The reports of cholera in Egypt and yellow fever in Havana needn’t alarm us here at all; but they suggest to my mind a curious story which my old friend Nick Barton got direct from his old father, who was personally aware of the facts in the case.
Nick’s father, old Nicholas Barton, a tiptop shoemaker, used to live in Greenwich Village and was doin’ a snug trade when the yellow fever broke out. Old Nicholas Barton was a man of very temperate habits and took life regularly and easy, so he wasn’t afraid of the fever a bit, didn’t get it, or the scare about it, which was worse than the fever, and kept right on with his regular line of business and his regular habits of life and had time to look at the yellow fever like a white philosopher.
He noticed several things about it which interested him greatly, and among ‘em was the number and variety of infallible cures or preventatives that there were against the dreadful disease. These were so numerous and so simple that old Barton really began to wonder how anybody could be so foolish as to die of the yellow fever, when he could so easily, cheaply, and infallibly prevent it.
The papers were full of recommendations about the right kind of food, and the proper kind of drink, and the necessary kind of life for the fever; and many quacks made a good deal of money out of the pestilence, trading on the credulity and fear of their fellow-men.
And one of the smartest and most successful of these cracks and humbugs was a neighbor of old Nicholas Barton’s, a grocer who conceived the idea of makin’ his fortune off the fever. He was set up to this by his wife, who was a regular old hag, who cared for nothin’ in this world but money, and who had a good deal more brains than her husband. She saw that people in New York were thoroughly frightened–too much scared to retain their senses–and that anything that promised to prevent the fever was bound to coin money for a while, anyway, till it was found out, by which time, however, the pestilence would probably be over.
So she and her husband sat awake at nights, while others were dyin’ all around ‘em, tryin’ to think of some cheap way of gullin’ the poor public. But for some time no way presented itself, that is no way that hadn’t already been tried, no original, startlin’ way that was likely to command immediate attention.
But one day an accident gave ‘em the idea that they wanted. At the corner of Cortland street and Broadway, one of the old families had left their fine house in the charge of a man-servant and had gone out of town. After some days it was noticed that he did not appear in the street as usual, durin’ the day never left the house, and so it was supposed that he, too, had fled, leavin’ the house to take care of itself. But a day or two later a brother of Old Nicholas Barton, who had charge of a store whose windows looked into the yard of this Courtland Street and Broadway house, saw the servin’ man of this family, who was supposed to have fled, sitting in an arbor or summer house in the back yard. He thought this was rather strange, but, takin’ it for granted that the man had returned to town again, bothered no more about it.
But the next day, lookin’ from his window again, old Nick Barton’s brother saw this servant man once more still sittin’ in the arbor, in the very identical position of yesterday, lookin’ as if he hadn’t moved a bit in twenty-four hours–as he hadn’t.
Barton’s brother, thinkin’ this alike very funny and very serious, told some of the neighbors. The alarm was given, the door of the mansion was burst open, and the servin’ man was found to be dead. He had been seized with the fever and died sittin’. By his side was found a book of travels, which book Barton’s brother put in his pocket.
Coming over to Greenwich Village that night, Barton’s brother told all about this rather singular case and showed his brother the book of travels. He happened to see somethin’ in it which at once induced him to buy the book, which he did for a song. And this book of travels, found accidentally at a dead man’s side, and bought for a trifle, was the direct cause of that Greenwich Village grocer becomin’ a rich man.
For in this book was a description of the city of Marseilles, in France, and in this description of Marseilles was a passage relatin’ to the history of the dreadful plague which raged there in the middle ages. And in this history of the plague was a story of four thieves who carried on their robberies all the time durin’ the pestilence, but never caught the disease. All the honest people of Marseilles were hiding in the dens and caves of the earth to escape the plague, but these four rascals went about, eatin’ and drinkin’ and stealin’, just as unconcerned as if there was no such thing as a plague, any more than there was such a thing as the law. They defied the law and the plague together. But at last, the plague somewhat abatin’, the citizens ventured out, and one of the four thieves was caught. He was tried and condemned to die by bein’ broken on the wheel; but, just at the last minute, he begged for his life, and promised, if they would spare him, to give up the secret by which he and his three companions in crime had been enabled to escape the plague. Of course the authorities were only too glad to avail ‘emselves of his proposition, and so the secret was divulged. This charm consisted of a peculiar kind of vinegar, which, drank constantly, was an infallible antidote against the fever, and which after this became a great article of trade in Marseilles, under the title “The Vinegar of the Four Thieves .”
As soon as he read this the Greenwich street grocer and his wife knew what to do. They hired a man who had somethin’ to do with the newspapers to write up this four thieves and vinegar story, and to write puffs of this vinegar and the four thieves, and to announce it as an infallible preventative of the yellow fever, and to get up a romantic yet plausible yarn how the recipe came into the grocer’s possession. Then they took all the common vinegar they had in stock in their store, and all the common vinegar they could get hold of round town, and put it in bottles labeled “The Vinegar of the Four Thieves,” and sold this vinegar at about ten times its cost, and were kept busy selling it day and night.
It was perhaps the most simple and audacious swindle ever attempted even in the way of patent medicine. There was no expense or trouble incurred. Nothin’ was done to the vinegar; it was merely bought wholesale, very cheap, put into bottles with this odd label, and then sold at retail very dear.
A snug little some was realized ere the summer was over. This snug little sum, under the prudent management of the grocer’s wife, laid the foundation of a subsequent fortune. The son of the grocer, who once offered common vinegar as an elixir against yellow fever, now lives in fine style on Fifth Avenue, and his family move in “the best society” of New York city.
So much for knowin’ how to make “sugar” out of vinegar.
[Editor’s notes: Several aspects of the column above need to be unpacked, but it does serviceably convey the gist of the legend of the Four Thieves Vinegar. However, when the first documented use of the vinegar occurred is in question. La Maison Maille, the French mustard and vinegar maker, claims that Antoine-Claude Maille “invented” the Vinegar of the Four Thieves from his shop in Paris in the 1720s, to relieve the citizens of Marseilles, who were suffering the last great outbreak of the Bubonic Plague, which arrived there in 1720. Earlier mentions of the Vinegar cannot be found. Did Maille also “invent” the tale of the Four Thieves, or did it date further back to a “middle ages” outbreak?
Moving on to “Harry’s” story, it involves an outbreak of Yellow Fever in the life of Nicholas Barton Sr., the father of a friend of Harry’s. New York’s last major outbreak of Yellow Fever, a mosquito-borne virus, took place several years in between 1793 and 1803. This appears to be the occurrence that the anecdote relates to. However, the Yellow Fever epidemic hit Philadelphia first in the summer of 1793, and it is in a Philadelphia paper that we first find an American vendor of the Vinegar of the Four Thieves.
The first New York City newspaper advertisements for the Vinegar came a month later, in September 1793. So, it was not in New York City that the first mention of the Vinegar appeared in America, but in Philadelphia. The name was not a trademark, and over the years several vendors sold it.
After a hiatus of three decades, the Vinegar of the Four Thieves advertisements reappeared in New York in 1834, during a serious Cholera epidemic.
Doubtless, a few vendors of the Vinegar may have reaped profit from it. But it would be prudent to question the veracity of the dead man-servant, the travel book, the greedy husband and wife, and the founding of a Fifth Avenue family fortune.]
