The Merry Widow Sauce

 The Merry Widow Sauce

Bristol, U.K.

Purnell & Panter (Sauce)

Ca. 1907 - ca. 1926

#30

One “The Merry Widow Sauce” bottle was found on site (False Creek Flats, 2021). It is a mould blown bottle made in a 3-piece cup-bottom mould. A small dot is embossed in the centre of the base. The bottle was about 20 cm tall (at least more than 17 cm) and 4.5 cm across on the base. The bottle is broken where there was a string rim about half-way down the neck. Embossing reads: “THE MERRY / WIDOW/ SAUCE” on three recessed panels. The fourth panel is not recessed. There is no maker’s mark to indicate who made the bottle, but two newspaper articles attribute it to Purnell & Panter in Bristol, UK. Merry Widow Sauce was created to market the Operetta “The Merry Widow”, which premiered in London in 1907 (Scott 2014; Traubner 2003:231).

   
Merry Widow Sauce bottle recovered from False Creek #30

A couple of ads from the Edmonton Journal in 1913 and 1914 call it a Worcestershire Sauce. One from the Vancouver Sun (June 6, 1912, p.16) describes it as: “Delicious, fruity, appetizing”. Two ads from Hampshire, England (Southern Echo, December 21 and 30, 1910) called it “Piquant and Fascinating” and “The Acme of Perfection”. In all, there are 14 ads found on Newspapers.com between March 1912 and February 1915 from Vancouver and Edmonton for “Merry Widow Sauce”. There are 11 ads found on the British Newspaper Archive from November and December, 1910, from Hampshire, and one ad from August, 1911, from Cornwall. There is also mention of Purnell & Panter (Bristol) making a “Merry Widow” Sauce in 1926 (Western Mail October 7, 1926 p.11). 

The Evening Mail (Halifax, N.S., Canada) February 16, 1912, p.3.

An American newspaper posted the menu for a conference in 1909 in which was listed “Merry Widow Drill Sauce, Peppery” (The Butte Daily Post October 11, 1909, p.8). This description does not match any of the descriptions above, and this appears to have been a hot sauce - a hot sauce called "Drill Sauce" is still available online (I am not endorsing it, nor am I a paid sponsor - just providing the link in case you're interested). Another mention of The Merry Widow Sauce is found in an auction catalogue from Australia (https://www.abcrauctions.com/pdfs/CATALOGUE_11_web.pdf). All the catalogue says is that it is an unusual name for a sauce bottle and is from the UK – no date was provided nor the reason that it was from the UK.

So – it seems this was a cooking or serving sauce made in the UK and sold at least in Southern England, Australia, and Western Canada between 1905 and at least 1926. 

 

Photo of the same bottle type seen online - unbroken 

Ad from “Southern Echo” paper, December 9, 1910 p.4 




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