Bottles and Extras
September - October 2016
41
A photograph of the Fresno Volunteer Hook & Ladder Co. No. 1, in front of the C. G. SAYLE & CO. drug store, taken in the late 1870’s. Lefonso Burks is reportedly seated third from right, top row. (Photo courtesy of The Fresno Bee)
Claudius Sayle with Lefonso Burks as junior partner. The drug company of C.G. Sayle & Co. was terminated in October 1879 with Sayle leaving the business, while Lefanso Burks continued as sole proprietor. Lefonso Burks had an older brother, Charles F. Burks, who also moved West with the Burks family. He opened the first drug store in Fresno in 1874 but the store was soon purchased by Claudius Sayle with Lefonso Burks as junior partner. The drug company of C. G. Sayle & Co. was terminated in October 1879 with Sayle leaving the business, while Lefanso Burks continued as sole proprietor. Lefonso surely caught the attention of the readers of the Fresno Republican Weekly of January 18, 1879, when a short article noted; Lefonso Burks of the firm of C.G. Sayle & Co. is in San Francisco buying goods, and arranging for the manufacture of 3,703,506 bottles for his celebrated Lightning Liniment. This incredibly high number of bottles is incomprehensible for such a small operation as Burks’, and was either an overt exaggeration or a typographical error. Two months later, a more realistic number of bottles arrived from the San Francisco & Pacific
Glass Works, the only glass manufacturer in California at that point in time. The Republican Weekly noted three gross (432) of Lightning Liniment bottles had been received by Lefonso Burks. LIGHTNING LINIMENT - Lefonso Burks received three gross of bottles in which to put up his Lightning Liniment, this week. The bottles were manufactured expressly for him by a San Francisco firm and have “Burk’s Lightning Liniment” stamped on them. This liniment is gaining quite a reputation, and has effected a number of cures for sprains and bruises in this vicinity.(8) This is a far more realistic number which makes one wonder if the previously quoted figure of 3.7 million bottles may have been some sort of estimate of how many bottles could potentially be blown in the private mold that was commissioned by Burks, before it wore out. The lettering on the bottles reveal the fact that the mold was manufactured by the well known maker who produced the curved leg letter “R”, who was active from about 1867 to the first several years of the 1880s in San Francisco. The Lightning Liniment mold was undoubtedly made in late 1878 or early 1879. The Lightning Liniment specimen pictured herein, measures 7 3/8 inches in height, is neatly finished with a tooled top, which