Card of the Day - 2021-10-19

Stephen Mitchell was actually founded in 1723, in a small cottage in Linlithgow, moving to Glasgow in 1825. They were not just a maker of tobacco, they also sold snuff, tea, sugar, black pepper, cheese and soap. And their factory was taken over for "war work" during the Second World War.

These cards are most attractive, but are unnumbered, the cards were first listed in the London Cigarette Card Company Handbook of 1950, under H.275, a number code they retain in our own World Tobacco Issues Index to this day. However in the 1950 book there is the additional information that the back was illustrated in Cartophilic World, page 679. This page turns out to be in Volume 6, No.69, issued for November 1948, and the article was written by Eric Gurd.

In the 1950 L.C.C.C. Catalogue the cards are listed for sale at 8/6 to 25/- per card, or sets were available at £30.