This card gave us a market, though it is the rather sad Cattle Market; so this card may be changed when I can find someone with card 9 of the general Market Place. Now one of the things that collectors want to do on holiday is to go round the local shops and markets, but there is nothing to stop you either having a day trip when the weather gets warmer, either by car or by train. There are many websites which list markets and fairs, and you may well find one, near you, that you never knew existed.
Now the story of Adcock and Son seems to begin with Edward Joseph Newbegin, the father of a Norwich tobacco manufacturer, and, the son who inherited that business. However on the son`s retirement, he allowed a man called Daniel Adcock to take it over.
How this Daniel Adcock came to be in Norwich, when his father was a New York cigar manufacturer is an odd tale. Oddest of all is that Daniel Adcock had actually been born in Norwich, in November 1805, and his first adventure had involved him being held prisoner by the Spanish. The details of this are sketchy, to say the least, and most of the tale was almost certainly embroidered by Daniel Adcock. But it appears that his family had left Norwich in 1807 to emigrate to America, when he was barely two years old, and somewhere along the way they had been captured by the Spanish. Then they continued their journey and eventually arrived in New York. They were there for forty years and then returned to England, at first London, and then coming back to Norfolk, apparently on request from Edward Newbegin.
Now the tale gets a bit confused as some stories say that there was too much work for one man at Newbegins, and so he called in a partner, Samuel Denham. Others say that the Newbegin connection soon became boring and he put Samuel Denham in a factory to see if the two could make it on their own, or perhaps even as rivals to Newbegin. This latter idea is supported by the fact that Daniel Adcock had kept in touch with his contacts from New York, and started to call them in, eventually importing American and Cuban tobacco to make cigars, which they sold branded as Adcock`s "Sure Shot" Cigars. To local Norwich smokers, that name must have been pretty suggestive of a good time in the Wild West, and they were amazingly popular, so much so that Adcock became the largest tobacco name in the whole of Norwich. And also that Daniel Adcock started to use "Sure Shot" as a nickname.
When Samuel Denham died, in 1885, the business became Adcock and Son. The son was Ernest Daniel Adcock, born in 1856, when his father was fifty years old - and he was the eldest son too! He was not that interested in tobacco, his first pleasure was photography, and he had even patented a device to enable almost any photographer to be able to turn their photo into a vignetted work of art. He also had a great interest in painting, and was a talented artist, both in oils and watercolours, though he much preferred the latter, and he was a member of several clubs and societies, including the Ipswich Fine Art Circle.
In 1894 Daniel Adcock died, and the entire business became Ernest Daniel`s. He lived until 1936, and then his youngest son, Ernest Noel, took over.
In our original World Tobacco Issues Index, all the header tells us is : "Founded 1868. Cards Issued 1928-29.Trading 1956"
This is also their only set, and it is listed as :
ANCIENT NORWICH. Sm. 68 x 38. Sepia on light yellow. Nd. (12) ... A10-1
That text is identical in our updated volume, save a new card code of A150-050
Neither of these mention something quite important, and that is that the set is usually sold as a part set, of just eleven cards, missing card number 6, of Mousehold Heath, showing a windmill silhouetted against the sky. This missing card is not as a result of modern profiteering, though, for way back in 1955 it was already listed in the London Cigarette Card Company catalogue as :
ADCOCK & SON, Norwich
odds sets
12 Ancient Norwich (1928-29) ... - 70/-
11/12 Ancient Norwich (No.6 missing) 1/- 12/6
However this does mean that at this time there were enough complete sets to be able to offer them for sale on the open market.