Good morning, dear readers. I have such a great guest for you today! Lucy Santos has extensively researched the history of cosmetics and some of the dangerous products people have used in the quest for beauty. If you were touched by the story of the radium girls in Luminous, you won't want to miss this story of a woman who was working at the US Food & Drug Administration (FDA) to protect consumers from dangerous, unregulated products - like cosmetics infused with radium. I confess that I had not previously heard of Ruth deForest Lamb, so I appreciate Lucy sharing her story with us as part of the Women's History Month celebration.
Welcome, Lucy!
~ Samantha
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Ruth deForest Lamb and the FDA's Chamber of Horrors
Guest Post by Lucy Santos
I am a beauty historian specialising in the ways in which cosmetics intersect with science and technology. A lot of my work is around the toxicity of ingredients – I even wrote a book which examined (amongst other aspects of the elements uses) the ways in which radium was used in cosmetics.
And because of this fascination I do a lot of research into the various ingredients, beauty companies, places you can buy these products and deep dives into the ways they were marketed.
When Samantha kindly asked me to do a post for Women’s History Month I knew there was only one person I wanted to write about – so let me introduce you to Ruth deForest Lamb.
Born in 1896 in Hallstead, Pennsylvania Ruth graduated from Vassar College and was one of the first women working in advertising – which, in the years after the First World War was an emerging industry. A bit off topic but if you haven’t read Murder Must Advertise by Dorothy L Sayer I highly recommend it for a flavour of what it was like to work in advertising during this period.
By 1933 Ruth was working for the U.S Food and Drug Administration as their first Chief Educational Officer and one of her initial huge projects was to put together a display for the 1933 Century of Progress International Exposition, held in Chicago during 1933 and 1934.
The FDA’s contribution to this massive exhibition was an exhibit of 100 products that they considered ‘dangerous, deceptive or worthless’ but had no legal authority to ban. The products encompassed dodgy medications, foods with unlabelled substitutions and cosmetics with dangerous ingredients.
This was actually a huge problem at the time because, despite some progress via the 1906 Pure Food and Drug Act, the US consumer was largely unprotected and the FDA largely powerless to change the situation. Even worst cosmetics were not covered by the regulations at all.
This name, shame and educate campaign was carried out across seventeen display boards illustrated with ‘large, vivid pictures coupled with spare, terse prose’ – detailing the problems and the effects of these unregulated products. So Othine, a cream made with ammoniated mercury which promised to lighten the skin was highlighted as was dinitrophenol, a chemical that was sold as a weight loss tool but could cause fatal blood disorders.
But two of the most shocking products were produced by the companies – Lash-Lure Laboratories, Inc of LA and Koremlu Inc of New York. Lash Lure was a synthetic aniline dye (a component of coal tar) that was designed for dying eyelashes and eyebrows. Koremlu was a hair removal product made from the toxic element Thallium.
Both of these products were widely available in beauty salons and Koremlu was even sold in the biggest department stores in New York City.
They had been popular products until their users started to fall ill, and it was these victims that were featured heavily in Ruth deForest Lamb’s ‘Chamber of Horrors’ exhibit in Chicago. The stories of the suffering caused by these products were particularly gruelling – especially that of Mrs Brown, a woman who had been persuaded into dying her eyelashes by a beautician and ended up with her ‘laughing blue eyes’ being ‘blinded forever.’
Koremlu’s panel exposed Kora B Lublin, a beauty salon owner, who had begun manufacturing her hair removal cream after reading an article about how thallium acetate prevented the regrowth of hair. Ignoring the warning about the dangerous nature of the ingredient (which is a poison) Lublin had her assistants make up jars of product by hand with no controls in place to even achieve a standard dose.
When users began to fall ill with thallium poisoning it was at an inconsistent rate as some batches of the cream were more dangerous than others. Hospitals throughout the US began seeing patients presenting with symptoms including paralysation of lower limbs, nausea, blindness and loosening of their hair on other parts of the body that hadn’t been treated.
It were these types of products that the FDA were powerless to stop and deForest Lamb in particular felt the injustice of a law with so many loopholes and the frustration of working for a toothless regulatory organisation. By drawing attention to specific products at such a prominent event as a World’s Fair, deForest Lamb’s intention was to expose the companies that made them and, ultimately to change the laws surrounding their manufacture and sale.
After the exposition finally finished on 12 November 1933 the exhibition was packed up and returned to Washington D.C where it went on display at the Department of Agriculture. Again deForest Lamb made sure that the spotlight remained on the horrors they were exposing and there was another flurry of publicity when the First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt visited it. Time magazine reported on her reaction when presented with photographs of the women blinded by Lash-Lure: ‘I cannot bear to look at them.’
A few years later deForest Lamb went on a leave of absence from the FDA and turned the exhibition into a book, The American Chamber of Horrors. Whilst this used all the material from the exhibit as well as other sources from the FDA’s archives she stated that she wanted to write the book as a private citizen rather than an employee as it would make the argument more powerful.
Not only did she make the case for the strengthening of a law that left Government officials with ‘no real power’ to prevent tragedies caused by products currently on the market but she dedicated the book to the other organisations that were fighting for change. In effect she was advocating for a new type of consumerism – one where users were not just passive victims and officials were given the power of real regulation.
It took a few more years but deForest Lamb’s advocacy and awareness raising helped to ensure the passing of the Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act (FDCA) of 1938. And whilst this wasn’t by any means perfect it was the first time that cosmetics had been regulated at a federal level and gave much more protection to consumers.
Under this law Lash-Lure was taken off the market as well as action taken against other, non toxic but misleading products. For example the FDA ordered Elizabeth Arden to change the name of their ‘Skin Food’ to ‘Skin Cream’ because the ingredients were not nutrients and the company had been advertising that they would ‘furnish nourishment to the skin.’
There was, however, no need to take Koremlu off the market – consumer action had already done that when users started to sue Cora Lublin. By the time she removed Koremlu from sale in 1932 she been sued for $2.5 million and closed her beauty salon shortly after.
Ruth deForest Lamb left the FDA in 1942 and died in 1978.
Connect with Lucy Santos
Lucy has appeared as a contributor on TV and radio, and her historical research has been featured by History Today, BBC History Revealed, Jezebel, LitHub, New York Post, Vogue, and on the BBC2 documentary, Makeup: A Glamorous History. Her most recent project is as Creative Consultant for the documentary Obsessed With Light a film that tells the story of the performance artist Loïe Fuller.
Lucy’s debut book was Half Lives: The Unlikely History of Radium (Icon: 2020, Pegasus: 2021). Half Lives was shortlisted for the BSHS Hughes Prize in 2021. Her next book, which is a history of the element uranium, will be published in 2024.
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Tracing uranium's past—and how it intersects with our understanding of other radioactive elements—Chain Reactions aims to enlighten readers and refresh our attitudes about the atomic world.
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