User:Pmcyclist/Brandreth Article

Benjamin Brandreth (1807-1880)was a pioneer in the early use of mass advertising to build consumer awareness of his product, an purgative that allegedly cured many ills by purging toxins out of the blood. He became a successful and wealthy businessman, bank president, and New York State Senator.

Benjamin Brandreth was born in Leeds England in 1807. He emigrated to the United States in 1835 hoping to find a bigger market than he had in England for his “Vegetable Universal Pill” invented by his grandfather. The formula was a powerful cathartic and played off the popular notion that impurity of the blood was the source of many ills^[1] Establishing himself on Hudson Street in New York City, Brandreth eventually found success marketing his pills prompting a move to a larger facility in Sing Sing, (later Ossining (village), New York) in 1838. Brandreth was a pioneer in using the then-infant technique of mass advertising in building brand awareness to create a mass market for his product. Brandreth created and published a wide variety of advertising material for his pills, including a 224 page tome entitled The Doctrine of Purgation, Curiosities from Ancient and Modern Literature, from Hippocrates and Other Medical Writers. His advertising copy had a distinctly literary flavor which found favor with the public. Brandreth widely distributed his books and pamphlets throughout the country as well as taking copious advertising space in newspapers.^[2] Eventually his pills became one of the best selling patent medicines in the United States ^[3] “…A congressional committee in 1849 reported that Brandreth was the nation’s largest proprietary advertiser… Between 1862 and 1863 Brandreth’s average annual gross income surpassed $600,000…”^[4] For fifty years Brandreth’s name was a household word in the United States^[5] Indeed, the Brandreth pills were so well known they received mention in Herman Melville's classic Moby Dick^[6].

A prominent businessman, Brandreth was among the original incorporators and was the first President of the Westchester County Savings Bank in Tarrytown NY. The bank was incorporated on 21 July 1853 and was merged into Federal First Fidelity Bank on 30 December 1993.^[7] In 1857 he built the Brandreth Hotel near Canal and Broadway in New York City.

In 1851 Brandreth bought 26,000 acres in the Adirondacks of New York State for 15 cents an acre^[8] establishing the first private preserve in the Adirondack Park^[9] becoming known as “Brandreth Park”. The Park remains in the family today and incorporates a number of grand hunting lodges in a preserved wilderness setting.^[10]

Brandreth died in 1880, "That morning he had risen early, reaching the plant, with his eldest son, at six-thirty. He had worked an hour or so in the mixing room. Then came a stroke of apoplexy and death. Thus, at the end as at the launching of his venture in America, Brandreth was mixing the purgative in which he so fervently believed."^[11] The impact Brandreth had on the local community of Sing Sing was noted by the account in the New York Times which stated that at the time of his death “…flags have been hung at half-mast there and on Saturday all the business places of the village, including the bank, Post Office, Soldiers’ monument, and several hotels, together with innumberable private dwellings, we draped in mourning.^[12]