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2001/7/2 Milk bottle cap (wad), 'Devonshire Dairy', red and blue writing, cardboard, Devonshire Dairy, Hepburn Springs, Victoria, Australia, 1930-1960. Click to enlarge.
  • Image 1 of 2, 2001/7/2 Milk bottle cap (wad), 'Devonshire Dairy', red and blue writing, cardboard, Devonshire Dairy, Hepburn Springs, Victoria, Australia, 1930-1960. Click to enlarge
  • Image 2 of 2, 2001/7/2 Milk bottle cap (wad), 'Devonshire Dairy', red and blue writing, cardboard, Devonshire Dairy, Hepburn Springs, Victoria, Australia, 1930-1960. Click to enlarge

Milk bottle cap

Made
This milk bottle cap is a good example of the efforts undertaken in the 1930s and 40s to control the dangers of milk-borne illness, especially tuberculosis.

Milk has been promoted as a health food since the beginning of the twentieth century, but until government legislation made pasteurisation compulsory in the late 1940s and early 1950s, milk could also carry disease. Potentially milk-borne illnesses included diphtheria, scarlet fever, brucellus abortus, polio and tuberculosis.

Summary

Object No.

2001/7/2

Object Statement

Milk bottle cap (wad), 'Devonshire Dairy', red and blue writing, cardboard, Devonshire Dairy, Hepburn Springs, Victoria, Australia, 1930-1960

Physical Description

The cap is a disc made of cardboard, printed with the words 'DEVONSHIRE DAIRY / HEPBURN SPRINGS / PHONE 223' in blue, and 'PURE MILK / T.B. TESTED COWS' in red.

Marks

No marks

Short URL

https://ma.as/10416

Production

Made

Notes

Made for the Devonshire Dairy, Hepburn Springs, Victoria, Australia. This wad probably dates to the period between 1930, when TB testing of cows was introduced in Victoria, and the 1950s, when pasteurisation of milk became compulsory.

History

Notes

Milk bottle caps or 'wads' were pushed into the mouth of a glass milk bottle to stop flies and dirt getting into the milk inside. The cap also helped identify the dairy that supplied the milk in the bottle.
This wad was used to identify the source of milk in glass milk bottles as the Devonshire Dairy of Hepburn Springs in Victoria. The Devonshire Dairy was a large operation located at Hepburn Springs, 114 km north-west of Melbourne and 48 km north-east of Ballarat.

Source

Credit Line

Gift of Sandra McEwen, 2001

Acquisition Date

24 January 2001

Cite this Object

Harvard

Milk bottle cap 2023, Museum of Applied Arts & Sciences, accessed 1 June 2023, <https://ma.as/10416>

Wikipedia

{{cite web |url=https://ma.as/10416 |title=Milk bottle cap |author=Museum of Applied Arts & Sciences |access-date=1 June 2023 |publisher=Museum of Applied Arts & Sciences, Australia}}

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