Error or counterfeit?

By Kirsti Scott

Left: “Lea & Perrrins” stopper (Manny Paraskevas). Right: Lea & Perrins stopper (Kirsti Scott).

When Manny Paraskevas picked up a beautiful sea foam green stopper on the beach in Western Australia, he was thrilled with his find. He took it home and cleaned it off, and then realized there was something off. His Lea & Perrins sauce bottle stopper had a spelling mistake. “Instead of two Rs in Lea & Perrins, this glass stopper has three Rs,” said Manny. Manny reached out to Lea & Perrins to find the origin of his stopper but got no response.

Left to right: Lea & Perrins Sauce Trade Card (Boston Public Library). Lea & Perrins Ad, Woman’s Home Companion, August 1900 (Vintage Dish/Flickr). Antique bottle (Aukland Museum).

If you don’t know, Lea & Perrins Worcestershire Sauce is one of the most ubiquitous sauces in the world. First sold in the 1830s, the global market for Worcestershire sauce was almost a billion dollars in 2022. Lea & Perrins convinced British ocean liners to offer the sauce to passengers to season their meals. The company also advertised their sauce in papers and magazines around the world. You probably have a bottle of this savory sauce in your pantry, or you grew up in a home with one, well-worn and maybe stained with drips of its dark and flavorful contents. The bottles originally came with a glass stopper and cork seal embossed with the name Lea & Perrins on the top.

Learn more about glass stopper history›

Manny was stumped, and reached out to Beachcombing to see if we could help. We passed along photos to the experts at the Historic Glass Bottle Identification & Information Website (sha.org/bottle) to see if they could help. Bill Lindsey, creator and author of the sha.org website and co-editor and co-author of the book Baffle Marks and Pontil Scars: A Reader on Historic Bottle Identification, couldn’t identify the stopper either. “Never seen one with 3 Rs and I’ve seen a lot of them. Cool!” said Bill. “It is a mold engraver’s error that Lea & Perrins probably figured didn’t matter much…assuming that they actually caught the error.”

Bill passed the photos to the SHA Bottle Research Group to see if they could help. Carol Serr agreed that it was likely a manufacturing error. “Oops. That sure was a goof on the part of the mold maker (engraver),” Carol said. “I wonder if these stoppers were only used on bottles imported to Australia?”

Left: 1874 article in The Age (Newspapers.com). Right: 1880 Lea & Perrins ad (Marcus Harrison/Alamy Stock Photo).

Apparently, there was fierce competition in the Worcestershire Sauce market, with other companies coming up with their own proprietary recipes and some even creating imitations of the original. Researcher Bob Brown found a piece (bottom left) in The Age—a daily tabloid newspaper in Melbourne, Australia, that has been published since 1854—from Wednesday, November 25, 1874, which warned of fraud in the Worcestershire Sauce market. The article warned, “Some of the foreign markets have been supplied with a spurious Worcestershire Sauce, upon the wrapper and labels of which the names of ‘Lea and Perrrins’ have been forged.” Bob said, “Notice they spelled ‘Perrrins’ with three Rs in the mid-section of this 1874 article.” Lea & Perrins ads in the 19th and 20th centuries asked that buyers look for the Lea & Perrins signature on the bottles.

“Lea & Perrrins” stopper (Manny Paraskevas).

So, the question remains whether the stopper with the three Rs is the result of an error in the mold maker or an example of one of the counterfeit bottles of Worcestershire Sauce. If you have any information or if you have seen a stopper of your own with the extra letters, let us know!

This article appeared in Beachcombing Magazine Volume 46 the January/February 2025 issue.