In the Image of Lillian Russell.
Lillian Russell added sugar to everything – even milk.
Condensed milk was invented by Gail Borden in 1853. After one bad invention followed by another, he finally hit on the idea of food concentrates as an economical way to safeguard the food supply. He once said he conceived the notion by observing his wife adding sugar to her milk to keep her full-figured voluptuousness, a sign of beauty and wealth at the time. Lillian Russell had the full-figure look women tried to emulate. Before, milk was shipped in unsanitary oak barrels, and its spoiled quickly. Although he didn’t invent the tin can, his marketing skills in effect launched the canned food industry. Canning food diminished the possibility of food-storage spoilage, subsequent short supplies from the whims of natural elements, and contamination by vermin. He died in Borden, Texas, of gastrointestinal flu (possibly from drinking from a dented container) in 1874 and had his body packed in a tin can of a railroad car to be buried in Woodland Cemetery in New York.
