Exhibit at the Slack-Carroll House offers a glimpse of an earlier time.
By: Adam Grybowski
Meeting the everyday standards of beauty in the Victorian Era sometimes meant having your own homemade beauty products on hand.
Very often, Victorian women made their own cosmetics, growing most of the necessary ingredients in their gardens.
Some of those recipes, plants and artifacts used to make home remedies and beauty products are on display at the Slack-Carroll House on Georges Road in Dayton in an exhibit titled "Grandma’s Lotions and Potions."
"The basic concept is to show the way people lived," said Joan Luckhardt, a retired anthropologist and a member of the Dayton Village Citizens Coalition, which was instrumental in the preservation of the Slack-Carroll House. "Grandma’s Lotions and Potions shows that we’re removed from our natural environment. We don’t know how to make these things. If you were stuck, these remedies would be very helpful."
Dr. Luckhardt said the 1800s were a time of growth for professional medicine, but hucksters also used the trappings of professionalism to make a buck. Household remedy books were popular.
Many of the recipes on display come from "Dr. Chase’s Last Recipe Book and Household Physician." The book was written in 1887 and contains, in addition to the remedies and beauty aids, how-to tips on removing rust from hinges and caring for cows.
In addition, some recipes from the book call for using ingredients that are now known to be harmful. Dr. Luckhardt consulted a toxicologist and a pathologist before arranging for the recipes to be put on public display.
"They all agreed it would take the skin off with the freckles," Dr. Luckhardt said about some of the original recipes.
Also on display are numerous recipes for homemade toiletries, including hair dye, mouthwash, perfumes and astringent, as well as a dressing table.
"It was amazing what people resorted to, to look a certain way," said Terry Caruso, a coalition member who attended Sunday’s exhibit opening.
For example, the "Gibson Girl," created by illustrator Charles Dana Gibson, achieved an S-shaped torso by wearing a swan-bill corset. She was independent, fashionable and an equal companion to a man. Although the image was fictional, many women sough to reproduce it. Camille Clifford, a Danish-American stage actress, was perhaps the most famous.
Dr. Luckhardt said the ideal was difficult to achieve, as is the image of today’s rail-thin models.
Dr. Luckhardt said the exhibit took six to eight months to prepare, although one man’s contribution is the result of at least three decades worth of work.
Richard D. Ilnicki, professor emeritus from Rutgers University, Cook College and a former South Brunswick mayor, photographed thousands of wild plants that grew in South Brunswick when it was more rural than it is today. Digital reproductions of his slides supplement information about the recipes and ingredients. In addition, a sample of the plants highlighted in the exhibit are grown in the house’s rose garden and backyard butterfly garden.
The museum is open Sundays from 1 to 4:30 a.m.

