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Daffy's Elixir was one of the most popular patent medicines in Britain during the eighteenth century, and it was produced for nearly three hundred years, which is amazing considering these types of products were usually often just a flash in a pan. But what makes Daffies different than others we've talked about this season, other than perhaps its longevity, is that its ingredients list was not a secret initially maybe, but it didn't stay that way for very long, and
the manufacturers plural seemed to be okay with that. And then there's the question of ownership. Who thought of it and whose recipe was the original? As the story goes, it was probably created by clergyman Thomas Daffy of red Myle, Leicestershire in sixteen forty seven. They named it Elixer Salutes or Elixir of Health, and things took off from there, not only with dozens of different formulas, but also published recipes to help you make some in your own home.
That's unheard of. Welcome to Criminalia. I'm a Rage Marky.
And I'm Holly Fried. It was a novel idea to publish ingredients and recipes for patent medicines in newspapers and pamphlets. Most products didn't even put that information on the label, but in the nineteenth century, recipes began to be widely distributed in places like household management books, and that included Elixer salutes. But these recipes did not always have an associated name or source. So who should claim themselves as the sole manufacturer of the genuine elixir of health? Well,
that's complicated, and we're going to talk about why. During this time of patent medicine popularity, there were, of course rivals, there were counterfeitters, and each reclaimed to consumers that the other was of quote spurious imitation. Ownership of a recipe could be claimed by its inventor or by anyone any relative, an employee, or a business partner in the manufacturing company.
Basically legit or not. Anyone who had access to the recipe could say that they owned it, and there wasn't actually much to be done to correct those falsehoods once they happened, which makes the historical record on Elixer salutis a bit of an adventure.
Manufactured and sold for roughly three hundred years. The elixir became popularly known as Daffy's Elixir and was one of the longest surviving and one of the most successful of all patent medicines. So let's start at the beginning. When Thomas Daffy died in sixteen eighty, his recipe stayed in
the Daffy family, but not for long. It was such a popular product that herbalists and chemists had begun making their own versions for them their apothecary shelves, even though their ingredients often bore little to no resemblance to the Thomas Daffy original. It's believed only three people knew the original recipe after Daffy's death, his daughter Catherine, and two other family members, Anthony and Daniel Daffy. Daniel was his son, and Anthony was very likely a nephew, probably not a son.
Records dating back three hundred years can be a little bit fuzzy sometimes, Both, though, were apothecaries in Nottingham.
Way back in the historical timeline when the product was first introduced. Daffy's Elixir was listed in the Oxford English Dictionary as a remedy for toothaches, in particular for teething babies, and its origin was listed as seventeenth century English clergyman Thomas Daffy, and maybe he intended it to be for toothaches or not. That's actually hard to know because its usage changes over time, as we're going to talk about.
By sixteen eighty though, around the same time of Thomas's death, Thomas Daffy's name was replaced with Anthony Daffy in the OED. Close to the turn of the eighteenth century, Anthony moved to London and began to advertise Elixer Salutis as Daffy's Elixir Salutis. He began to market it beyond word of mouth by distributing pamphlets listing the patent medicine as a laxative rather than a remedy for toothaches. It was nicknamed
quote the famous purging cordial. Anthony's advertising brought it out of the shadows and into the national and eventually international market, and people began using it for all sorts of things.
When Anthony died, the secret recipe became an open secret. It wasn't very secret before his death, though, to the chagrin of the Daffi family.
Quote.
Despite all the efforts of Anthony Daffy and his family to keep it to themselves, it still got out. Before seventeen hundred, there are published records of more than one version of the Elixir, but then over the next two hundred years, many versions were published in dozens of household medicine books, pharmacopeias, and books of household management.
After Anthony's death, it's believed that his widow, Eleanor, continued to market the product until their daughter, also named Catherine, took over the business in seventeen oh seven. Probably this is a turn in the elixir journey that is a little bit ill defined, but we do know that in the early seventeen hundreds, the Elixir began being advertised widely in not only local pamphlets, but also in emerging national newspapers and journals.
Anthony and Eleanor's daughter Katherine is considered responsible for placing an ad, well sort of an ad you'll see what we mean in the Postboy in seventeen oh seven, or maybe very early seventeen oh eight, telling the origin story of the tonic, which will paraphrase, and it went a bit like this that during the inventor Thomas Daffy's lifetime. The elixir had been sold by his son Daniel in apothecary at Nottingham. The ad claimed his kin, Anthony Daffy,
also knew the secret ingredients and preparation. It's also said that at the time Anthony's widow, Eleanor, disputed Thomas Daffy's daughter's right to name herself proprietus of the elixir, though we don't know why she felt that way, or why it would even be written in marketing materials, but there it is.
The new and rapidly growing medium of newspapers offered a way to expand the reach of your advertising. Patent medicines, or otherwise beyond anything that was previously available, you could
reach national and international consumers at least potentially. One advertisement, placed in an addition of the Manchester Mercury in seventeen fifty seven, begins describing the product as a cure quote the original elixir so much approved of in both town and country, which has performed such number of great cures when all other medicines have failed, recommended by several eminent physicians.
We're going to take a break for a word from our sponsors. When we're back. We'll talk about how many manufacturers really produced Daffy's Elixir and how many claimed they were the.
Original Welcome back to Criminalia. Let's talk Diceyan Company, and how while they were definitely not the original makers of the elixir, they became its number one source.
By the seventeen twenties, there were at least half a dozen different Daffi's Elixir manufacturers competing to be the number one seller, names like Ray Rock, Barclay, Bradshaw, Jackson, Swinton, Smith, Staples. Throughout the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, all of these names came and went as producers of the elixir, but one company dominated the others, William and klud Dicey and
Company of Bow Churchyard in London. By seventeen seventy five ish they claimed they had the soul rights of manufacture of what was now being called true Daffy's Elixir, though there's no official record of anyone having soul rights. There is though record that the Daffy family knew there were fake versions out there. An advertisement as early as seventeen hundred featured the warning quote reader, beware of counterfeiters, for they swarm.
Let's talk about this dominating producer, Dicey in Company, from at least the early nineteenth century until the mid twentieth century, when it disappears from the market. Most of Daffy's elixir sold is thought to have been manufactured by Dices. The company saturated the market so well that what had always been nicknamed Daffi's was now popularly known as Dicey's, Daffy's, Dicey's, Daffy's.
The Daffies that became Diceys seems to have first appeared during the seventeen twenties, so that's about twenty to thirty years after all of those allegedly secret recipes were first produced. DICE's, as we mentioned, was just one of many producing the product, and people were okay with this. It was generally accepted that there was more than one version of their go to patent medicine. For an analogy, think of it the way we have different brands of say aspirin on the market today.
But by the turn of the nineteenth century, two names show up repeatedly when it comes to the elixir and its preparation, Dicey Yes and also a brand named Swinton. Consumers may not have noticed a difference, but there actually was one. Dicey's version was based in senna leaves, while Swinton's elixir base was jolip root, and we'll talk about how both are part of an early ingredients list. But Swinton's Daffy's elixir had one thing in its favor. It
had a direct link to the Daffy family. And here's how. A man named Peter Swinton married Mary Acton around seventeen sixty three, and Mary was the niece of Anthony Daffy. This Anthony Daffy was the grandson of the Anthony who was Thomas Daffy's nephew. It's somewhat confusing because we have a lot of similar names, but hang in there with us.
We'll try to figure it all out. According to records, Mary seems to have been the maker of the elixir for the Swinton brand until her death in seventeen eighty, after which Peter claimed proprietorship of the product. Peter died a few years after his wife and left the rights to the elixir to his son, who was another Anthony,
Anthony Daffy Swinton. This Anthony continued to produce and sell Swinton's original Daffy's Elixir until roughly eighteen fourteen, and after which writes to produce the product appeared to have gone to Smith and Company.
Manufacturing later turned over to Messrs W. Sutton in Company of Enfield, Middlesex, who continued to market it throughout the later nineteenth century. It remained in production in a similar form as in previous years, and we'll get into how its ingredients and preparations varied by manufacturer in just a bit. Eventually it made its way to the American market, most
likely through Diceian Company. Prior to the American Revolutionary War, the elixir was exported from Britain to colonial America, but after eighteen hundred it was manufactured. It appears in Pennsylvania by the Diattville Glassworks. Thomas W. Diot, owner of said glass works in the eighteen thirties, was well known for tempering the bottles for patent medicines that he sold around the country.
We are going to take a break for a word from our sponsors now, and when we return, we'll talk about the ingredients used to make this elixir and how some differed from what was considered the original.
Welcome back to Criminalia. Let's talk about ingredients like senna and jalap and how manufacturers of the elixir over the years changed its health claims.
As we mentioned earlier in the episode, the top two producers of this elixir were the Dicey and the Swinton brands. Most published recipes that actually had attribution were associated with these two specific manufacturer names as well, But one common observation of the recipes from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries was that Daffy's Elixir was very similar to a product called tincture of Senna, which was sold by apothecaries and
druggists during that time. Sena tincture was an herbal remedy used to relieve constipation and contained generally the leaves of Senna alexandrina in an alcohol base. Its use went way back before the time of a patent medicine's craze, but it was available around the time many of these wannabe
Daffy's Elixir manufacturers were busy being wannabes. They could have easily read about it, for instance, in Nicholas Culpeper's English Physician and Complete Herbal which was written in seventeen eighty nine.
An early recipe for what was called true Daffy, dating to seventeen hundred lists the following ingredients. This was only twenty years, mind you, after Thomas Daffy died. Quote aniseed, brandy, coconeel ella, campaign, fennel seed, jalla, manna, parsley seed, raisin, rhubarb, saffron, senna, and Spanish liquorice. Modern analysis suggests, though they were mostly made from alcohol, many forms of the elixir could function
as a laxative of note. Other older recipes included guwackened wood chips, caraway seeds, and on occasion, coriander seeds.
So laxative that seems plausible toothaches debatable. Let's break down these ingredients a bit. Using an alcoholic distillation as an ingredient would have helped to preserve the elixir. Aniseed is a folk remedy often used for indigestion, so that's on brand for a purgative. Jollip, mana, and senna all have laxative qualities. Raisins would have added sweetness, but also fiber. Rhubarb, like raisins, would also have been a good source of fiber.
Those other ingredients, some of them may or may not have anti inflammatory benefits. Coconeil does not have laxative properties, but it's long been used to give things a really deep red color. Add those alternative ingredients we mentioned too, Guiacum wood chips were historically used to treat syphilis, not constipation, and caraway and coriander may have helped with digestive conditions like heartburn.
In later years, the ingredients list differed depending on which manufacturer you got your tonic from, but most often contained a similar list to that one from seventeen hundred. It was really amazingly consistent. The whole thing doesn't sound very tasty. Well. It was said to be an acquired taste. Any alcohol could be used, but the alcohols of choice for a
true elixir salutis were gin or brandy. In fact, in the eighteen hundreds, when the product was at peak popularity, gin was so popular as an ingredient that the name Daffies became British slang for Jim.
Antique. Bottle Collector's ABC magazine published in twenty nineteen that they had discovered, at least so far nearly thirty recipes for Daffy's elixir across the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries, including one that was handwritten, and unlike most other proprietary medicines, you could if you wanted to just make them at home.
There were multiple recipes available to make small batches. The Lady's Friend and Family Physical Library, published in seventeen eighty eight, notes that quote this is an agreeable purge if there is such a thing, and nothing more can be useful
than to keep it ready made for family use. Modern Domestic Cookery and Useful Receipt Book from eighteen twenty nine printed another version from William Augustus Henderson called quote the true Daffy's elixir, and this was considered by many to be the true do it yourself recipe.
So what's in that homebrew? Henderson's was as follows, quote take five ounces of aniseeds, three ounces of fennel seeds, four ounces of parsley seeds, six ounces of Spanish liquorice, five ounces of senna, one ounce of rhubarb, three ounces of ella campaign root, seven ounces of kiln, twenty one DRAMs of saffron, six ounces of manna, two pounds of raisins, a quarter of an ounce of cocaine, eel and two gallons of brandy stone the raisins, slice the mots and
bruise the jallab, then mix the hole together, and after letting them stand close covered for fifteen days, strain out the elixir. If you look closely at it, that ingredient list isn't too different from what manufacturers were producing, and other make it yourself versions that we found contained spirit of malt, sac or white wine, and liquorice shred. When it came to method, of course, it varied a bit among the home recipes as well.
Analysis of those recipes dating from as early as the sixteen eighties, which is shortly after Thomas Daffy's death, through eighteen fifty shows there are some ingredients that often overlap, but there are three primary ingredients in common. And no, it's not the fennel, the raisins and the rhubarb. It's the senna, the jallab and the copious amounts of alcohol. All of the Daffy's Elixir recipes have a high alcohol content, ranging from around twenty five percent to more than fifty
percent by volume. Among the twenty seven recipes uncovered by Antique Bottle Collector, twenty six are different versions, although some of those recipes have identical ingredient lists with just differing proportions and maybe slightly differing method and also sure transcre ryption errors and other mistakes could have been made when
recipes were transferred between people and over generations. That's certainly a really common problem with documents in general, as they're shared and they evolve.
We can't talk about a patent medicine without talking about its dubious medical claims. And as there were many variations of Daffy's elixir, there were also many claims it was originally designed for toothaches, as we said, or maybe stomach ailments, depending on what you read, but it doesn't matter. Daffy's wasn't a single source remedy for long. By the early nineteenth century, it was advertised as an elixir intended to help the following ailments. And you should brace yourself because
this is going to take a minute. Quote the stone in babes and children convulsion fits, consumption and bad digestives, agus piles, surfeits, fits of the mother, and vapors from the spleen, green sickness, children's distempers, whether the worms, rickets, stones convulsions, gripes, king's evil, joint evil, or any other disorder proceeding from wind or crudities, doubt and rheumatism, stone or gravel in the kidneys, colic and griping of the bowels.
The this stick, both as cure and preventative, provided always that the patient be moderate in drinking, have a care to prevent taking cold, and keep to good diet. Dropsy and scurvy. The frequent use of the medicine to treat colic, gripes or fret in horses was deplored in early veterinary manuals. Oh yeah, that's right. There were at least two recipes found that were intended for veterinary use.
That is a long list, and as that long list shows, in the end, it became, characteristically as most other quack medicines, a product promoted as a cure all and a general pick me up. Popular as it was while it was claimed it could cure everything. This elixir probably couldn't cure anything. But what it could do was get you drunk.
And on that note, would you like a little sip of curious what ails you? Well?
Yes I would.
Okay, this one gave me such a delicious inspiration and I'm very glad and happy to report that it turned out really well. So once we mentioned there's an ingredient, we mentioned that's not any of the primaries that I literally did the meerkat set up and went, let's put that in a drink, and that is saffron.
Oh, one of the alternatives.
Yeah, yes, And once that came up, I knew exactly what I wanted to do. And because gin was so prominent in it and it was very alcohol forward, I was like, we need to do a spirit forward drink that features gin and saffron, And I thought, ooh, we could mess with a gimlet and make something new. First of all, you got to do a little infusion before you're ready to make your drink. This is a prep
the day before situation. As an aside, I thought when I was a kid that saffron was like for millionaires, because every time my mom would make saffron bread, she would make sure we knew how expensive that saffron had been and we better appreciate it.
I felt the same way.
It is pricey compared to some other ingredients or herbs or any kind of mix in you might use. But it's also a nice case where a little goes quite a long way. So for this, you need a pinch of saffron, like I would say, less than a third of a teaspoon. I get mine, and it comes in like pre set little mini envelopes, and so I just use it as in the envelope. It averages out to like maybe a third of a teaspoon. Maybe you're being
very generous. You're gonna put that into an airtight container with six ounces of gin, so you're gonna make a lot more gin than you actually need. But if you, as we've said before, if you shrink your amounts a lot smaller, you start to mess with the proportions and it doesn't quite work as well. So put those in your eartight container. Give it a good shake. You'll notice right away it starts to turn yellow. Leave it overnight if you don't want to wait overnight six to eight hours.
You can shake it more if you want optional, but it's fun to do. Then when you're done, you're still gonna have those kind of little spindly threadlike pieces of saffron that you'll strain out, and the gin will be a beautiful golden yellow color. And it is time to
get ready to make your drink. So into your shaking tin, you're gonna put two ounces of this saffron infused gin, three quarters of an ounce of lime juice, three quarters of an ounce of simple or vanilla syrup, and then we're gonna add another ingredient that came up, which is a half ounce of cognac. Shakey, shaky, shake with ice. Strain it into a pre chilled cocktail glass. You will
not have ice in that glass. And then note how absolutely beautiful it turns out and how absolutely beautiful it tastes. I am obsessed with drink now. I gotta have saffron all the time. I'm calling this one open secret since Daffy's recipe was gonna open secret. I love this. I love a spirit forward drink once in a while, and this one was like exceptional. And what's really cool is that there's a ton of gin in it, which a lot of people don't like. And I really think people
that don't like gin might like this drink. So I tested it on people that don't like gin and they liked it.
That's in its favor.
The mocktail is you're gonna use the same proportions for everything, But instead of that two ounces of gin, you're gonna use flat tonic to do your saffron and fusion. Make sure it is very flat before you seal your thing and shake it because you don't want any surprise explosions. It's never fun. And then in lieu of kognac, you'll only use half an ounce. But again this is a proportion game. You're gonna use four ounces of white grape juice and you're gonna soak it with a tea bag
of black tea. If you want to heat up your white grape juice, that is totally fine. You really only need to steep it for like ten minutes. You can also cold steep it and give it more like forty five minutes or an hour. That also works fine. But you basically just want to give that white grape juice a fuller body and a bigger flavor than it has on its own, because that is going to help balance out all those other ingredients. And that is you make
it exactly the same. So it's a two ounces of your saffron infused fluid, whether that be gin or flattonic, three quarters of an ounce of lime juice, three quarters of an ounce with simpler vanilla syrup and then just a half ounce of cognac or your tea infused white grape juice. Delicious.
That sounds both of them sound delicious, both versions.
You want it so cold and it's so good. Now I just have to be constantly infusing gin with saffron and then you'll feel fancy if you grew up like me getting yelled at about how expensive saffron is.
Oh, I think that might be our age group.
That is the open secret. It is a lot of alcohol. So it is one that we want you to be very careful with. Drink responsibly always. We will be right back here next week with another tale of snake oil and another drink to go with it. Criminalia is a production of Shondaland Audio in partnership with iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from Shondaland Audio, please visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.