# T W Dyott



## Steve/sewell (Feb 22, 2010)

Where do you start with a man like Dr.Thomas W.Dyott.No figure in the history of early American glass is more notorious or his wares more collectable than that of  this man.His flasks were the first called by name in advertisments starting in 1821.
 Thomas W. Dyott was born in 1777 in England (or possibly Scotland).He immigrated to Philadelphia around 1795 when he would have been 18 years old.Likely his travels took him from practicing medicine in Great Britan or at least working for a pharmacist there,on to the West Indies, and finally to Philadelphia.Thomas W. Dyott himself claimed to be the grandson of the celebrated Dr. Robertson of Edinburgh. Unfortunately, not only is there no evidence that he was Dr. Robertsonâ€™s grandson, but also there is no record of a Dr. Robertson practicing in Edinburgh during that time. The only other piece of information about Thomas W. Dyottâ€™s life during this period is a statement made by one of his close friends,claiming that Dyott served an apprenticeship to an English druggist, who had taught him the art of making boot-blacking.He is arguably the most facsinating glass mogle there ever was.


 By his own claim, he arrived in Philadelphia in 1805 nearly penniless.Soon thereafter, he set up a practice as a doctor and began selling medicines of his own invention. One of the stotries that has been tossed around about Dyott, was that when he arrived to America he had no money in his pocket.He then began concocting boot blacking at night, selling it by day and somehow established himself as a prominent business man in a matter of a few short years.Probably closer to the actual truth is that Thomas W. Dyott arrived in America with little money, but instead was carrying  recipes of medicine formulas for which he was familiar with in Great Britain.Next he either began manufacturing his own medicines, which he sold to store Merchents,or,a more likely senario,he found a business with an existing manufactoror of medicines, who provided him with the facilities to begin the manufacture his own medicines.Once Thomas W. Dyott found customers for his medicine, he immediately began to advertise in the local newspapers and very soon after this he attached the word â€œDoctorâ€ or â€œM.D.â€ to his name. Although thereâ€™s no formal record that he attended medical school,many doctors became such through apprenticeships with physicians or druggists. So calling himself a Doctor certainly added to his prestige and undoubtedly helped the sale of his drugs, doing so wasnâ€™t considered an illegal or immoral act at the time.He was very oppurtunistic in his business approach and way ahead of the competion in regaurds to advertising his wares as he had over time 40 sales people in various parts of the United States with over 14 agents in the state of New York alone.

 In order to keep pace with the demand for glassware, Dr.Dyott gained an interest in the Olive Glass Works in Glassboro, New Jersey. In 1817, still associated with Olive Glass Works,Dyott also became an agent for Gloucester Glass Works in Clementon, New Jersey and the Union Works at Port Elizabeth, New Jersey in 1818.These three factories allowed Dyott to gain almost complete control
 of the glass,bottles and vials inventory in the Philadelphia region.Some of the bottles made here are famous English Patent medicines such as Turlingtons Balsam of Life,Godfreys Cordial,True Cephalick Snuff,Dalbys Carminitive and Essence Of Peppermint to name just a few.This arrangement lasted for four years until Dyott decided to purchase the old Kennsington Glass works late in the year of 1821.The Union and The Gloucester glass works soon closed after Dyott no longer needed their out puts
 but the Olive Glassworks were consumed by the the Harmony Glass works which in a very short time became the famous Whitney Glass works and that is another story.

 Dyott now had near complete control of the glass industry in the city of Philadelphia and in doing so made enemys of all the other glass factories in Southern New Jersey and as far away as New York and New England. The other factories had business dealers located in Philadelphia but were finding it quite difficult to compete with Dyott and petitoned Congress that Dyott had created a monopoly in the glass industry.But than the business climate in the new United States suffered a minor deppresion and before long Dyott had a host of creditors including David Wolf of the Olive Glass  works that sizeable portions of funds were owed to.Dyott was forced into a court appointed trusteeship payout to his creditors but was finding it very difficult to make payments.Historians are unsure how Dyott pulled off the next sequence of events but he was able to pursuade the courts and his creditors that the only way he could  colllect his debts was to allow him at the same time to run the glass factory again.To the amazment of his creditors and possibly Dyott himself he was able to pull himself out of financial ruin and actually turned a sizeable profit in 1826.The tariff  act passed in 1828  helped fuel the recovery along even further.The late 1820s were Dyotts best business years as he continued to expand the size of and the number of his furnaces where he soon was employing over 150 men,boys and women.With three factories operating in 1828  and a fourth to come on line in 1829 Dyott had survived the tumultous 1820s and was ready to go another step in acheiving the best possible financial results.

 In 1833 Dyott built the fifth and final glass factory and furnace.He had expanded the factorys land size from 1 and a half acres to six and a half acres.Late in the year 1832 Dyott named his factorys The Dyottville factorys.By the time the name Dyottville came into existence the village had unofficialy been an entity for two years already.In 1831 the news magazine Picture Of Philadelphia published that there were 5 factories,a mill house's for grinding clay and pot ashes,a clay house for melting the clay,Lime and sand house's  for the storage of those ingredience's.A pounding house , a pot house,The superintendents house,Stablery for horse's,a wicker shop for Demijohn covering and other Basketry uses.There were 2 Smith shops where tools and blow pipes were made,A carpenters shop where the wooden crates were assembled,and any other lumber needs were satified.There was a firehouse located in the village,and there were 2 large warehouse type structures to store the glass products in.There were over 50 private brick dewellings  for the workmen.The work force had now grown to 275 to 300 men and boys with another 30 women.The number of blowers was about 70 at this time the largest in the country.Also a wharf was in the process of being built with a hundred feet of  frontage and extending 150 feet into the Delaware river.Not all was well for Dyott as the Glass manufactors of the Eastern United States were complaining to the Congress of the United States of Dyotts complete control of the Philadelphia market.Thomas Jefferson became involved on his friend Dr. Dyotts behalf when the Dr. founded his Dyottville temperance and closed society village and persuaded congress that it wasnt a complete monopoly but one that tried to correct an industry long strifed with alchohol abuse and social disfunction.In the end however Jefferson wrote that Dyott wouldnt want to be kept out of the New Jersey, New York and New England markets so he should honor the same of his counterparts from those regions .This along with the bank failures across the country in general really limited Dyotts ability to have complete control of the glass trade he so desired.

 Even with all of the stumbling blocks placed in Dyotts business path Dyottville now was well established. Dyott turned to his business aquaintence Stephen Simpson.Simpson felt Dyott could enhance the factorys even further with the addition of first a newspaper and than a bank.Simpson asked Dr. Dyott was he a Democrat or a Whig to which Dyott replied neither,but Simpson explained to him he needed to choose a side.Simpson explained to Dyott that the Whigs had the most money but that the Democrats were the most numerous.Dyott chose to publish the newspaper with a Democratic slant.So begining on January 4th 1835 The Democratic Hearld and Champion of the People began its circulation.The publishers name on the newspaper was John Dyott Dr. Dyotts son.The paper lasted about two and a half years before becoming a victom of Dyotts second Business collapse.It was at this same time that Dyott became a banker after consulting with Simpson. Again he opened a savings fund bank  with Simpson as his cashier and Peter Y. Calder as the teller on February 2nd 1836.Despite the lack of securing a bank charter from the Pennsylvania legislature Dyott In the month of May of the same year had savings deposits of 13,000 and officially opened the Manul Labor Bank at the N. East corner of Second and Race streets which replaced the Drug warehouse which moved next door to 139 Second street. The solvency of  the Manul Labor Bank was looking good in the first two years but were about to take a bad 180 degree turn for the worse.

 Banks through out the City began to fail and notes issued to mechanics of various trades for their work performed were denied.
 To make matters worse counterfeit notes were being printed and that only hastened the total collapse of the Banking industry country wide now.Dyott again was being persued by creditors,bankers and ex workers all looking for their due compensations.
 Dyott was not able to save Dyotville,his Bank or any of his business'es as on June 1st 1839 a Jury of his peers found him guilty on 
 11 counts.This was reduced to seven.The punishment was hard labor and solitary confinement from one to seven years at the discretion of the court.Apparently the judge hearing the case was not so convinced of Dyotts total guilt and to the degree it was 
 said to had been.On August 31st he sentenced Dyott to three years imprisonment.This was not the end of the case as Dyotts lawyers 
 filed for an appeal and on November 9th 1839 a Judge Todd heard the ingenious and able arguments of the deffendants and Plaintiffs lawyers.A few days the judge ruled the deffendant was not entitled to freedom and ordered him back to jail.Dyott was assigned to the Eastern State penitentiary.Now his case was in the hands of the Pennsylvania Supreme court which having agreed  to have all papers in and relative to the case brought before it and heard by the court.The exact desicion the court handed down was not clear but a historian of the day did find that the court ruled that Dyott never intended any fraud and was a victom just as others were of the collapse of the Unites States economy.He served jail time for a year and a half and than Governer Porter of Pennsylvania pardoned him for all crimes commited on May 10th 1841.His son presented the papers to the prison and Dyott was released from the prison.His freedom was brief as  he was rearrested as a debtor and sent to the Debtors apartment of the Moyamensing Prison.His stay again was very short as on May 24th Daniel Mann assumed all surety on all of the judgements against him.Dyott was finally able to go home.He settled back into what he knew best selling drugs and other related items from his sons John and Thomas jrs store at 143 Second street.


 No other manufactoror of glass has captured our attention for his wares like Dyott has.He had the audacity to call one of his flasks Dyott/Franklin not the other way around truley a man infatuated with his own success.Here is a picture of Dr.Dyott the only known portrait painted by the famous John Neagle a portrait-painter,by trade, born in Boston, Massachusetts,November 4th, 1796; died in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania,September 17th, 1865.This is a print copy from the original painting in 1836. The date of this reprint is 1839 of which only 30 were printed at that time


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## Steve/sewell (Feb 22, 2010)

This aerial picture shows a group of homes that still stand along Hewson Street and along Berks Street east of Girard Avenue, and they were original homes of Dr. Thomas Dyott's utopian Dyottsville Glassworks. Built for glassworkers, these homes date to the about the 1820's-1830's, and were lived in by mainly German glassblowers.The other areas in the photo show the Glass works factorys in Yellow. The workers homes are shown in blue and the other factory buildings,Mill,warehouse's,Carpentures ,wicker building ect.are in green.


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## Steve/sewell (Feb 22, 2010)

On the following pages I will show advertisments placed in Philadelphia newspapers in the early 1800s.I got very lucky last year as an old newspaper purchased on ebay for the neat picture ad on the front page unrelated to anything I collect yeilded a back page 3/4 of which were ads placed by Dyott.To own some of the bottles and to then tie their beginnings via ads placed in newspapers is very rewarding and gives a good sound backing for age, dates and the manufactor of the glass when conveying information to other collectors.No other source from that time period would be a better and more objectional medium of information then an old newspaper from the era in question.Here are the first ads I found starting with the earliest May 19th 1817.


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## Steve/sewell (Feb 22, 2010)

The date in close.


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## Steve/sewell (Feb 22, 2010)

The first ad on the lower front page.


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## Steve/sewell (Feb 22, 2010)

The second ad which is quite large showing a lot of the products offered for sale by Dyott.This ad is located on the back page.


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## Steve/sewell (Feb 22, 2010)

The last ad shows a product which Dyott sold a lot of Mahays plaster cloth.The ad describes the product.


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## Steve/sewell (Feb 22, 2010)

This is Mahy's plaster cloth in its original container.


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## Steve/sewell (Feb 22, 2010)

Another picture of the same product.


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## Steve/sewell (Feb 22, 2010)

The same newspaper but on a later date of July 3rd 1817.


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## Steve/sewell (Feb 22, 2010)

Front page in close.


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## Steve/sewell (Feb 22, 2010)

An ad showing Dyotts concern for the benifit of the poorer people.


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## Steve/sewell (Feb 22, 2010)

The Olive Glass works in blast again.


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## Steve/sewell (Feb 22, 2010)

Dyotts cure for venereal disease using no mercury.


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## Steve/sewell (Feb 22, 2010)

Dyott now annouces he is the sole agent for the Union, Olive and Gloucester Glass works all of Southern New Jersey in 1818.


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## Steve/sewell (Feb 22, 2010)

Here is the ad placed by Dyott.This is the most historic ad I have in my possesion relating to Dyott.


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## Steve/sewell (Feb 22, 2010)

The ad in close clearly showing the glass works.


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## Steve/sewell (Feb 22, 2010)

An ad for Dr. Dyotts anti Bilious pills.


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## Steve/sewell (Feb 22, 2010)

Now for the bottles produced at the Glass works in New jersey for Dyott.All of these were found locally by me in Gloucester and Camden Counties.
 Lefty to right Godfreys Cordial,London Mustard,True Cepphalick Snuff,Liquid Opodeldoc,Dalbys Carminitive,Bears Oil,and Robert Turlingtons Balsam Of Life.


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## Steve/sewell (Feb 22, 2010)

Godfreys Cordial and London Mustard.


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## Steve/sewell (Feb 22, 2010)

True Cephalick Snuff and Liquid Opodeldoc.


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## Steve/sewell (Feb 22, 2010)

Dalbys Carminitive,Bears Oil and Robert Turlingtons Balsam Of Life.


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## Steve/sewell (Feb 22, 2010)

The Turlington in close.I will post a lot more bottles later in the week as it is time for bed long day for me tommorrow.
 I hope others will also post their Dyott bottles as they are quite collectable.Good night.


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## Dabeel (Feb 22, 2010)

Wow, Great informative post Steve!

 Thanks,
 Doug


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## Steve/sewell (Feb 22, 2010)

This is where Dr. Dyott located his drug warehouse in 1810.This area has completly changed from when I-95 was added in 1970.
 Running north to south all the way to the right is the Delaware river with its peers and bulkheads.You can see boats tied down in neat rows.
 Today this area is the Northern extent of Penns Landing.Running along the top of the picture is the Ben Franklin Bridge.
 Notice how the present day Race steet is still there just shifted north of where I show the original steet running towards the river.


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## Steve/sewell (Feb 22, 2010)

Here is an aerial photo showing how close Dyottville in Kensington and his drug warehouse properties in Philadelphia were.
 All of the area between the two towns was originally farmland.There was a dirt stage road leading from Philadelphia to Kennsington in 1810.


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## southern Maine diver (Feb 22, 2010)

I'd love to get my hands on one of those "Godfrey Cordials" for obvious reasons... I wonder what could be found in the Delaware River near those glass houses? Do you think the water is all mucky, no visibility.. polluted type water or relatively clean?  Be an interesting road trip.

 Wayne


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## Steve/sewell (Feb 22, 2010)

Wayne you would probably find more bodies that have went missing from the South Philly Mob than you would bottles.
 The only Godfrey you would find would be Little Tony Godfrey[][]I do know of some places here in Southern New Jersey that could be
 dived that would yeild quite a bit of colonial relics.


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## JOETHECROW (Feb 22, 2010)

Steve,...another amazing and interesting, well researched post!....Thank you for the great read, and pics of your great old bottles....I dug a later version of your godfrey's at a local farm dump this past summer....although not nearly as cool as yours..It was a first for me.                                                   Again thanks...Joe


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## Steve/sewell (Feb 22, 2010)

Thats nice Joe is it pontiled.


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## baltbottles (Feb 22, 2010)

Steve,

 Your wrong about front and second streets. Present day second street is the same as it was in colonial times. It hasn't changed. Also Front street is the same also. There was another street beyond front called Water Street that's the street that 95 destroyed. Columbus Blvd is nothing but fill over the old wharves and piers during the 19th and 20th century.

 Chris


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## JOETHECROW (Feb 22, 2010)

Nope Steve,...no pontil but it IS unique in the fact that one side is vertical, while the 'taper' is all on the other side,....for instance, it sits on our kitchen window sill next to a strap side flask...if you turn it one way,..it's straight up and down on a side, and if you turn it 180 degrees it's seriously sloped to match the taper on the flask....although I must say....Your example is awesome!  
	

	
	
		
		

		
			





  Joe


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## Steve/sewell (Feb 22, 2010)

This is an original 10 dollar note redeemable at the Manual Labor Bank.All the signatures are original.
 T.W. Dyott is signed at the lower right, Stephen Simpson the head cashier is signed at the bottom left on the note.
 Yes that is a picture of Philadelphias favorite son Ben Franklin on the left and Dyotts portrait is on the right.


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## RedGinger (Feb 22, 2010)

Great bottles and info, Steve!  You really should write a book.  Forgive me, but did you dig all of those?  What a neat post.  Those old newspapers are great too!  Joe told me I should stop by and check out your thread.  I've become really interested in Godfrey's Cordials since Joe dug his.  Thanks for taking the time to share all that info with us.


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## Steve/sewell (Feb 22, 2010)

Thanks Red and Joe they are neat bottles.Chris you are correct I had received my information from my wifes Aunt Carol
 who got to dig around all of the construction.A simple look up on the citys street grid showed you are correct mostly.
 Parts of Front street were moved for the construction of I-95 and the area in Society Hill was taken underground to not spoil the view of the River
 Here is the new picture with the corrected cordinates showing Second and Race streets.My drawing of Dyottville is very accurate as 
 I have personally toured the area and talked to old time city residents who showed me the boundries of the old Dyottville glass works and homes.


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## Steve/sewell (Feb 22, 2010)

Another picture of the 10 dollar note showing Dyotts signature up close.


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## Steve/sewell (Feb 22, 2010)

Close up of the glass workers on the note.
 The gaffer in white the largest figure, kinda looks like Vegas Elvis huh?[]


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## Steve/sewell (Feb 22, 2010)

The Ben Franklin Picture on the note close up.


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## Steve/sewell (Feb 22, 2010)

Stephen Simpson's signature up close.He more than anyone influenced Dyott's life for the good and bad.


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## Steve/sewell (Feb 22, 2010)

Tommorrow I will post my Dyott attributed flasks.If anyopne has Dyott related bottles or flasks also, please post them as I would love to see them.


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## Steve/sewell (Feb 23, 2010)

Here is a group shot of the early 1821 to 1828 Dyott flasks.
 I will post at a later date individual pictures and descriptions of each Flask.


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## bostaurus (Feb 24, 2010)

Were his bottles always clear or aqua?


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## Steve/sewell (Feb 24, 2010)

Like any early glass works Melinda their main output was aqua, clear.They did make some of the fancy flasks in
 Dark and light blues, ambers,yellows,citron,Emerald greens.Unfortunatley for me I can ony occasionally afford
 the 350.00 to 550.00 versions of the historical flasks.The rare color examples bring 3,4,10,15,000 depending on the flask
 rarity.I need four to go to have everything attributed to Dyotts early Kennsington glass works.If I even thought about
 purchasing a flask for 3 or 4 thousand I would be in Divorce court the next day.[][]


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## bostaurus (Feb 24, 2010)

I know what you mean.  My husband is not a collector of anything but he puts up with my crazy collecting.  Out of respect to him and the fact that he is the bread winner in the family I do not feel I can spend a lot on a bottle....and three kids in college next year..ouch.  Maybe when I get up to Wisconsin I can find some good  bottles.  I still want to dig some one day...


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## potstone (Feb 24, 2010)

Good work Steve, I've always had a great interest in T W Dyott.
 At one point in my collecting, I started to make an attempt to
 acquire an example of each type of bottle and flask that was
 manufactured at the Dyottville Glass Works. I'm very impressed  looking at your acquisitions, an almost complete representation of
 all types manufactured at Dyotts glass works. You have done an
 excellent job. I should have maintained my momentum and continued the task myself. I've always had a problem keeping
 focused in one area. I probably need medication. Once again, my compliments for an outstanding job. Greg


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