Manufactured Glass, brown bottle, 20th C

Historical information

This bottle may have held medicine used by a local early settler family. A local resident discovered it when digging his garden in McKinnon 2013.
James Hardie immigrated to Australia in 1888 from Linlithgow, Scotland, and created a business importing oils and animal hides. Andrew Reid, also from Linlithgow, came to join Hardie in Melbourne, and became a full partner in 1895. When Hardie retired in 1911, he sold his half of the business to Reid. James Hardie Industries Ltd first listed on the Australian Stock Exchange in 1951 and is an industrial building materials company headquartered in Ireland which specialises in fibre cement products. James Hardie manufactures and develops technologies, materials and processes for the production of building materials. For over 20 years, Hardie has also operated a research and development facility devoted solely to fibre-cement technology. The company was a key player in asbestos mining and manufacturing in Australia through most of the twentieth century. Working with products containing asbestos - including the building material known as "Fibro" - caused people to develop various pleural abnormalities such as asbestosis and malignant mesothelioma. In December 2001, the company shareholders unanimously voted to restructure and relocate the company in the Netherlands as a parent company. This was part of a strategy to separate the company from the stigma of its asbestos liabilities. February 2010, James Hardie moved its corporate domicile from The Netherlands to Ireland, In May 2012 the High Court of Australia found that seven former James Hardie non-executive directors misled the stock exchange over the asbestos victims compensation fund'

Physical description

A brown glass bottle with finger ring hold at neck that may have been used by a local home owner to hold medicine c1900

Inscriptions & markings

around base ' THIS BOTTLE ALWAYS REMAINS THE PROPERTY OF JAMES HARDIE PTY LTD SYDNEY '

on base ' IS 994 '

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