It is hard to find much information about this set, all I know is that it is part of a group of sets that are all inscribed with series letters.
It is described in our original World Tobacco Issues Index as :
E SERIES OF PHOTOS - POLO PICTURES. Sm. 68 x 39-40. Sepia. Unnd. (25) See H.296 ... M164-9
And this text, though not the code, remains the same in our updated version. Now the Handbook code, H296, is actually incorrect, it ought to read H.294. The listing there is rather too long to type because it lists all the card titles - so I have scanned it.
What I have found out is quite a bit about some of the players.
Walter Selby Buckmaster, the subject of cards 2-5, was born on the 16th of October 1872, and he was British. He was also on two Olympic Polo teams, the first one in 1900, where he was on the BLO team, and won a silver medal, and the second one in 1908 with the Hurlingham club, and he won a second silver medal. The reference here to "Old Cantabs" refers to the fact that he was at Cambridge University. During the First World War he served in the French Red Cross as an ambulance driver, which might even have been a horse drawn ambulance.
Frederick Maitland Freake, card 7, was also in the Old Cantabs team. He was also at both the above Olympics, on the same squads. He seems to have moved about a bit in the First World War, but ended up in the Royal Field Artillery. Again, this was a horse oriented regiment.
John Hardress Lloyd, cards 11 and 12, was Anglo-Irish, and was born on the 14th of August 1874. He was on the Irish team (though this was counted as part of Great Britain) at the 1908 Olympics, winning a silver medal. He also served in the First World War, both in Europe and Gallipoli, winning the Distinguished Service Order - as well as being of an age to also take part in many other earlier wars including the Second Boer War, where he was with the 21st Lancers, another horse regiment. Strangely, though, by 1917 he was in the Tank Brigade, reaching the rank of Brigadier General.
As for our man, showing here, on cards 13, 14 and 15, that was Devereux Milburn, and he was born on September 19th, 1881, in Buffalo, New York. He was once considered to be the best polo player in the whole of America, and he won the celebrated Westchester Cup an amazing six times. His father was a lawyer, which kind of explains how our man had the money to play polo and afford the best ponies, and to go to Oxford University, where he was also a champion swimmer. During the First World War, he was a Major in the Field Artillery, and afterwards he and his brother became lawyers with the family firm. He also got married and had four children. However he died, aged just sixty, from a heart attack, whilst playing golf. Strangely this was at the Meadow Brook Polo Club, on Long Island