Ideas to Improve the Health
Following on from last week’s theme of ‘Looking Back’ this takes me to an earlier time before I was born. Although the family spent the summer months working the fairs and carnivals around the UK my Grandfather was always looking ahead. Although he earned a good living, there was always the odd time when the summer didn’t go well for some reason. It could be a variety of difficulties, the weather, transport problems, cancelled venues and occasionally family illness all affected the takings to some extent, remember, whatever we earned in the summer had to see us through the winter because in those days there was no such thing a Social Security, if we didn’t work we didn’t eat, simple as that.
So not being one to leave things to chance my Grandfather (Gipsy Xavier Petulengro) had an idea way back in the 1920’s to put some of his knowledge passed down from his Mother to work. This was the knowledge of Herbs and Herbal Remedies. This was before his days of fame on the BBC programme The Word Goes By, with Freddie Grisewood and In Town Tonight, before his days of glory as one of the very first newspaper astrologers.
His great idea was to collect various herbs, roots and barks from the hedgerows and sell them to some of the many Herbalists up and down the country, who at that time had to go out and find their own supplies or pay some young lads to do it for them. Because granddad knew what they needed and the quality required he soon built up a successful customer list. This fitted in nicely with the fairs because they mostly opened in the evening so he had all the daytime free to pursue this new venture.
After a while he thought it would be a good idea to start-up his own herbalist business selling direct to the public, however, this was not possible because as he was travelling from place to place, then he had another brain wave, why not sell by Mail Order? So another new business was formed, he contacted one of the largest customers he supplied his herbs to and made arrangements for them to make up his own Romany remedies with the brand name ‘Petulengro’s Herbal Products’ . The company concerned was quite famous themselves at the time, they were called ‘Heath & Heather’ and in fact are still in business today in 2016. They agreed grandfather would advertise his products in the press then pass all the orders on to Heath & Heather and they would then post them out to the customer as if it had come from Petulengro’s Herbal Products.
That business was started in 1935 and was still in business being run by my Wife and myself, selling Grandfathers original Romany Remedies (made up for us by a pharmaceutical company in the New Forest) right up until 1990 when we were forced to cease trading due to new EU medicines regulations. Below are a couple of pages from Grandfathers original catalogue of 1935. Click Photos to enlarge
Until next time …………..
Category: Blog
