The Husband and the Whiskey Barrel: a Case of Agency
| Publication year | 2017 |
| Pages | 16 |
HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVES
By FRANK GIBBARD.
The 1892 meeting of the Colorado Pharmaceutical Association was a lively and collegial affair. The attendees took a trip to Elitch Gardens, where they participated in a baseball game, a foot race, a high-kick event, a “tug of war,” and a hop-skip-and-jump contest.[1] Prizes were awarded for these events, including the special prize won by a Fort Collins pharmacist—a La Tosca toothbrush case.[2] There was also comic singing. One attendee stumped for “free silver.” The pharmacists’ wives, a “group of elegant ladies,” graced the conference with their presence at the reception and ball.[3]
The proceedings were not entirely fun and games, however. Serious papers were delivered on pharmaceutical topics. The need for a Code of Ethics was discussed. Tings took a somber turn when the chairman of the Association’s committee on trade reported that the Denver business had lately become unsatisfactory and even demoralizing, because “the extreme healthfulness of the community has caused a falling of in the receipts from prescriptions.”[4]
The highlight of the three-day conference was the annual dinner banquet, a “stag a fair” held at the St. James Hotel.[5] At the end of the banquet, the attendees joined hands and sang “Auld Lang Syne,” full of bittersweet feelings brought on by the knowledge they would not meet again for another year.
Any sadness was partly dispelled by the performance of Denver druggist Felix A. Lyneman as Toastmaster at the banquet.[6] His fellow pharmacists clearly thought highly of Mr. Lyneman. He served as secretary of the Association from its founding in 1890 until 1894, the year he died.[7] One account of the 1892 meeting opined that he was “the right man in the right place” and “well known . . . to the druggists of Colorado and a better officer cannot be found anywhere.”[8]
Lyneman’s Pharmacy
Unfortunately for Mr. Lyneman, his wife held a less favorable view of him. E. Pauline Lyneman owned the pharmacy that he managed, Lyneman’s Pharmacy, located at 1336 19th Street in Denver. Although she permitted Mr. Lyneman to manage the store bearing their name, she in fact “had very little confidence in her husband’s business capacity, and disliked his methods.”[9] She wasn’t shy about expressing her opinion. The Colorado Court of Appeals later professed surprise at the bitterness with which she attacked Mr. Lyneman’s “honesty and integrity” on the witness stand “when we remember that her husband was dead when she testified.”[10]
Mrs. Lyneman didn’t just speak evilly under oath of her defunct husband. During his lifetime she took steps to monitor and control his operation of the business. To this end, she forbade him from “buy[ing] any goods East, because she could not keep track of the purchases . . . she wanted her goods bought in Denver, from two houses, which she named.”[11]
A Visit from a Pharmaceutical Rep
Whatever instructions she gave Mr. Lyneman to that effect, he wasn’t very good at following them. According to Mrs. Lyneman, one day in July 1893, she happened to visit her 19th Street pharmacy. There she found one John J. Smythe, a pharmaceutical representative from the Moftt-West Drug Co. of St. Louis. Mr. Smythe was trying to get Mr. Lyneman to place an order with Moftt-West.
Mrs. Lyneman told Mr. Smythe to keep out o f the store. She informed him “she knew just what goods were needed” and she wanted her husband to buy from two local suppliers so “she could keep herself advised of his movements.”[12]
Mr. Smythe remembered things differently.[13] In any event, Moftt-West presented evidence that between November 11, 1893 and June 12, 1894—notwithstanding any contrary instructions from Mrs. Lyneman—Lyneman’s Pharmacy purchased drugs, merchandise, and whiskey from Moftt-West and sold them in the regular course of business.
Mr. Lyneman died on June 19, 1894.[14] After his death, Mrs. Lyneman took over the store. On the premises she found a barrel of...
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