It's unlikely these days that any of us would trust our health to a chemist's shop known as 'Dirty Dick's' - but for more than 100 years, that's where many Newcastle folk would go to if they were suffering a medical ailment.
One item in the Evening Chronicle in 1895 advertising a product called Capko Tablets claimed the tablets could "cure toothache instantly", "cure cold in the teeth", and "cure neuralgia and abscesses". Decades ahead of the arrival of modern dentistry and antibiotics, it was of course wishful thinking, but for people with little money, living in age before the NHS existed, 'miracle cures' like this were regularly sought after to help alleviate illness, pain or discomfort.
One of the shops where you could buy Capko Tablets - alongside an A to Z of other health treatments - noted the Chronicle advert, was a chemist's shop at 105, Clayton Street, in Newcastle city centre, called J R Forster & Co. It operated under a few different owners from around 1840, finally closing in 1972. For generations of folk who flocked there for its remedies, it was simply known as 'Dirty Dick's' - the nickname deriving from the fact the original shop was never cleaned and was full of dust and cobwebs.
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Forster and Co was a unique Tyneside institution. You could walk in, be diagnosed, and have the medicine for your ailment made up on the spot. Many people swore by Dirty Dick's, preferring it to using a doctor, with some claiming the potions cured them of all ailments. The shop's shutters stayed up for more than 100 years (after an early break-in at the premises) and long queues would frequently stretch down street.
The earliest apothecary's shop at the site dated back to around 1840 - the time when Clayton Street was built. Of the shop's various owners down the years, the most notable was the chemist and druggist James Crozer - a man known for his eccentricity and frugality, who dined every day on "hot water and a pennyworth of rice" and slept on the floor in the back of the shop. He took over the place in 1860s. One newspaper account noted: "Mr Crozer was as careless of the shop as of himself. He never dusted it. The place was full of cobwebs. The rows of old bottles and jars thick with dust and lit by candles or oil lamps must have given the shop a true Dickensian air."
In 1888, Mr Crozer died and the premises was later taken over by Mr J R Forster, the name the shop is remembered by. The end for Dirty Dick's came in April 1972 when the Chronicle reported its last owner, Mr Alan Todd, had decided "with regret" that it would close. "Training a successor would have been long and arduous," it was noted. "Besides, the drugs and medicines used in the shop were costly and some were now hard to obtain."
And so, 50 years ago, a small, curious chapter in Newcastle history came to an end. Today, where Dirty Dick's once traded, you will find the Clayton News convenience store.
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