This rather fine pale green
glass bottle has the words THE PROPERTY OF O.T. Ltd LONDON on it with an image
of chillies – the firm’s registered trade mark. Minutes of research on the Internet and we
have come up with a reference to one John Dixon of Prahran (that’s in Australia
for those of you too lazy to look it up for yourselves) who made famous bottled
drinks – free from lead (from water pipes) and bugs (from sewage) and so on… So
why this bottle has ‘London’ on it when Australia would be more likely is a
conundrum we are too bored to explore…Did Dixon, dizzy from success in London set
up down under in 1898 or vice versa…. ?
If you can answer this succinctly kindly let us know and … guess what…
you might even get your prose on Cybergrot.com…. Fame at last… or what?
We have filched the following
text which gives some sort of clue as to the original contents of this bottle….
And all we can do is speculate that the reason we can no longer purchase this
elixir is that tastes change, and that a beverage that combines chillies and – say - milk
quickly went out of fashion.
"Hot Chilli Punch", manufactured from chillies and
fruit juices; that was the description of O.T., a winter and summer time drink,
beverage with health benefits that could be blended with many mixes, whisky,
bandy, beer, aerated waters and milk. The recipe for O.T. Punch came from one
of the Marajahs of India. First introduced in 1905, within two years of
manufacture there were very few hotels in the country that did not sell O.T.
Bottle perfect but dirty.…Date: after (but not long
after) 1907 when the trade mark was registered. Height – bottle height – we can’t
find our tape measure.
