This card brings us to a sport that was a way of life to these people, ice fishing. They would cut a hole in the ice and sit there hoping to entice their dinner before they were frozen and their clothes wet through from being so close to the ice, and if they did not manage to catch anything they would go hungry.
Ice fishing today is big business, and none of the above is relevant. These days someone cuts a hole, usually by mechanical means, and then they drag what is often a small house over it with a snowmobile. These houses are heated, and watertight, and they have proper places to sit and fish, plus, often, toilets, ovens, beds, and access to the internet so that if the fishers get bored they can play computer games or watch television. Some of them even have a system where the fishing equipment is automated to ring an alarm if a fish throws itself on the hook.
Such a simple little card, or so it appears in our original British Trade Index part III. In actual fact the majority of the Hitchman`s sets are listed in part II, nine of them, but this one is not there, and that is because it was listed later.
Part III catalogues it as just "People & Places. 68 x 37. Nd. (25). See Db.348". Now a Db reference sends you to the rear of the book and it invariably means it was issued by another company as well.
That turns out to be Clover Dairies, but at the moment I am not sure of the date that version was issued, as it varies from 1970-1972. They started in Grimsby in the early 1920s, and had several branches in the north down as far as Lincolnshire, plus ones in Gloucestershire, Kent, and Wandsworth in London. They were bought out by Northern Dairies in the late 1970s.
Then I opened the modern version of the British Trade Index - and the fun began. That catalogued it in much the same way, but the handbook code at the end was HX.26. And that revealed that this set was very widely issued indeed - starting in 1964 and finishing with Clover and Hitchman`s Dairies. That means that during the week I will return to the earlier index and find more info on the others, which are :
- Askey`s (biscuits, 1971)
- Badshah Tea Co. (tea, 1970)
- Barratt & Co. (sweets, 1965)
- Browne Bros(tea, 1965)
- Clover Dairies Ltd. (milk, 1972)
- Gowers & Burgons (tea, 1970)
- Hitchman`s Dairies (milk, 1971)
- F. Lambert & Sons (tea, 1964)
- Ringtons Ltd. (tea, 1964)
- Wilcocks & Wilcocks Ltd. (tea, 1966)
That gives us lots of scope for future cards, all of which will be linked in.