Edwards’ “Harlene”

Another oddity from the side branches of my wife’s unusual family tree. 

Reuben George Edwards was born Reuben Goldstein, but like many others changed his name to something more “I’m not Jewish” which was better for business. His wife’s family had changed from Nathan to Newton, and other relatives to Lewis, Lawrence, Harris and Ellis.   

Reuben founded Edwards’ Harlene, manufacturers of hair restorers for men and women, in the 1880s. Bizarre and rather unsettling newspaper advertisements made claims that would be illegal today. One pictures a young mother with high-maintenance knee-length hair, standing at her dressing table, being asked by her daughter, “Mama, shall I have beautiful long hair like you when I grow up?”, to which she replies, “Certainly, my dear, if you use ‘Edwards’ Harlene’.” Another shows an improbably hirsute man with beard and handlebar moustache, and a woman with thick wavy locks:   

Edwards’ “Harlene” positively forces luxuriant hair, whiskers and moustachios to grow heavily in a few weeks without injury to the skin and no matter what the age.

The world-renowned remedy for baldness, from whatever cause arising. As a producer of whiskers and moustachios it has never been equalled. As a curer of weak or thin eyelashes, or restoring grey hair to its original colour, it never fails. 

My goodness! If only you could still get it. With some of that I could have been in Jethro Tull, or more likely Wizzard for which I’ve got the nose but not the hair. It would be Christmas every day. 

The business was very profitable. When he died in 1943, Edwards left £86,500, equivalent to over £3m today. 

They founded the Edith Edwards Preventorium at Papworth Hospital, Cambridgeshire, for the treatment of tuberculosis, in memory of a daughter who died aged 15 in 1914.