It’s July, the weather has been hot and steamy, so this seems like a fine time to talk about fur coats.

Actually, almost 100 years ago you would find newspaper ads for fur sales in the middle of the summer.

Murphy’s was a well-known name in Lewiston for high quality fur coats and other products. The business was located on Ash Street for many years, and there also was a Lisbon Street retail store “at the sign of the hat.” Murphy’s was the place to go for purchases, repairs and seasonal storage of furs.

Nearly a full page of the Lewiston Journal on Aug. 2, 1916, featured a promotional article and a summer sale ad. Murphy’s was much more than a store. It employed a highly skilled staff. “Raw fur” was purchased from trappers and the workers turned the skins into luxurious “coats, scarves, wraps and coatees.”

The Murphy’s ad in 1916 said the “the men who design and cut our fur garments can not be excelled in the world. New ideas in the fitting and the finish of the garments put the fur goods made in our factory in a class by themselves.”

The ad trumpeted the savings to be had in “furs direct from the trapper to the wearer.”

Hudson seal coats were on sale in August for $275 . . . skunk trimmed for $375. Canadian lynx scarves went for $115. There were summer prices on taupe, black and natural American lynx and Maine fox products, too.

Apparently, it was not uncommon for women of that time to show off their furs even during the summer months. The ad said, “By the seashore or in the mountains this summer there are many occasions when there is a decided chill in the air that you will be glad to have light furs to wear.”

The accompanying article said, “nearly every country on the face of the globe is represented in the assortment of furs” at the Lewiston store. The furs included “squirrels from Siberia, Australian possums, Persian lambs, nutrias from South America, minks and kolinskys (a kind of weasel) from Japan and, most important of all, skins from the little animals that roam the woods of eastern Maine and Canada.”

T.J. Murphy founded the business in 1873. He developed a national reputation for quality.

The article said, “It was not long after Mr. Murphy started in business that the boys back in the woods came to realize that the little animals that roamed over the farms and through the woods were worth big money. Beavers, minks, otters, fishers, fox and lynx are among the finest skins caught in the Maine woods.”

The article concluded, “With the reputation that this house has for square dealing, with the demand for the fine eastern goods ever on the increase, who knows but that in years to come little Lewiston, Maine, will be on the map as one of the big fur centers of the world.”

Of course, that was not to be. Times change, and the popular products of bygone times go out of fashion or they go out of favor for a number of reasons. Today, furs are in that category in which sensitivities about trapping for furs have altered attitudes about fur as fashion.

Maybe T.J Murphy saw the handwriting on the wall as early as six months before the August sale in 1916. He wrote a letter signed “T.J. Murphy and son” to a national monthly publication called “Fur News.” It said, “We believe that the catch to date has been below normal and that neither trappers or dealers are holding furs worthy of mention but that the eastern section is practically cleaned out.”

 Dave Sargent is a freelance writer and a native of Auburn. He can be reached by e-mail at [email protected].