Sarah Rachel Russell
Popular among the women of Victorian London's social elite, Russell was especially renowned for her "Magnetic Rock Dew" tonic, allegedly sourced from the Sahara desert.
The hyper fixation and desire of selling goods and services to the public would bleed into her adulthood, however, would consist of disingenuous motives behind her marketing demographic and advertising strategies.
Being neck deep in an industry where you are a provider of personal goods and services that could benefit a potential customer’s internal, self-perceiving conflict was a perfect front to make an increased, skyrocketing profit.
The only way women and men could adhere to conventional beauty standard was to be of nobility status and from pinching one’s cheeks and biting lips to enhance the blood flow to those certain areas of the face, ultimately achieving that flushed, youthful look.
Otherwise known as “enameling of the face”, this cosmetic practice would be used to whiten one’s skin color and came to be due to the high demand of confining to the predominant English beauty standard of being fair-skinned, which resembled a symbol nobility and wealth.
By any means to be considered attractive in the eyes of those living in nineteenth-century Britain, desperate consumers would flood through Madame Russell’s salon’s doors despite their skepticism.
Madame Rachel was exposed for consistently blackmailing female consumers that were not able to pay in-full their first trip shopping, having her goods and offered services being deemed as fake, distributing abortion-inducing medications, and potentially running a brothel right above her salon.
Being considered "prey" among Rachel's predator-like traits meant that she fell victim to the conartist's ploys to steal money from her with fake, hallow promises of beauty and having a youthful presence.
Using careless methods to get what she desired, Sarah Rachel Russell would do anything for the sake of making profit which also meant harming her customers psychologically and mentally.
During the court hearings, she was losing respect as a person because of how the jury felt about her role as a consumer and her moral standpoint of spending her late husband's money.
The effects of Russell’s trial had sparked criticisms from everyday buyers that her manipulative advertising had been mishandled for a decent amount of time, which caused a sense of anxiety to purchase from other sellers.
The multiple series of trials proved that there were not proper laws set in place to protect British consumers from the false, harmful advertising and products marketed for them.
Her daughter Helene Crossmond-Turner was an operatic soprano who overcame the scandal associated with "Madame Rachel" and sang with success in England, America, and Italy, notably in the role of Aida in Verdi's opera of the same name.
On April 22, 1888, following an argument with the producer, Augustus Harris, over a contract to appear at Covent Garden, in which she tore up the agreement and was replaced by alternative singers, she shot herself in the back of a cab at Piccadilly Circus, later dying at nearby St. George's Hospital.
