10/15/2026
More Creepy Fun ... Skeletons for Halloween
-- On ebay = https://www.ebay.com/itm/860045383699 ...
-- The "Grim Reaper" is usually portrayed these days as a ghoulish figure cloaked in a black hooded robe. By contrast, the 19th Century image featured today lays the Angel of Death totally bare... exposed all the way down to the bones.
-- With Halloween but a couple weeks away, dark and comical versions of the Angel of Death dressed in a shroud holding an hour glass and clutching a scythe have popped up amongst the rustling leaves of front yards everywhere. Personally, I prefer harvest celebrations with corn husks and scarecrows alongside orchard baskets of apples and uncarved pumpkins.
-- But to each to their own. And I do suppose if the goal is to induce goose bumps, then the Pale Rider (sans flesh) is probably a good horror of choice.
-- America's most famous Grim Reaper image of the Victorian Trade Card era was the one issued by the William E. Clarke Co. for their infamous Hunt's Kidney & Liver quack remedy.
-- Their graphic illustration offers a dramatic marketing metaphor where a healthy, robust man uses a bottle of Hunt's Remedy as a weapon to beat back death, personified as a skeleton wielding a scythe and hourglass. Clarke marketed Hunt's heavily as a "cure-all" -- the card states that the concoction "Cures Dropsy and all diseases of the kidneys, bladder, liver, and urinary organs". (Dropsy was a historical term commonly used for severe fluid retention or edema.)
-- Like many unregulated patent medicines of its era, Hunt's Remedy employed a secret formulation that likely relied heavily on high concentrations of alcohol (frequently recorded at around 17.2%), water, red w**e, and bitter vegetable herbal extracts to act as a diuretic.
-- The striking imagery used in their advertising became iconic in the history of American advertising. It was first used for a 3-cent private revenue tax stamp in the late 1870s and was famously adapted much later by the United States Postal Service for a commemorative 32-cent postage stamp honoring the historic 1906 Pure Food and Drug Act.
-- For more historically fascinating "snapshots" into the past, as well as to view general images of 19th Century Life and Victorian culture, visit my ebay store (https://www.ebay.com/str/oldcardsatdavesgreatcardsgalore)
