Vintage 1940s-60s Glycerine of Thymol Label 🧪 Very Rare, C Charnley, Grove Pharmacy

What Was Glycerine of Thymol For? 🧪 Vintage 1940s-60s Pharmacy Label, Charles Charnley Ltd, Grove Pharmacy

3 1/2" x 2" ~

🧪 Four Sets of Directions, and Every One of Them Above the Collarbone

This is an original chemist's label for Glycerin of Thymol Compound B.P.C., issued by Charles Charnley Ltd., The Grove Pharmacy, Wilmslow, in Cheshire, England. New Old Stock — never applied to a bottle, never trimmed. Sage green, cream and navy, with a pale ghosted device of a tall footed shop bottle behind the type.

The reason to own it is the directions, which are printed in full and tell you exactly how this was used:

• FOR NASAL CATARRH, OR COLD IN THE HEAD. — Dilute with three to six parts of warm water and use as a Nasal Douche.
• FOR SORE THROAT. — Dilute with three parts of warm water, and gargle or spray the throat frequently.
• AS A MOUTH WASH. — One or two teaspoonfuls with a third of a tumbler of lukewarm water.
• AS A DENTIFRICE. — Use a few drops on a wet toothbrush.

Four uses, and every one of them is the mouth, the throat or the nose. The heading says so outright: AN ANTISEPTIC ALKALINE SOLUTION FOR THE MOUTH, THROAT AND NOSE. This is not a general household antiseptic and it was never sold as one — it is a gargle, a douche, a mouthwash and a toothpaste substitute in one bottle, which is a very particular Edwardian idea of thoroughness.

📖 What B.P.C. Means, and Why the Word "Alkaline" Is On It

B.P.C. is the British Pharmaceutical Codex — the standard reference that told a dispensing chemist exactly how a preparation should be made. Putting those three letters on a label was a claim: this is not my own recipe, it is the official formula, made to the national standard. The Codex carried the compound under its Latin names, Glycerinum Thymolis Compositum and Glycerinum Thymolis Alkalinum, and it is that second name the word ALKALINE on this label is pointing at.

Thymol itself comes from thyme and has genuine antimicrobial properties — it is still the active ingredient in some mouthwashes today. Glycerine was the carrier: sweet, syrupy and soothing, which matters a great deal when you are about to squirt something up your own nose.

🏛️ Charles Charnley, Chemist, of Wilmslow

The Charnley name is real and unusually well documented for a village chemist, though it belonged to a village chemist and not to a figure in the history of British pharmacy. The Wellcome Collection in London holds two volumes from the Charnley shop, MSS.8437–8438. One is a pharmacy recipe book running 1866 to 1940, inscribed on its first page "Charles Charnley, 16 May 1866" — medical, household, cosmetic and culinary preparations, a few veterinary and horticultural ones, in several different hands with periodical cuttings pasted in. The other is a clothbound volume of 1869 to 1925 whose opening pages are a register of prescriptions dispensed to named individuals. The Charles Charnley who signed that page in 1866 may be the man behind this label's Ltd, or the one who came before him.

And a notice in the Stockport Advertiser of 22 July 1938 places C. Charnley at The Grove Pharmacy, Wilmslow, still trading. Those are four scattered points across seventy-odd years rather than a continuous record, but they are four more than most village chemists leave behind.

🕰️ This Is the Later of His Two Labels

Here is something you only get by holding two of his labels side by side. This one trades as CHARLES CHARNLEY LTD., an incorporated company with a registered address on Grove Street. His Tasteless Castor Oil label trades as C. CHARNLEY, Pharmacist — a man, personally, with no company and no address. Both carry the same telephone number, so they sit close together in time. But a business does not un-incorporate: this thymol label is the later of the two, printed after the Ltd went up over the door. The printing says the same thing — this one is a proper three-color job with a ghosted illustration, where the castor oil label is one ink, plain type and rules.

And the Wilmslow paper puts years on it. The ads still read "Charles Charnley, Pharmacist, Tel. 3059" in September 1946, and "Charles Charnley Ltd ... Wilmslow 3059" from May 1949 into at least 1966, and by 1979 the number was Wilmslow 523059. Ltd plus 3059 makes this a late 1940s to 1960s label, not the 1910s or 20s.

The Wilmslow paper fills in the rest of the story. Charles Charnley was advertising as a dispensing chemist on Grove Street by 1875, the shop's phone number was 4X around 1909 and 59 by 1914, and by 1946 it was "Charles Charnley, Pharmacist," at Wilmslow 3059. Sometime between 1946 and 1949 the business became Charles Charnley Ltd, and in time it added a second shop at 20 London Road in Alderley Edge. In 1998 the paper called it Wilmslow's oldest chemist shop and talked to 87-year-old Charles Charnley, whose ancestors, it said, founded the business in 1863.

💊 The Word "Pharmacist" Was Earned

On his earlier label Charnley styles himself Pharmacist, and that was a protected title. The Pharmacy Act of 1868 made it an offense in Britain to call yourself a chemist, a druggist, a pharmacist or a dispensing chemist without being on the register. Printing it was a legal statement about his standing, not a job description.

🖼️ Display Ideas

• 🧪 Apothecary wall — pair it with his castor oil label and you have the same shop before and after incorporation, which is a far better display than either alone.
• 🦷 A dentist's or doctor's waiting room — "use a few drops on a wet toothbrush" is a conversation piece in the right office.
• 📚 Framed with a note on the Wellcome holding the shop's recipe books.
• 🎁 For a pharmacist — particularly one who enjoys that a single bottle was expected to do four jobs.

🎁 Who Collects These

Pharmacy and apothecary ephemera collectors are the core audience, and British chemists' labels with a named, traceable man behind them sit at the top of the field. Dental and medical historians want the dentifrice direction specifically — a liquid toothpaste is not what most people picture. Cheshire and Wilmslow local-history collectors take it as a piece of the village. And typographers like the restraint of it: three colors, a ghosted bottle, and four blocks of directions laid out cleanly on a sheet three and a half inches wide.

❓ Frequently Asked Questions

Is it original?

Yes — an original chemist's label, New Old Stock, never applied to a bottle. The color is full and the sheet is flat and unglued. The type ghosts faintly through to the back, which is what thin period label stock does.

Charnley's labels have had a second life as wall art, too. The poster publisher Buyenlarge reproduces several of them, his Ammoniated Tincture of Quinine and his Gee's Linctus among them, as posters and canvas prints. I don't know about you but I prefer to have the original.

What was it actually for?

The mouth, throat and nose, and nothing else. The label prints four sets of directions — nasal douche, throat gargle or spray, mouth wash, and dentifrice — and the heading names those three places outright. It was not a wound antiseptic.

Can you date it exactly?

Not to the year, but closely: "Charles Charnley Ltd" with telephone 3059 is how the shop advertised from 1949 into at least 1966, and it was not yet a limited company in September 1946. So the late 1940s to the 1960s.

What does B.P.C. stand for?

The British Pharmaceutical Codex, the national standard reference for how a preparation should be compounded. On a label it is a quality claim: made to the official formula rather than the chemist's own.