Verdugo Views: ‘Cucumber Queen’ had a fight on her hands
A local woman who helped transform skin care from made-at-home into today’s multibillion-dollar business, had a personal life as unusual as her business life.
Fanny Briggs Carr, known for her cucumber-based products, was the focus of an exhibit at the Doctor’s House Museum last spring. It was curated by Joemy Wilson, who generously shared her research.
The “Cucumber Queen,” as she became known, married William Carr in 1892, started her cosmetic line four years later, and by 1900, had purchased property she called Viznaga.
A few years after Carr died, she married Maurice King. From reports compiled by Wilson, it appears their relationship was troubled from the beginning.
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Here’s what she told the court during divorce proceedings.
“I was running the Hotel Kenwood, and he was one of the guests. He came there with the introduction of old friends from the South, and I did everything in my power to make him at home. He told me of his troubles and I helped him out, “ she recalled.
“Maurice Adrian King didn’t have enough friends to act as pallbearers at his funeral until I paid his initiation fee into the Elks. I gave him the money which established his standing when he was applying for the Home Telephone franchise before the City Council. I boosted him into society.”
After their 1903 marriage, “he inveigled me into forming the FBC (Fanny Briggs Carr) Co. in which all of our property, 16 acres in Glendale and lots in Venice and Huntington Park, are held. In this, I find that I have not a single share. All of it belonging to M. Adrian King, who took it away from me,” she said
“It was my treatment of five to 15 patients a day that built up the business, not his name or work,” she said. “Without me, he would be where he was in 1900, when he arrived here from St. Louis.”
In her divorce suit, filed in September 1910, she cited extreme cruelty and that he had taken up with a young woman, Gertrude Young, in the company.
A few days later, King went to court to petition that Carr was incompetent. She refuted his petition.
Gertrude Young testified that Carr was of ‘’weak mind,’’ but changed her testimony the next day. Carr’s longtime retainer, V. Castillo, testified that King never helped Carr when she was sick.
King charged that he had to “take a room in a remote part of their home in order to be able to sleep at all,” and that she was jealous of an employee. “No need, although he had taken her out for breakfast.”
By May 1911, a divorce decree was pending, but the battle continued over the company and property. Carr and her retainer, Castillo, went to the ranch and a fight ensued that seems to have involved a gun, a fistfight, a rock and a piece of a picket fence.
The judge threw out that case, saying “it appeared to be a family row in which all members were trying to kill each other and that much of the testimony he could not understand or believe.”
After receiving an interlocutory decree in October 1912, Carr celebrated at her ranch with some 100 friends. After causing King’s arrest 11 times in three years, she had emerged victorious.
The Los Angeles Times headlined Carr’s “Three years of scrimmages!” and “One long, ecstatic jubilant shout of freedom!”
Although the property was still in dispute, she held the ranch with the consent of court. King moved to a little cottage two blocks east on Verdugo Street. The divorce was finalized March 1914.
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According to Joemy Wilson, the use of cucumbers in cosmetics, lotions and powders has a long history, especially products advertising that they bleached the skin or lightened the complexion. “Cleopatra was said to have used cuke juice on her skin,” she wrote.
Victorian women valued their pale skin, she added. When women became more active and outdoorsy, their skin darkened and the “natural” products needed boosting, so mercury was added to some cosmetics in the 1920s.
Carr was sued by the family of a client for mercury poisoning in 1927, charging she died of a fatal infection from bichloride of mercury in lotion she ordered from Carr. The defense said an agent sold samples only meant for pharmacists and that the client didn’t follow directions for use properly. But in 1928, the client’s estate won and received $1,000 from Carr’s company.
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KATHERINE YAMADA can be reached at katherineyamada@gmail.com. or by mail at Verdugo Views, c/o News-Press, 202 W. First St., Los Angeles, CA 90012. Please include your name, address and phone number.
