Coal Tar

Tam highlighted some WWI era soldier's comics.  I love this stuff.  I feel sorta melancholy that many people know no real detail of the Great War.  Some know nothing at all.  I mean that it even happened.   It takes history geeks to really think on it. 

They'll still wear poppies in November on the BBC for a good while, I bet. 

Anyhoo... these old comics and other non-Master of Fine Arts quality literacture from 100 years ago have advertisements in them.  I notice that about older publications.  The first Boy Scout manual had a plethora of them.  I guess that faded over time.  Commercials moved to Radio then TV then the Internet and your Kindle.  The media isn't in the business of telling stories or reporting the facts.  They are in the business of selling soap, so they say. At the end of the first Fragments from France, there was a soap ad.

Ah, coal tar soap.  It's good stuff.  I recommend you at least try.  Old Grandads is a Pine Tar variety and is available through online purveyors if your local People's Drug doesn't stock it.  There are other varieties, too.  It can be a bit spendy...  Now.  Back then it was 3 three for a shilling.

But, seriously, where are you gonna get your soap?  You need grease, a base, and perfumes to make soap.  And you don't really need perfume.  Maybe some gylcerine, but what is that?  More fat, really.  And where do you get an oil?  From the meat packers, and drilled from the ground and distilled from wood.  Or, from liposuction clinics.  I should make my own, save the money.  Mmm, out of BACON grease!  I'd have to set up a barb wire perimeter around my house to keep back the female admirers.