This tale begins with one man, Alfred Weaver Allen, who started making sweets as a sideline in a little shed behind his shop in Fitzroy in 1891.
He knew all about sweets because he was also working for MacRobertson`s, the local confectionery factory, and had previously worked at Dillon, Burrows and Co. who were the pioneers of Australian confectionery, though neither man was Australian, Mr. Dillon coming from Cornwall, and Mr. Burrows hailing from Jersey. Strangely Mr. MacRobertson, (which is a slighly incorrect name as he was called Macpherson Robertson), was not Australian either, he was born in Scotland.
In 1917 our man started amalgamating with other confectioners, and later on, in 1922, he opened his own company, A. W. Allen Ltd, though he did not build his own factory until 1924. Sadly he died the following year, in October 1925, aged just fifty five, and so never got to see many of what would become his best selling brands, including our Q.T. Fruit Drops, which was introduced in 1927.
As for our cricketer, Walter Reginald Hammond, he was born in Dover on the 19th of June, 1903, and he outlived this card by almost thirty years. His forte was as a batsman, one of England`s best, so much so that he captained England. As a child he travelled widely, due to his father`s military service - but this ended with the outbreak of the First World War, in which his father was killed. His widow moved down to the South Coast and sent young Walter to a local school but then it was agreed that he should go to a boarding school, and Cirencester was chosen. There he settled in well, and much enjoyed sports of all kinds - in fact it was his prowess on the cricket pitch there which led to him being taken on by Gloucestershire County Cricket Club.
This is one of several sets of cricketers issued by Allen, starting in 1924. They all appear in our original Australian & New Zealand Index, issued in 1983 as reference book RB.30. It is a scarce volume, so I was lucky to not only find one at all, but one being sold at a very reasonable rate, for it is long out of print.
Our set appears in that volume as :
Cricketers - 1938 (A). 67 x 39. Front and back per Fig, AL2-11. Action pictures or head and shoulder studies. Back in black, dotted lines top and base, no vertical lines. Multi backed, four advertisements, 36 different known. Nd. (36). "Boys Captain" issued Nos. 1/18, see Set. BO6-1 ... AL2-11
This is followed by a list, which will eventually be scanned in but does not identify the adverts, only by codes, which are somewhat baffling as to why they are the codes. But never mind, we will add a list below, which will give the code plus the advert text. The illustration they show, which will also appear at the same time as that list is our card, of W.R. Hammond, but in black and white, and with a different advertisement back, for Irish Moss Gum Jubes. However there was only one advertisement used on each card and so it ought to have been "Q-T" - the simplest way to explain this is that the supplier of this illustration most probably had two cards from the set and used a front of one with a back of another simply because it was the only possible way to take a picture of both the front and the back at the same time.
The full list of advertisements are :
- ( C ) - Allens Cure-Em-Quick. Stops Coughing Instantly. Sold in 3d Packets and 3d. Tubes.
- ( IS ) - At the first sign of a cold take - Allen`s Irish Moss Gum Jubes. You can feel them doing you good. Sold in 3d and 6d packets.
- ( IQ ) - Allen`s Q-T Fruit Drops. 1d a Packet - An Orchard in the Packet
- ( QS) - Allen`s Steam Rollers. 1d a packet. The Perfect Peppermint.