Reno of 120-year-old Ontario home unearths crumbling condom from a forbidden time

For at least seven decades, the original owner of athree-pack of Sheik condoms was successful in shielding their existence.

The condoms,not yet decriminalized in Canada,had been carefully hidden between the floor joists of abasement in the Old North neighbourhood of London, Ont., an area marked bycentury-old homes.

Slidbehind some well-rusted tools and tins of old nails, the condom pack remained out of sight until it was discovered last week as part of cleanup and renovation work in the basement.

Claire Mertens, a university student in her 20s, found the package while helping her parents clear the basement of the house they've owned since the late 1990s.That's when she came across the condoms, which, based on information on the American Museum of Natural History, were sold sometime between the 1930s and 1950s.

"I found an awl and a wrench, and saw something tucked at the back.I touched a lot of spider webs," said Mertens. "I got it out and thought it was a matchbox, like the kind you get at motels or as party favours. It said 'rubber prophylactics,' which I'd never heard of."

The packaging features an image of a silhouetted warrior, mounted on his steed in full charge with spear in hand. Inside the flapwas one condom still banded in cardboard. The cardboard band of a second condom was in the package, but the condom was missing in action. Condom No. 3was also absent.

Condom packaging curiosities

Mertens grew up in an era when condoms, commonly called prophylactics, are legal and easy to get.

She finds many curiosities in the condom packaging unearthed during the renovation.The packcost 50 cents, but inside the flap, the purchaser is reminded that next time,12 Sheiks could be boughtfor the price of nine.

The blurb on the back says the product is sold "for protection against disease." Pregnancy prevention is not mentioned. It also states the Sheiks can only be sold "in drug stores only."

The package says the product is distributed by the Julius Schmidcompany of Toronto.

The remaining condom also indicates how they were sold at the time. They weren't sealed in packaging, but simply bandedby cardboard, with the condom's edges open and exposed at either end.

"It reminds me of when you buy yarn, like they have just the paper to hold it together and you can see what's around it," said Mertens.

The changing roles of contraception

Rubber deteriorates over time and what remains in the pack Mertens found is a condom that's crumbling.

"We put it in a Ziplocbecause it was shedding little bits of rubber," she said."There's nothing air tight about this. There's no expiry date. It looks like a matchbox and it's about as protected from the air as a matchbox would be. I was shocked that that was how they were sold."

While the ancient condom is certainly a curiosity,Wendy Norman views it as a time capsule from a not-so-distant place in Canada's history, when birth control, including condoms, were almost impossible to acquire legally.

Norman teaches at the University of British Columbia andchairsfamily planning research for the Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC) andCanadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR).

She said it took two years of debate and 1969 legislation to decriminalizethe sale of any form of birth control.

"Before that, even a doctor or a nurse couldn't speak to a couple about contraceptives," she said. "And certainly the condom manufacturers were not allowed to describe the use of condoms as a way to prevent pregnancy. They were only allowed to sell condoms to be a protection against infection."

Norman said that before 1969, condoms wereonly available at pharmacies and generally couldonly be purchased by married adults.

"Any pharmacist would be well within their right at that time to reserve their condoms for married people," she said.

Mertens shared photos of her condom package find on a local Facebook group.

Many of her neighbours weighed in on where she should send the condom and its packaging for posterity. Some suggested a medical museum. She's not yet settled on a destination.

"Of all the weird things you could find in an old house, I don't think we expected to ever find an old condom package."