Harrods, the department store on Brompton Road in Knightsbridge, London, England, once advertised that it could provide anything from an elephant to a pin. Originally called Omnia Omnibus Ubique, this motto means All Things for All People, Everywhere. It was the “Supply Centre for The Empire.”
The shop issued a catalog of 1,525 pages titled ‘Harrods of Everything’ in 1912. It had over 15,000 illustrations, with many pins but no elephants, at least none on the ground. There were also rifles with high-velocity cordite ammunition, adapted to kill anything from elephants to rhinos to hippos. You could even order cough syrup that contained cocaine, as well as dozens of throat pastilles in dozens of flavors. An automobile van delivered goods to homes via telephone ordering and cutting-edge logistics.
Eric Hutton scanned the entire catalog. He writes:
Putting Harrods for Everything through Distributed Proofreaders was a mammoth and long-running task, which started sometime in early 2007 with me scanning the original to produce a text that other DP volunteers could work on. While the books we work on sometimes have a few pages of advertisements, this project was ALL advertisements. Pages were split into three to five parts to make proofreading and checking easier…
The catalog is a fantastic record of how life was like in 1912, from the declaration on the inside cover about Harrods being synonymous with excellence to the “essential” items such as saddlery that were available. Take a look at some of the most unique, bizarre, and arcane things that were available
