Caveat Emptor – Buyer Beware
By David Wright
Town Historian
“Roswell Curtis kept a general store just north of where the railroad track runs across Main street. He had dry goods, groceries, drugs and most anything. But I’d never buy what I’m to put inside me in a store kept according to modern notions. Roswell Curtis wasn’t very particular about sanitation. He weighed out some flour for a woman once on the scales he’d just weighed white lead in, without stopping to wipe them out. She died very soon after. Some time after that I sent one of the children down to his store to get a bottle filled with medicine. When it was brought home it was in another bottle and the liquid had such a queer, dark look, I examined it and found black, crusty places in it. I went down to the store myself and asked Roswell Curtis why he changed the bottle. He said he’d broken it and happened to have an empty ink-bottle there, so he used that. “Did you wash it out?” I asked him, and he said he never thought to do that, so it was cakes of ink that were mixed in with the medicine. I left it with him, thinking my little girl would get along full as well without the medicine.”
“Do you remember that?” asked Mr. Judson, turning to his daughter…
“Yes, I do,” she smiled over her sewing.
The preceding paragraphs were taken from an interview with Stratford’s oldest living resident in 1915, Lucius Judson. Mr. Judson was interviewed by one of Stratford’s excellent historians, Lura Abell. The article appeared in the Bridgeport Herald, May 2, 1915.
Lucius Judson was born in Stratford in June 1823. He was a direct descendant of William Judson, the first settler of what was then “Cupheag,” in 1638. Mr. Judson was a very well-known figure in the town. Up until a few weeks before his passing in May of 1919, he’d walk, every day, from his home at the corner of Hillside Avenue and (3095) Main Street to the fire house in Stratford Center which was just south of today’s Lovell Building. Mr. Judson would spend his mornings at fire headquarters playing cards with his grand-nephew, Fire Chief Allen Judson.
Lucius Judson worked for 50 years at the Wheeler & Wilson shop in Bridgeport retiring when he turned 80 years old. He was a trained shoe maker and an expert gardener. Anyone living in Stratford who wanted a garden properly set out would contact Lucius for advice and planning.
Mr. Judson also held very strong opinions on a variety of topics. In his 1915 interview with Lura Abell, he continued:
“Mr. Judson believes that work is the best tonic for himself, and judging from the fresh color of his smooth skin and the keenness of his interest in life, it agrees with him. His hair is white and his shoulders are bent, but he finds his years no great burden.
His time is systematically mapped out and the early morning to these fine spring days finds him busy in his garden. His hyacinths were among the first and the loveliest of the season and his tulips will soon signal the passerby on North Main street to stop for a moment and admire their brilliance. Back of his attractive white house is the vegetable plot, which he has marked out in rows as precisely straight as a regiment of soldiers on parade, and every bush and tree and blade of grass about the place testify to the care Mr. Judson has given them.”
Mr. Judson’s long life in Stratford taught him many things. Foremost, however, may have been he learned to carefully inspect, and select, what he purchased from local merchants. You, too, would also be well-advised not to purchase any medicines from merchants in town who package your prescriptions in used ink bottles!
