A FAMILY PAPER DEVOTED TO THE NEWS OF THE DAY IN SOUTH DANVERS (PEABODY), MASSACHUSETTS
January 6 – June 29, 1864 - Part VI
Inventions
About the South Danvers Wizard

Overview:  Jan.- July 1864

 About South Danvers (Peabody), Massachusetts

 

 South Danvers Wizard, 1/27/1864, p. 2/7
“We were this morning delighted with the operation of a new invention for the Ladies – ‘Mrs. Campbell’s Skirt Lifter’.  This is really the most ingenious, and yet simple contrivance to keep Ladies’ dresses from the mud that we have ever seen.  By simply pulling a cord, made to come out at the opening of the dress, the skirt will rise in a moment, all around alike to any desired height, and hang there in the most graceful festoons imaginable.  This is something, we think, by the appearance of the soiled and torn dresses which we daily see in the streets, long required.  Messrs. Browning and Long have secured the sole right to selling them in Salem.  No lady should be without one.” Reprinted from the Salem Observer.

South Danvers Wizard, 6/1/1864, p. 2/4
THE SALEM LEG COMPANY – “This company is, we understand, regularly organized and in possession of all the patents of the inventor. Arrangements are on foot to furnish well constructed and useful artificial limbs to those who have been unfortunately deprived of their natural ones, and they are of such close imitation of nature that the lookers-on can hardly detect the cheat.
     This happy invention has done for locomotion what dentistry has effected for mastication.  In both cases, it is one part of wisdom to ‘get the best’. So marked is the superiority of the ‘Salem Leg’ over all other inventions, that the company can have no lack of orders, especially from those who have suffered amputation in the army, as this invention has the sanction and recommendation of the government, which pays the expense of furnishing the limbs.”