A Secret History of Brands

by A Secret History of Brands- The Dark

  Legend further tells us that Coons helped Sarah establish total communication with William in the afterlife. Hoping for words of love, she was disappointed by a gloomy and dark message from the tortured spirit of her husband. William’s ghost told Sarah that she would be forever haunted by the spirits of those killed by the Winchester rifle. The spirits had also decreed that the Winchester family needed to provide them with a final resting place. William then told her to build a house that would never be completed, with infinite rooms that would provide shelter for the spirits. Sarah believed that by doing this she would gain immortality. This is the legend, and the basis for much of the thought about the motivations of Sarah Winchester and her ‘mad’ mystery home. How much of this is actually true? Surprisingly little, it turns out.

  I spoke to Sarah Winchester’s biographer Mary Jo Ignoffo about the reality of Sarah’s life and she had a vastly different picture to paint. Mary Jo spent five years researching Sarah Winchester’s life for her book Captive of the Labyrinth: Sarah L. Winchester, Heiress to the Rifle Fortune. Mary Jo slaved over a ton of first-hand information from sources such as letters that Sarah had exchanged with her attorney; the daybooks of her ranch foreman John Hansen; and property deeds from Santa Clara and San Mateo counties. Interestingly, when I questioned Ignoffo about Sarah’s relationship with medium Adam Coons, the pivot-point for the entire legend, she informed me that in all of her research she had never been able to locate a record of a medium by that name. It wouldn’t be surprising if a recently widowed woman with a fortune at her disposal was preyed upon by a number of characters looking to pedal spiritual advice for a price, but I also couldn’t locate any actual evidence of one named Adam Coons.

  Sarah soon travelled to Santa Clara valley in San Jose, California, where she bought forty-four acres of land and an eight room farmhouse that was under construction. It is said that the townsfolk watched in awe as Sarah brought many wagons of materials, at all times of day and night, to build her ambitious new home. Sarah spoke only to the architects and the carpenters on any regular basis and she was regularly dressed in black mourning clothes and a veil, which would be traditional grieving garb for the era.

  The ‘mystery home’ of Sarah Winchester would finally settle with an astounding 160 rooms, 110 of which are currently available for the public to view on regular tours that are still held there. The house is an Eastlake shingle Queen Anne design that would end up costing Sarah more than five million dollars to construct. The building work wouldn’t actually end until Sarah’s death on 5 September 1922.

  The crews of carpenters and masons worked day and night for several years. After a time, Sarah fired her architect, because she wanted to be fully in charge of providing the designs. The home looked like a typical Victorian mansion from the outside and fit well into the landscape of the town, but much to the surprise of the locals, it continued to expand and grow beyond expectations. Keeping in mind that no one in the local community had any idea about Sarah’s supposed premonitions, they only knew what they saw from a distance. The casual passers-by could see Mrs Winchester, still in mourning, lurking around the extensive grounds, but they say that she never acknowledged or spoke to anyone on the outside. She remained an enigma, keeping fairly secluded, not socialising much with the locals.

  Mary Jo Ignoffo also provided some insight into how Sarah was perceived by the local San Jose community: ‘At the time, Sarah Winchester was perceived as building an excessively large and decorous house and as not ‘going in’ with the neighbors (quote from newspaper). A few very close neighbors visited her property and occasionally did favors for her.’

  Sarah may have been in deep mourning and isolation, but she did enjoy the inheritance worth nearly twenty million dollars, plus an income from the Winchester Repeating Rifle Company profits that would equal around $1,000 per day. Cost was clearly not an issue for Sarah and her bizarre home renovations reflect that fact.

  The former workmen from the home would spread stories and rumours about what they saw while in the home, to the eager ears of the local townies. The interior of the home was a mysterious labyrinth of mazes. There were passageways connecting many of the rooms, which Sarah would use on a regular basis to move around the home unbeknownst to the staff. There were stray hallways and corridors that led nowhere. It is said that the layout was so unnerving that new servants didn’t like to stray from the known hallways. There is one particular seven-story staircase that was 9ft tall and had forty steps, each of those steps being only 2ins in height. This oddity is likely due to the severe arthritis that Sarah suffered from.

  By the turn of the century, the house engulfed the outbuildings and stables on the land and any others were soon gone. All of the original eight rooms of the house had disappeared. She had to add a high fence to keep people out who came to get a look at her and the house. She even planted a high cypress hedge and hired gardeners to focus on the hedge to nurture it into a thick green wall to keep away prying eyes. Any request to see her or her servants was refused.

  In 1904 Sarah had withdrawn from society so completely that she could no longer deal with the servants or workmen anymore. Sarah’s niece Margaret Merriam soon moved in to assist as a liaison to all people. No one was allowed to see Sarah anymore without her full veils and mourning garb and they certainly weren’t allowed to communicate with her directly. The butler would see her in a more relaxed state, only because he had access to her for the purpose of serving her meals.

  The seven-story house soon became somewhat of an attraction that drew visitors from miles around. Sarah had a particular obsession with the number thirteen. One press release from the ‘Winchester Mystery House’ details her preoccupation: ‘Her will had 13 parts and was signed 13 times. The house has 13 bathrooms, and the 13th bathroom has 13 windows and 13 steps leading to it. Many windows have 13 panes and rooms have 13 ceiling panels.’ The peculiar mansion spans 24,000sq ft of space and boasts 2,000 doors, fifty-two skylights, forty bedrooms, three elevators, two basements, six kitchens, thirteen bathrooms, forty staircases, forty-seven fireplaces and ten thousand windows.

  It is said that the turnaround was high amongst the servants. The legends say that the servants would sometimes leave out of intense fear, and sometimes they were fired for prying or defying orders. Eventually a regular staff was established who would stay with Sarah and protect her from the prying, hurtful eyes of the outside world. The wall of secrecy surrounding the widow and her house only continued to grow as the years went by.

  Mrs Winchester would use her secret séance room on a regular basis, but she was so suspicious of prying eyes that she would take a variety of different corridors and secret passageways to the room each time she used it. The séance room was a small, blue room with a barred window and only one obvious entrance and exit. The secret exit did exist, but it was carefully hidden inside a closet. Sarah would spend hours in the room, hoping to consult the spirit of her dearly departed husband. Servants are said to have been able to hear, from outside the door, her speaking out loud to him during these sessions. There were many legends surrounding these supernatural sessions, mostly purported by ex-staff members and local gossips. One such tale spun the yarn that the servants could hear a baby crying from within the room, and another instance entailed a servant who hid in the room. She claims to have seen an ethereal and mystic hand appear out of nowhere with an ornate chalice that Mrs Winchester subsequently drank from in some sort of bizarre ritual. These claims, however, remain absolutely unsubstantiated gossip and urban legend.

  Another legend states that Sarah had announced to her servants one day that she would be hosting a lavish ball that very evening, seemingly out of nowhere. A new ballroom had just been completed in the home, with a gorgeous Tiffany chandelier, and she intended to host a celebration ball with food and rare wines. A troupe of musicians were hired and brought in that night to entertain and delight the partygoers with song. A luxurious and decadent dinner was also served on beautifully decorated
buffet tables. The ball began with all the appropriate fare, including the butler announcing the names of guests as they arrived. The band is said to have looked on, confused and disturbed, as people were being announced and the ball was rocking along – but there were no actual guests present. The musicians, unnerved by the entire evening, finally fled the eerie scene at two in the morning.

  In the wee hours of 18 April 1906, the massive San Andreas fault began to rumble and groan. The subsequent earthquake caused immense damage to Sarah’s home and the house became a death trap with Sarah trapped alone in her room. The servants were unable to hear her muffled cries for help for several hours. They finally discovered her in the ruins of her once beautiful bedroom. The front portion of the house, an area that she had ensured was very lavish and expensive, is what sustained the majority of the damage in the earthquake. The tortured widow took the natural disaster as a sign from ‘the beyond’ that her decadence was being punished. New orders were given to board-up that area of the house and no one was allowed there again after that point. The quake shook Sarah so deeply that she left the home to live in various other places. One such place was a houseboat anchored in the San Francisco Bay. Other sites included a ranch, and a home in Atherton. Sarah continued to move around for the next six years. She would send daily orders to the foreman, and construction crews would continue, but she did not return to the home once during this time.

  In the spring of 1912, Sarah returned to the home and renewed the building at a near frantic pace. She was suffering from a crippling form of arthritis and her health was beginning to decline. Thanks to her condition she was often confined to her living quarters. A decade later on, the night of 4 September 1922, the evening crew stopped work to play cards and have some whiskey to relax and unwind after a hard day’s work. They hadn’t seen Mrs Winchester for months and weren’t sure if she was even still on the grounds, or living in her other home. The following morning, Sarah’s niece Margaret went to her room in order to check on her aunt. The tortured widow Sarah Winchester was dead; she had died in her sleep.

  The obituary in one San Jose newspaper recalled the widow’s life: ‘She has lived a quiet, secluded life here for about thirty years. For many years she has aided financially the department of the Connecticut state hospital devoted to the treatment of tuberculosis patients, as well as being interested in other charitable activities.’ Sarah Winchester may have been laid to rest, but her legend had only just begun.

  The Winchester Legacy

  The beautiful and carefully restored Queen Anne Victorian home at 525 S. Winchester Boulevard still stands today. Today, the six-acre property is a tourist trap. You can visit the home and take tours that include the grand ballroom, private séance chambers and more – there is even a special ‘behind the scenes’ tour. The tour guides will tell tales of the mysterious widow who spent her millions on a home to house the spirits that haunted her.

  During the Halloween season tour guides now offer a night-time ‘Halloween Candlelight Tour’ at the home, promoting the supernatural aspects of the legend of Sarah Winchester’s Mystery House. The press release for the tour touts it as a seriously spooky event:

  TIME magazine has called us one of the ‘Most Haunted Places in the World’ and this Halloween we’re enhancing what’s already here with an all-new macabre, atmospheric, and truly creepy overlay with our limited time only Halloween Candlelight Tour offering.

  Peter Overstreet, one of the successful directors at the Great Dickens Christmas Fair in San Francisco states:

  During the candlelit visit some kind of paranormal force will definitely be awakened within the house, much to the shock of guests on the tour … .This all-new experience for guests to the Winchester Mystery House will be both a physical visit and a great example of ‘theater of the mind’ where your imagination is coerced to fill in the blanks to even more frightful effect.

  It is commonly thought that after a certain point, Sarah’s isolation may have had a lot to do with her severe arthritis. In reality, she was an intelligent, generous woman who spoke four languages, loved the arts, sent gifts of food from her garden to needy families and, according to her former servants, donated to many charities. The facts surrounding the mysterious widow are actually few and far between. Her legacy is shrouded in legend and hearsay, which all serves to make her life seem far more fanciful and mysterious than it likely was. Mary Jo Ignoffo described Sarah Winchester to me as:

  … a brilliant investor, more talented than her peers, male or female; with investments in land, fruit, stocks, bonds. She would not have called herself a feminist or an icon. She wanted to be a talented architect, but she believed the results of the earthquake highlighted her shortcomings in that pursuit. She did not believe in inherited wealth, and so she sought to make her money grow. I think she is far more interesting and believable as a three-dimensional historical figure – someone who faced many challenges in life and found very creative and effective ways to deal with them. To me, it is far more intriguing to understand that, for a dozen years or more, she got up everyday and managed a major construction project – not for some fanciful reason about obsession or ghosts, but because it was a creative outlet and she preferred a life of work rather than leisure. She was a busy woman, right up to the end.

  When it comes to the question of her supposed obsession with the occult, Mary Jo takes umbrage with the status quo. ‘I found no historical evidence that Sarah Winchester was obsessed. She could have joined a local group that routinely held séances, and she did not. As for the occult, she belonged to an Episcopalian church.’

  When they removed Sarah’s remaining personal items from the home, a small box was recovered that consisted of some of her dear husband’s items and a small lock of blonde hair from her baby. We should perhaps focus on remembering Sarah not as an isolated and superstitious eccentric, but as a devoted wife and mother who was tragically stripped of everything she knew and loved. Sarah Winchester was left with a hollow fortune and, instead of bringing her comfort and distraction, it served only to further drive her intense amount of sorrow and grief. Her elaborate and mysterious home was simply her best way of honouring the memory of her loved ones.

  The Winchester Mystery House Today

  The Winchester mansion boasted one hundred and sixty rooms…or so we thought. During the writing of this book a secret attic room was uncovered by those who run the mansion. The preservation team at the house were able to recover several items from the room, from a Victorian couch, sewing machine, and pump organ, to paintings and a dress form. The room was boarded up after the 1906 earthquake and had not seen the light of day until now. The mansion remains a landmark for both California and San Jose and is even listed in the National Archive of Historic Places.

  Chapter Nine

  Bakelite: Killer Plastic

  Bakelite was one of the more fascinating of the early developments in plastic and, although it was only on the market for a relatively short time, it was utilised during the glamorous era of the Roaring Twenties on many beautiful products, making it very collectible still today. It was ultimately fatal controversy involving the family who invented this amazing product that clings to the memory, and continues to fascinate as one of the more salacious dramas in recent brand history.

  A Brief History of Plastics

  Plastics are one of the most revolutionary and important inventions to come out of the nineteenth century. Plastics can be tough and rigid, soft and flexible, transparent or opaque. Plastic began to be mass manufactured just over a century ago, which makes it a very modern material. Prior to the inception of plastics, other similar materials such as shell and horn were often used. By 1725, London had become the major European centre for the moulding of horn. By the nineteenth century the common use of ivory and tortoise shell was no longer viable because the natural resources needed to poach the animal materials were being over-farmed and were becoming scarce. There was a great need for an artificial material to take their pla
ce, and that is where plastic came into play.

  The first plastic was introduced at the Great International Exhibition in London in 1862. This is where British chemist Alexander Parkes introduced the world to his invention, Parkesine. The product resembled the look of ivory and horn and seemed like a great new alternative. The reasons for the failure of the product vary, depending on the source. There are some who say that it wasn’t a viable option thanks to inflated production costs, and others who attest that Parkes used inferior materials, thus producing inferior products that weren’t well received by consumers. Regardless of the reasoning, Parkesine was a commercial failure, but soon another innovation in plastics would emerge to take its place.

  Inventor John Wesley Hyatt, Jr. and his older brother Isaiah, both moved to the bustling and busy city of Chicago early in their adult lives. John worked as a printer’s apprentice and began inventing at a young age, while Isaiah was a newspaper editor. The Hyatt brothers filed for their very first patent on 19 February 1861 under Patent 31,461. The invention was an ‘Improved Knife-Sharpener’. The Hyatt brothers seemed to work well together and would continue to do so in the future, leading up to their most important discovery. The two would file another patent the next year, on 17 June 1862, for an ‘improvement in knife or scissors sharpeners’ (Patent 35,652).

  In 1863, Phelan & Collender, the largest billiard supply company in the United States, were running a contest, seeking a synthetic replacement material to the ivory billiard balls that had long been the industry standard. The material was beginning to show signs of scarcity, due to the over-farming of elephant tusks. The hefty bounty of $10,000 was offered to anyone who could bring the company a new synthetic. John Wesley Hyatt, Jr. was one of the people that put his hat in the race, and to great success. Hyatt kept working in the print shop to pay the bills, but in his spare time at night he would work feverishly on the new invention.