Newsletter - 2022-06-25

Now we are getting to the point of repetition, or rather of my trying to avoid it, hence the sudden idea of the index and gallery. Which we will be doing a bit more on over the weekend

Another thought is that maybe it is time to change to something else, one idea is Counties of the United Kingdom, using the first three cards as a guessing game, and the rest of the week either highlighting any branches or clubs in that area, or looking for unusual references and pictures. There are 110 Counties, so tons of scope, but some may be rather hard to find seven cards for even if we do go off on a considerable tangent.

Any other ideas for changing into the next phase will be gratefully received. Over to you…..

This week's Cards of the Day...

... have been recording seafarers week, so plenty of scope there! We have also found a couple of sea related scarcities, on which note, if we are going to have a gallery added to this site, we welcome, or more correctly encourage, your scans of your really rare cards, front and back. We will do the job of finding a way to fit them in to our system and talk about them as either the Card of the Day or in the Weekend Newsletter. And you do not need to publish your name, for we are perfectly happy to say “A collector” and leave it at that - though anyone who does want to be linked with their wonders is welcome to ask that their name be added so that their card goes on remaining part of their collection until the end of time.

Also issued by Churchman (C504-270 : C82-20 : RB.10/61 ~ January 1909) and Franklyn Davey (F756-440 : F52-13 ~ also issued in January 1909). Both the Churchman and the Ogdens set follow the same numbering, but the Franklyn Davey cards are untitled, unnumbered, and also the most valuable, but it is probably simply that far fewer Franklyn Davey cigarettes were sold than Ogdens and Churchman ones.

All the cards were printed by Mardon, Son and Hall.

The Churchman version was definitely the easiest to acquire, and it was the first to be illustrated in Cigarette Card News, Volume 1, issue 6. I will get that scanned and added some time.

Only the Ogdens set had a fifty-first card, this being the Captain of the South African Team, who toured England in the autumn of 1906; this was almost certainly topical and by the time the other two sets were issued in 1909 was all forgotten. In the London Cigarette Card Catalogue of 1950 this Ogdens set is split into the main set, being retailed at between 1/9d and 5/- a card for odds or £12 a set, and the card fifty-one which was available at 10/-. In comparison the Churchman set was retailed at between 4/- and 12/- a card for odds or £30 a set, and the Franklyn Davey at between 4/6d and 15/- a card for odds or £37 a set.

Millwall, of course, was in London’s Docklands, and docks are the most important part of the seafarers journey, from which they sail out, and to which they hopefully return home. Here their cargo is unloaded and they can explore the feeling of the solid earth on their feet. At one time the Docklands was bustling and thriving, and full of comradeship, a word so fitting of its Naval origins; today this has all gone, it has been changed in use and character, and is housing for the most part, though the scars will always be there for the knowing to trace along its skin.

According to the Cartophilic Information Exchange the footballer shown is General William Stevenson. He was born on New Years Day in 1875, in Padiham, Lancashire and died on New Years Eve 1961. You can read more about him on the Play Up Liverpool website

He also appears on Cohen Weenen “Football Captains 1907-1908” (H.94 ~1908) 58
Gallaher “Association Football Club Colours” (1910) 36/100 – playing for Millwall
Ardath “Famous Footballers” (October 1934) 16/50 – playing for Motherwell

Here we have a single card that was inserted into packets as an advertisement. Our card was actually illustrated in the original John Player reference book RB.17, issued in 1950, so we will add that when we get to a scanner!

It is a set of one, but it is also available in a larger size, which would have been in the larger packets, so I guess type collectors can decide for themselves if they call it a set of one or a set of two. I don’t have the larger size, if anyone does it might be fun to add it and allow your fellow collectors to visually compare the two.

In the London Cigarette Card Catalogue of 1950 both were available, and they retailed at 1/6d for the standard size and 5/- for the large.

If you look closely at the hat band it reads H.M.S. Invincible, which is a change from the original Player’s Sailor, for his hat band said H.M.S. Hero, though in fact if you look really closely the life belted head on the reverse of this card still says H.M.S. Hero. Wikipedia/Hero tells of eight ships called H.M.S. Hero but none of them were sailing at the time of this card’s issue. However there was no H.M.S. Invincible in 1929 either, so if anyone knows what is going on, please pass us the info.

Even curiouser there is a set of John Player playing cards issued around the same time which also has the same dual band situation, the sailor on the back of each card having H.M.S. Invincible on his hat band, and the head on the ace having H.M.S. Hero.

The lighthouse is truly the seafarers friend, not only a light to illuminate their path, but a beacon shining in the darkness, and a refuge if the calmness of the sea allows for rowing boats after all else is lost.

This entire set is devoted to these majestic structures but Old Cresset St. Agnes is rather a favourite, for it shows that even when we had no electricity we still found a way to make darkness into light. Mind you for some reason, although it deals with the earliest history of these structures it is card 35, over halfway through. The lighthouse mentioned as being the first (yes I have given up trying to get those letters in the right order!) was actually at Sigeum near Troy, and the “..old lighthouse..” which was one of the seven wonders of the world was of course The Pharos of Alexandria.

The Wills archives tell us is that this set was issued in July 1926 with Three Castles brand in New Zealand. It was also issued anonymously as a general overseas issue by British American Tobacco in the same month and year. In our original Wills Reference Book the two sets were included together, hence the A suffix, there being a B for the anonymous, but for the World Tobacco Issues Indexes they were split away as two separate sets, the anonymous was moved to the Z section. In 1956 this was coded as ZB6-43 and for the most up to date version it has become ZB07-460.

John Sinclair was based in Newcastle-on-Tyne, with premises in Bath Lane, and a factory called Barney`s Tobacco Works. No, I don’t know who Barney was – do you? I have found out that Barneys Tobacco was made for John Sinclair but Murrays took it over. It is no longer made though.

Anyway John Sinclair was founded in 1856, and claimed to be the first company to issue cigarettes in the North of England, under the brand name of “American Cocktail”; but surely cocktails only came along in the 1920s and 30s. The issuer Robert Sinclair, also of Newcastle-on-Tyne was actually a breakaway, their partnership being dissolved in 1885. this was one of the last sets they issued before they were acquired by Carreras in the 1930s. The set is a popular one and was reproduced in 1997.

It is quite unusual to have a card of a diver like this, but if you look hard you may find a few more. This one is especially interesting because it is stated to be “A Diver Time of the Great War”, and it is really hard to find any mention of divers during the conflict apart from just five, who you can discover at History.com - is this card really one of those men?

There is a set of fifty cards which was issued by Victoria Gallery, these are called “Deep Sea Diving” and it is really hard to find out anything about them, I cant even find a picture of a back, but they look very interesting.

If you look in the header box on his card you will see that these were “Passed for Publication by the Press Bureau 23.2.17”, a kind of censorship test to ensure that no information on the cards could be useful to the other side.

The set was not issued for export, and perhaps that is why, though it does include cards of other Allied Nations, the ANZACs for one, and it would have been good for them to be allowed to see their work, and sacrifice, was appreciated if only by being included in this set.

This card is about the Mercantile Marine, and the text seems to be an attempt to prove that whatever the U-Boats did, we could take it, for “…ship after ship is coming over the sea, bringing food and raw materials that the vast armies may be fed, and that her factories may be kept busy in their unceasing work of producing clothing, munitions, &c”.

In truth the Merchant Navy faced a deadly foe, and many sailors were lost, so much so that they had a special medal at the end of the First World War, called the Mercantile Marine War Medal, first awarded in 1919 for “one or more voyages” or “at least six months service”. It is estimated that during the actual War, (not including the aftermath, when mines were still bobbing about across the seaways) 3,000 vessels were lost, and over 18,000 men, all of whom were simply sailors, not military ones, and not even part of the Royal Navy. In fact many men were not known, because civilians employed on seafaring vessels did not even get on the register until War broke out, and the records that were so hastily made then were all lost.

By the way, in case you were wondering about this strange term “Mercantile Marine”, yes, it is the Merchant Navy, but it was not called so until 1928, and only then by a strange default, when the Prince of Wales, the future Edward VIII, was granted the title of Master of the Merchant Navy and Fishing Fleet.

This card shows something known to, and remembered fondly by all sailors, the boatswain`s pipe, the call of which gives orders, welcomes sailors aboard, and makes it known when higher ranks are arriving.

They are quite collectable now, and were often silver; however, just like cards, there are modern reproductions.

This cap tally is for HMS Rodney, sister ship of HMS Nelson, who entered service with the Royal Navy in 1925 or 1928, saw service in the Second World War in Norway, the Mediterranean, including the Normandy landings and the Atlantic.

Her general claim to fame was that she was present at the sinking of the Bismarck in 1941. But she was also featured on a series of 48 photographic cigarette cards called "The Navy" which was issued in 1937 by Pattrieouex, and on Gallaher`s coloured set "The Navy" Some of these cards are actually the same, look at just one "Spit and Polish", which is a close up on card 20 of the Gallaher coloured set and just the left hand man off card 43 of the Pattrieouex photographic set.

Despite these, she was scrapped in 1948. The reason given was that she had been overused and not maintained, and she was now in too poor a condition to refit and save. The suggestion of a dry dock and museum was apparently not suggested.

This young man is Boy, 1st Class, John Travers Cornwell, aged 16½, but looking much younger. He was a boy scout, and joined the Navy at the age of 15, without telling his family, his references coming from his headmaster and from a man for whom he was working as a delivery boy.

The card says he was “mortally wounded in Battle of Jutland”, this was on the 31st of May 1916, when his ship was attacked by several German Cruisers. At the time he was working on the deck with one of the guns, doing the job of making sure the gun sights were true and the range was accurate. He did this by turning tiny wheels when ordered to by the men in command, just one of the jobs that the “boys” with small fingers were so much better at. His gun received several direct hits and was just a gun, no armour surrounding it, so all the men were immediately downed. John Travers Cornwell was also wounded but propped himself up for fifteen minutes in the hope that a new crew arrived.

He died the next day, before his mother could reach the hospital.

And this is just one of the stories from these cards.

Considering the Victoria Cross was only awarded as a great honour, it is chastening to think that eight series of twenty five cards were able to be issued in 1915-1916 alone. two hundred souls whose bravery was such that it needed to be recorded with the V.C., and, like John Travers Cornwell, most of them were not alive to receive it.

Curiously, the first series of this set was also issued by B. and J.B. Machado, in Kingston, Jamaica (M075-140 : M14-2), which was a company allied to British American Tobacco. They only issued those first twenty five cards, in 1916, and it is not known why they did, or why they stopped.

There is a really well researched piece about Machado online at flickr as part of the National Library of Jamaica.

now we will close with the thought that this is not the end for we are going to crack on with that index and gallery and maybe by the end of the weekend there will be some major progress.

once that is there I can start adding in other information as I work (slowly) through the magazine library

Sleep well whilst I am working, and see you all next week