Pink Pills for Pale People: A Product of the Past
By Danny deBruin
The Long Islander, August 5, 1993, pp. 12–13

“This is of great interest to women: Pale cheeks and nerveless hands are no longer admired. To be strictly correct, you must have rosy cheeks and good health. Men admire wholesome looking women and now seek their wives from that class.”

But women of today, there is no hope for you if you wish to do something about these characteristics men finds “so unfitting for a lady,” because the cure to these timeless ills, which have devastated women for all ages, no longer exists. That’s right—the cure-all to all health problems, Dr. Williams’ Pink Pills for Pale People, can no longer be found at your local pharmacy.

Dr. Williams’ Pink Pills for Pale People was a miracle drug, or at least it was advertised as one, in the Long Islander throughout the 1890s. The pink pill claimed a magical and special quality—it could cure everything: nervousness in mothers, silliness in young girls, paralysis, heart problems, and even “problems of the womb,” as one advertisement claimed.

Looking back on the town of Huntington 100 years ago, it appears that whatever was newsworthy could cause an illness and that readers should have a bottle of Dr. Williams’ Pink Pills for Pale People just in case. Maybe the pill could cure present day taxpayer’s dizziness caused by the anticipated tax hikes about to be enacted in Washington.

Yet there was one thing Dr. Williams’ pink pills could not remedy and that was the rapid development that Huntington, like most towns during the second industrial revolution, was undergoing. In 1890, Main Street and other roads in the village were cobblestone covered with dirt. Horses and carriages still galloped up and down the streets and by April 15, the town board granted the Standard Gas and Electric Light Company the right to lay mains, pipes, and conduits underneath the streets for streetlights.

A good pair of shoes ran for $3 and selling liquor on Sundays was still illegal. Vecause Huntington was still essentially a farming community, advertisements for manure dominated the pages of the Long Islander. Although it was powered by horses, the Huntington Street Railroad was introduced in 1890.

By October, 1894, Huntington townspeople petitioned the town board to install street lights. The cost to the town for the modernization and energy to illuminate each light was $15 per light a year. The town would put up 100 street lights and move to have seven of those lights shining all night long.

Individual residents joined in the lighting act. In December 1890, William H. Lewis put four new street lamps in front of his property on Park Avenue. But the gadgets of the new modern era were still a little too late in coming, at least for Wilmot J. Sammis, whose home, like most, was still heated by wood and coal burning stoves. According to a report in the Long Islander, Mr. Sammis lost his mustache and eyebrows while trying to keep the fire burning in his coal stove (maybe Mr. Sammis picked up a bottle of Dr. Williams’ pink pills afterward in the hopes of restoring his missing facial hair).

Had Mr. Sammis waited a few years to tinker with his stove there would have been a fire hydrant outside his home to extinguish his facial hair fire. By 1896, there were 38 fire hydrants in the village of Huntington.

But then there was the hydrant scandal of ’96, where it appears that the Huntington Water Works Co. was charging the town for more than the town was getting.

According to Huntington’s town minutes, the “town had no knowledge of renting more than 38 hydrants from the Huntington Water Works Co., yet the town has paid for 39 hydrants.”

On hot days in the summer it can only be speculated that hydrants were opened while people ran through the water And it’s a good thing the hydrants were completed by 1896, because until then there were no ordinances against nude bathing.

On June 22, 1896, a resolution was passed by the town board to prohibit nude bathing in the waters of Huntington and Cold Spring Harbor. Signs stating “No Nude Bathing” were to be posted throughout the beaches warning potential nudists that what they were about to do would be punishable by law. Today we see them on TV talk shows.

If Dr. Williams wanted to set up shop in the middle of New York Avenue, he might have been run over by an electric trolley. By 1898, the Huntington Electric Railroad was operational, and the trolley ran from Halesite to Amityville along New York Avenue. Huntington celebrated Trolley Day with a parade and day-long festivities, such as music and dancing.

It was a great day of celebration and looking toward the future. E.D. Davidson, president of the departed horse railroad, acknowledged the new technology that replaced his once modern operation. According to the Long Islander, Mr. Davidson spoke fondly of the new technological breakthrough and that he was not insulted in the least that the trolley had replaced the horse.

With all the new technology at hand, Huntingtonians must have been worried about what effects riding the trolley had on their health. But there was nothing to worry about because an advertisement in the Long Islander’s Trolley Day issue explained to commuters that sickness caused by riding the trolley could be cured by none other than Dr. Williams’ Pink Pills for Pale People.

The trolley car made way for the automobile by the 1920s just as the horse made way for the trolley in the 1890s. Even Dr. Williams’ Pink Pills for Pale People faded away like the old trolley tracks that used to line the cobblestone streets of Huntington. Although the 1890s were plagued by economic depression (i.e., the depression of 1893), a sense of progress and optimism still colored the atmosphere.

The 1890s and the decades after saw more progress and modernization than any other period in human history. Seventy-one years later, the grandchildren of those who attended Trolley Day would see men walk on the moon on the television.

No doubt if Dr. Williams were still around, he would have hawked his amazing Pink Pills for Pale People as a cure-all for the ills encountered with space travel.


Timeline for the 1890s

1890: Sioux Chief Sitting Bull dies. He and his men destroyed General Custer at the Battle of Little Big Horn in 1876. Sitting Bull was later captured and became part of Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show…. The “new” Madison Square Garden is opened on Madison Avenue and 26th Street in New York. The president was Benjamin Harrison.

1891: Pope Leo XIII, in response to worldwide labor problems, writes the encyclical Rerum Novarum urging employers to treat employees fairly and peacefully. U.S. foreign trade is second to Great Britain in the world.

1893: A U.S. supported coup d’etat ended Queen Liliuokalani’s reign in Hawaii…. The stock market crashed further, deepening the depression…. Grover Cleveland is the only US president to date to have served two non-successive terms (1885–89 and 1893–97).

1894: President Cleveland calls in troops to end a railroad strike in Chicago…. As a response to the depression, the National Association of Manufacturers was formed, its purpose was to promote international companies.

1896: The New York Giants celebrate their 10th year at the Polo Grounds…. William McKinley is elected president. Huntington Street Railroad is bought by the Long Island Railroad.

1897: The Japanese send warships to Hawaii. President McKinley’s first attempt to annex Hawaii fails. St. Louis pitcher and future hall-of-famer Rube Waddell makes his major league debut. The Huntington town board passes a resolution requiring those who sell tinware from vehicles to pay a $10 permit fee.

1898: H.G. Wells publishes The Time Machine. The U.S. Starts to pull out of the economic depression. The Spanish-American War begins and ends. Cuba becomes “free” under the protection of the U.S. Huntington trolley runs from Halesite to Amityville.

1899: The decade ends and so does the depression.