Weird Maine Inventions
In 1903 Josie Baldwin of Tremont patented an idea benignly labeled the “Chest-Bandage” that was, in practice, a boned corset for lactating women that squeezed so tight it collected milk as fast as the new mother produced it. The corset had holes for a pair of dangling rubber bags.
Its purpose: simultaneously doing away with the need for a breast pump while “a healthful bodily condition of the wearer is maintained.”
It’s perhaps no mystery why the Chest-Bandage didn’t take off; most women, of course, having a natural aversion to being continually milked in public.
A check of old Maine patents online finds all sorts of similar gems nearly lost to history.
There are no road signs as you enter town bragging “Lewiston: Home of the ‘Electrocuting Rat Trap’ and the ‘New and Useful Urinal.’” But whether because of the inventions’ fleeting popularity or questionable usefulness, that fact does nothing to diminish their creators’ inventive bursts.
No fewer than seven cow-tail holders? Invented right here. The pocket knife that doubled as a pistol? Ditto.
In 1866, A.J. Peavey of South Montville invented the Improved Combined Pistol & Pocket Knife. (The year before, he’d invented the basic model.) When whittling or stabbing wouldn’t do, the knife’s blade could be folded back. The handle doubled as the gun barrel.
“Very convenient for being carried in a person’s pocket without danger of being prematurely discharged,” Peavey assured in his application.
It seems likely that users of Joseph Grow’s Improved Liniment could have been wishing for such a death.
In 1864, the Brunswick man invented a medicinal rub with one gallon of vinegar, two quarts of turpentine, a dozen eggs and their shells and a half-pint of “skunk grease.”
Photo by U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.
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