# Tapscott druggist, brantford ontario canada?



## hemihampton (Jun 16, 2018)

Me & Tom got out to dig some Privy's. Dug about 3 1940's Trash Pits & was not looking to good. Then the 4th hole, a Actual Privy, had what looked like 1920's trash on top layer but underneath at bottom was some older stuff but not much really. Got this S. Tapscott Chemist & Druggist from Brantford Ontario Canada. I don't know anything about Canadian bottles. Is this a good one or a Common one? Anybody know any thing about it? THANKS, LEON.


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## RCO (Jun 17, 2018)

I'm not an expert on Brantford bottles but I haven't seen it before , it was a large industrial city in that period and is a fair number of bottles from the city , I have a couple embossed soda's from Brantford


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## CanadianBottles (Jun 17, 2018)

Nice find!  I'm not too familiar with Brantford bottles either, most of what I know of the town is that they completely obliterated their historic main street back at the start of the decade in one of Canada's worst heritage losses since the 70s.  I don't think anyone on here is located very close to Brantford, so it's hard to say in terms of its rarity.  Few Ontario druggist bottles of that type are particularly valuable, but we also don't really have those super-common druggist bottles like you get in the US because our population was so much smaller.  I'd classify any Canadian druggist bottle as a good find, but value is a different matter.


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## RCO (Jun 17, 2018)

according to Wikipedia , the population of Brantford was 23,132 in 1911 and 29,440 in 1921 , so that might give us a better idea of how common or uncommon the bottle might be . its grown over the years and closing in on 100,000 in last census 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brantford


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## CanadianBottles (Jun 17, 2018)

Eh, population doesn't really give you much idea of how common something will be.  If a small, unsuccessful pharmacy dumped its entire stock into a place that's easy to dig then a bottle that should be rare will be common, and if a town dump is entirely undiggable then it can make common bottles uncommon.  I don't see Brantford stuff that often, so it doesn't seem like there are that many bottles coming out of it, but they may also just not make it up my way.


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## hemihampton (Jun 17, 2018)

Ok, thanks, leon.


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## RCO (Jun 18, 2018)

CanadianBottles said:


> Eh, population doesn't really give you much idea of how common something will be.  If a small, unsuccessful pharmacy dumped its entire stock into a place that's easy to dig then a bottle that should be rare will be common, and if a town dump is entirely undiggable then it can make common bottles uncommon.  I don't see Brantford stuff that often, so it doesn't seem like there are that many bottles coming out of it, but they may also just not make it up my way.




well true we don't really know how many druggists and chemists there were in Brantford or which ones were the most dominate and busiest 

there also could be more than 1 variation of bottles used by this druggist

saw online there was another bottle from same store but it only said Chemist on it and looked a bit different ( although ad doesn't appear to be up anymore but it came up in google )

https://www.kijiji.ca/b-ontario/tapscott/k0l9004

Cached



5.75 inch S. _*Tapscott*_ and Co. Chemists _*Brantford*_ Bottle, medical bottle. With no chips or cracks. In very good condition. Please call or email. We answer all ...


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## StayWild (Mar 10, 2022)

Samuel Tapscott was the first pharmacist in Brantford, moving to the "Bell City" in 1868. Tapscott Drugs grew to three stores in Brant County. Later, he was joined in the pharmacy business by his son, Henry, and granddaughter, Helen. Although Henry died in 1951, the pharmacy continued to operate under that name until 1970, over a century after it was founded.

Samuel was my great grandfather. He and Henry became friends with another recent arrival in Brantford, a man named Alexander Graham Bell. You may have heard of Mr. Bell. The world's first commercial use of a telephone was a line between a local doctor's office and the Tapscott pharmacy. 

Hemihampton's bottle pictured above came from a pharmacy that had a long and storied history in Brantford, dating back almost to Confederation, just a year earlier. 

I cannot contribute a lot to this discussion on bottles originating from my family's pharmacy, other than to note that when I was a child, a large glass cabinet located near the back of the main store on Market Street was devoted to displaying many curiously-shaped bottles and glass vessels large and small that appear to have dated back to the earliest days of the business. These bottles had either cork or glass stoppers and paper labels, some of which were hand-written. Many of these bottles were made of deeply-coloured glass - blues, greens, dark browns, and even a few reds. Undoubtedly these are familiar to bottle collectors today.

This would have been in the late 1950s - early sixties. I recall asking the then-pharmacist why these bottles were made of such deeply and beautifully coloured glass. I was told that each colour of glass was selected to provide protection from the sunlight for the specific liquid or dry contents of each bottle.

Although only slightly biased, I would say that Hemihampton has an artifact of significant local importance, from one of the earliest and most successful pharmacies operating in southern Ontario.


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## embe (Mar 10, 2022)

Cool!


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## hemihampton (Mar 10, 2022)

Thanks for that Info, Much Appreciated. I'm not even sure where that Bottle is now, Probably Boxed up somewhere with hundreds & hundreds of other Bottles. LEON.


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