This is another railway related set that a lot of railway collectors do not know about, for the L.M.S. was the London, Midland and Scottish Railway, which at one time was the largest of the main rail providers in the United Kingdom, and was operational between 1923 and 1948.
The closest LMS station to the tramway was Stoney Hill, and that was opened in 1865. It only lasted until 1872 though. Then on the 14th of September 1931, Squires Gate was opened, and, in the late 1930s, that also seems to have operated camping facilities in decommissioned railway carriages. These lasted until the outbreak of the Second World War, but they also returned in the late 1950s and went on until they were not required in the 1970s, possibly due to the growth in overseas and package holidays.
Now this card was actually issued by Murray, Sons and Company Ltd., of Belfast, in Northern Ireland. They started in 1810, but took quite a while to decide to become a Limited Company. This may have been caused by the fact that they kind of teamed up with Gallaher Limited, who had moved to Belfast from Liverpool in 1867. Murrays specialised in pipe tobacco, mainly because they never seemed to get on with making cigarettes to the quality that other companies did. However their pipe tobacco was constantly praised, and won awards.
This card is branded for Mild and Mellow Honeydew, which was a straight Virginia, in other words not a blend of any other tobacco. Some of their other brands, especially the oldest ones, were, and these were called American Tobacco, like their two earliest dated brands, the "Murrays 1810 Belfast" and the "Murrays 1862 Whitehall". When the tobacco was simply a dual blend, one other with Virginia, it was either Perique - which is a very rare type of tobacco from Louisiana, known by the original Native Americans - or Latakia - which came from Syria at that time but due to political and military unrest now comes from Cyprus. You will actually see Latakia mentioned on the back of the Grapnel Mixture of Taddy & Co “Prominent Footballers” (1908-9 issue).
In 1953 Murrays was bought out by Carreras, but their ownership was brief, and they merged with Rothmans in 1958. For a short while the two names were used together, as Carreras Rothmans Limited, but then, in the early 1970s, the proof came that the merger had not been so friendly, and Carreras disappeared in favour of simply Rothmans International. And Rothmans International is now part of British American Tobacco.
These cards are very slightly wider than standard at 36 x 70 m/m
Now Ha.593 is a handbook reference and it is scanned here, for it lists all the cards in the set these, for some reason, being un-numbered -
