The Great Sequah in Gibraltar:         

             

           A single intriguing line in a Gibraltar Directory from 1891 stated baldly; 

          ‘16 Feb. 1891, Mr Sequah made his last appearance in Commercial Square.’

Had you attended that day, you might have been shocked, most certainly enthralled, as the event unfolded before you. Entering the square, you would have seen a gaudily painted horse-drawn wagon, complete with a small brass band of perhaps six of musicians and a big base drum. Sequah himself would be entertaining the crowd with stirring renditions of heroic poetry or famous monologues, whilst his assistants erected a canvas booth. Then he would extol the virtues of his ‘Apache Indian’ medications before inviting the sick and lame to step up and be healed. Sequah was an extravagant version of what our American cousins call a snake-oil salesman, pedalling his potions by putting on a show.

   

Sequah would appear in western dress, a broad brimmed hat, a fringed buckskin jacket, a beaded Indian waistcoat and high boots, broadcasting in a mildly American accent with theatrical gestures. His products, he said, were derived from the time he had spent with the plains Indians, who had shared with him the secrets of their arcane medical know-how. That theme was reinforced by the western scenes painted on his wagon and assistants dressed as cowboys, and unsurprisingly, the occasional ‘Red Indian’.

 He would invite lumbago or rheumatism sufferers into his booth to be massaged with Sequah Oil, thence to exit ‘completely cured’ to the delight of his audience. He also provided a dental service; strapping an electric lamp to his forehead and rapidly pulling infected teeth from compliant victims while his band drowned out their cries with martial music and the big bass drum. The pain was said to be immediately dispelled with the consumption of his Prairie Flower concoction… at only 2/6d a bottle. (That’s 12 ½ pence in modern money)

  

Sequah’s products included Sequah’s Indian Oil, an embrocation for external use, which was said to cure everything from rheumatism to gout, and a tonic medicine called Prairie Flower, that stopped indigestion, cleaned your liver, cured all blood diseases and relieved dysentery and internal pains.

 These were the days when patent medicines were rife, regulation poor and generally ineffective. Subsequent analysis determined that Sequah Indian Oil contained a mixture of fish oil (or possibly whale oil) turpentine and camphor, Sequah Prairie Flower being made up from a weak alkali, aloe extract and alcohol with capsicum… to give it some bite.

 Mr Sequah was, of course, not American but a Yorkshire man named William Henry Hartley; a sometime medical student at Edinburgh who abandoned his course and took to the road. He may have been inspired by Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show, then touring England, and led by the genuine Buffalo Bill Cody, employing actual native ‘Red Indians’ and generating enormous enthusiasm for all things wild west.

        

    

                                                  Buffalo Bill Cody & Company provided the model for Sequah’s costumes.

 

The Prairie Flower tonic rapidly became very popular throughout Britain and Ireland. People began to seek it out in chemists’ shops and buy by mail order. By 1890 its fame had spread to such an extent that Hartley needed additional Sequahs to service his market. His medicine show and his quack potions had made him a small fortune which he now turned into a large one by issuing shares. In no time at all, twenty three different travelling Sequah’s were ‘franchised’ and operating world wide.

Each operated in the same way, playing the same role and selling the same products. What in the eyes of most people were carefully prepared, almost magical remedies, were nothing more than a marketing campaign designed to part them from their cash; essentially it was a scam. One of these new recruits was William Francis Hannaway-Rowe who had begun his career as a herbalist, and calling himself the Great Sequah, may be the man who visited the Rock.  In January 1891, Sequahs arrived in Buenos Aires and Gibraltar. February and March saw half a dozen Sequahs arrive in Spain and this was the scene at Terrassa, near Barcelona, as Sequah set up for business.

 

                                                                        A square in Terrassa, near Barcelona.

                        

                  

                    

                        William Francis Hannaway-Rowe                                        Barcelona Advertisement

 

 

                                                                 Newspaper advertisement, Palma.

 

Because Sequah spoke only English, he employed a bowler-hatted translator to repeat his speeches word for word and he was accompanied by a physician, which the law in Spain demanded. Spain was ahead of the curve on that; from 1891 – 2 Britain and most European nations began to tighten up on patent medicine production and sales. However, before regulation fatally damaged his business, Sequah became bankrupt, through bad decisions and poor management. In an attempt to avoid his creditors, he was reported to have died in a shipwreck en-route to the USA. Like everything else about him, it was of course a fiction; Sequah lived until 1924 and apparently died in penury.

 

First published here, February 2025.   Paul Hodkinson.