when the Fiji went down in 1891, off what is now known as Wreck Beach, as well as pianos and child’s toys, parts of its cargo included glass bottles made in Germany and destined for use by Bosisto’s.

Now when I’ve been documenting glass bottles at Dow’s I havn’t recorded any of the manufacturer’s marks on the base.

Early bottles didn’t have them, and by the 1920s all the local glass manufacturers (and there were only two or three at most) had combined to form Australian Glass Manufacturers, meaning that cast marks have relatively little value.

There were exceptions, Burroughs Wellcome tended to use their own bottles and have them embossed Wellcome or Burroughs Wellcome on the base.

But while reading about the wreck of the Fiji, the author mentions that Bosisto bottles were embossed Germany on the base.

I’m fairly certain we have no such bottles in the collection at Dow’s but it goes to show that it is worth checking manufacturers cast marks on early Australian bottles …