Newsletter - 2022-04-30

Today is a day for all A.A. Milne fans, for it is Eeyore's Birthday.  However it is not always the same date, because all that is known is that it was the last Saturday in April. I am not sure why I am such a fan of A.A. Milne, I even follow him on Twitter, but receive in return wistful thoughts and gentle verses that make me wonder why the whole world is not so. 

Eeyore was based on a stuffed toy donkey owned by Christopher Robin, who was given a grumpy air and made to think rather dismal thoughts; he likes hearing sad stories because they make him feel happier about his own life. His tail often falls off, and has to be not only tracked down but reattached. In the Disney cartoons this is done with a headed push-pin. However, he has a hidden talent, like all under-rated people, as he is best of all the characters at playing pooh-sticks, a gentle game where each player picks a small stick and drops it in the river as it flows beneath a bridge, with the winner being the owner of the stick which emerges first.  

Eeyore first appeared in 1926 in the book “Winnie The Pooh” and was converted to a Disney character in 1966, but it seems his first cartophilic appearance was in 1971, on a bubble gum card issued by Anglo Confectionery. This set was “Walt Disney Parade”, and Eeyore was card 35 of 78. Almost all his cards (thank you again to the trading card database) are related to the Disney version of him, but in 2016 a company called Atlas Brands of Australia issued a set of two hundred cards called “RSPCA Pets & Creatures Trading Cards” where apparently a different Eeyore appears as card 190. It may be simply a donkey called Eeyore, but if anyone can shed light on this, please do. 

Our card is again a Disney version, [trade : OS] Fher S.A. “Walt Disney Gallery” (1972) 36/? and it is a plain back card where eeeyore has a new name, Igore.

We featured Fher before, and Winnie the Pooh, so nip along to https://csgb.co.uk/index.php/cardoftheday/2022-01-21 and read more about them!

By the way, just in case you were wondering how Eeyore got his name, it is taken from the sound of its braying, a different spelling of the usual “Hee-Haw”.
 

Today make a note to get up early and listen as the dawn arises, and hear a natural phenomenon which takes place every day, but has its own special day today, called “Dawn Chorus Day”.

This is a super way to start your day, when all the birds in your area tune up and slowly join in with chirping and song.

Aviary birds also join in, by the way.

 Birds have always done this, it marks their territory, and helps them to attract a mate, the gentlest, most lyrical, or most raucous song being the key to a lonely female`s heart, depending on what they are into, I guess.

However celebrating the day started in Birmingham with just a few people, and has grown to a worldwide event, with keen bird watchers trying to identify every one, and other people just listening to the tune as a whole. 

The tune up for the grand concert starts about an hour before the sun rises, and it usually consists of robins, blackbirds, and thrushes. These are up earliest because they are the ones who eat worms – which just proves that the old fable was right, the early bird does indeed catch the worm.  Hopefully not whilst I am watching though. 

Our card is from G075-340 Gallaher “British Birds” by George Rankin, a series of a hundred cards, and this is card 71, the song thrush. Its speckled stomach makes this bird instantly recognisable. The text does not relate to its song but to its nest, which has a lining of dried mud, apart from in very dry seasons. Now the question is how does the bird know this, for it must be in place before the nesting season starts, and it cannot be removed during it? So does some sixth sense tell the bird not to bother? 

Another question is why our cards were issued in two printings, one saying “By Rankin”, and one saying “By George Rankin”.  By the way they can also be found as a series of twenty-five cards by Carroll, simply titled “Birds” These  twenty-five were selected from the set of a hundred and so I don’t know if the song thrush was amongst them. And the set was never issued due to The Second World War. And twelve of our cards exist in black and white with a plain back, unnumbered, which, though anonymous, was issued by Teasdale Confectionery. Our card is not amongst the ones seen so far, but only twelve cards are known to exist. 

Today, in 1902, William Brian de Lacy Aherne was born. As Brian Aherne, he appeared in all branches of entertainment.

John Player`s “Film Stars” third series (1938) 1/50 tells us quite a lot about him, including things that do not appear elsewhere.

He was “of Irish ancestry”, that his stage debut was “at the age of four in a Christmas pantomime, “Puss in Boots”, and that he went to “Italia Conti`s School”, still a famous stage school.  He was on the London stage at the age of 21; his first film was the 1924 “The Eleventh Commandment” with Fay Compton and Stewart Rome. The Trading Card Database gives his first card appearance as R & J Hill Who's Who of British Film (1927) 18/50 – this possibly features “A Woman Redeemed”, released in that year, which was his fifth film. His first Broadway play was “The Barretts of Wimpole Street” in 1931. Then the Player card tells us that “in 1933 he made his Hollywood films debut opposite Marlene Dietrich in “Song of Songs”. 

In 1934 he appeared in “What Every Woman Knows”, and this is the film on our card, a dramatisation of the story by J. M. Barrie, who also wrote Peter Pan.

And he was nominated for an Academy Award in 1940, Best Supporting Actor for Juarez (1939)

Today is National Paranormal Day, and, oddly, World Press Freedom Day.  

The press and the paranormal usually make uneasy bedfellows, one so keen to conceal and the other so urgent to reveal, so it seems curious that they both share this day of celebration. Or was the intention to force the World Press to reveal the existence of National Paranormal Day?

Well someone has to, eventually, because though a lot of people still do deny the existence of alien visitors, it is hard to cover up a phenomenon which has been around since the dawn of time and appears in most civilisations.

This is very intriguingly covered in a set of twenty-five cards issued in 1965/66 with Space Man Bubble Gum Cigarettes by Barratt & Co. Ltd, called “Space Mysteries”, and among the facts in this set are sightings from Ancient Egypt, 13th Century Yorkshire, Native Americans, France in the Middle Ages and 19th century Scotland.  This one is a red globe suddenly appearing and shooting into the sky in Sussex. These early sightings are very intriguing, for why would they bother to report them, there were no newspapers, or social media, and doing so would not make the sighters famous.

Why not mark the day by trying to find out any unearthly goings on in your home county, simply by searching online for the county plus alien, ufo, unexplained, etc. I cannot believe you will not find at least one. And if you don’t let us know and I will have a look for you ! 

Last year we did May the Fourth (Be with You), or Star Wars Day, so today we have gone for a different crew of heroes, closer to home, who are called upon to battle a foe with tongues of flame, and are marking International Firefighters Day and Firefighters Memorial Day 

Our card is Godfrey Phillips  B.D.V. Cigarettes "First Aid series", which features the rescue manoeuvre known as the fireman`s lift, but look in the background and you will see a fireman climbing up a ladder to go into a fire and presumably rescue someone who cannot rescue themselves.

Also note that he is wearing one of those really grand vintage all brass helmets with the raised dragon headpieces – these were a design feature, as was the vent over the front to ensure the head did not boil. Traditionally these were known as Merryweather helmets, after the makers, Merryweather & Sons, who called themselves “Firemens Outfitters – London”, and they were standard issue from the Victorian era, changing little through the years, apart from the crossed axes badge on the front, which was later replaced by county initials.

You can see these helmets, in colour, on John Player “Fire Fighting Equipment” 35/50
and 42/50 at the New York Public Library
 

A bit of frivolity, or a way to get a serious point across? Today, and every May 5th, is National Cartoonists Day, and has been since 1990, when it was started by the National Cartoonists Society. 

A cartoon is technically either a funny tale, a rough, unfinished sketch, or a drawing illustrating the foibles of people in the public eye. I was going to talk about Louis Raemakers, but there is enough war in this world right now; what we really need is less of that, and more gentle peaceful humour, so we have gone for this card, which features two of my greatest passions, horses, and guitars, though I freely admit to being much better with a horse than with a guitar. But one day, who knows . . .

The card was also sent to me by The Card Scene, a printed magazine for and by collectors of all kinds of ephemera, which also tries to bring a spot of quiet reflection into these tough times, and they also have a super website. 

The card shows Henry, a hairless child, mute, and sometimes even mouthless, who was the creation of the American Carl Anderson, and immortalised on five sets, each of fifty large sized cards, by J Wix, plus on postcards, using selected images from the first and second series. Special albums were issued for the large sized cards, but only the first and second series cards were numbered, or given adhesive backs. The third, fourth and fifth are actually illustrated in our British Tobacco Issues handbook, as figures 625 I, II and III, but the whole set is on each page, so they are quite small.  

The American Tobacco Company also issued similar cards, using subjects from the first four sets, with Herbert Tareyton Cigarettes - and the link tells you all about those.

More recently a clothing company called Just Henry International Boys Wear asked J. Wix if they could use the images, and this was agreed. They then used the first twenty cards from the first series and made their own cards from them, though, curiously, the cards all say “A Series of 20 – 2nd Edition”. Was there a first edition, and nobody saved them? Do you have them? If so let us know….
 

Today is National Nurses Day.

Do we still hold these unsung heroes of the pandemic so close to our hearts?

I hope so, for they risked all to save us, even before they were told the full extent of the situation, or the real symptoms of what they fought. 

Our card shows the Nurse`s Hospital at Winburg, during the South African War. The card was issued by Faulkner, and it is part of the “South African War Series”, a calm card amongst all the war goings on, I like to think that someone had just received a letter that their loved one was in hospital and then was shown this card, it would have eased them, though the eventual outcome would probably not. It was still the case in 1901 that disease killed just as ruthlessly as any bullet.

Some of these nurses are recognisable on a photo, taken for the papers though it calls the hospital “Wynberg”. A bit more digging finds that Wynberg was a popular name, of several hospitals, a General Hospital, possibly in Pretoria, operating from 1899 until 1902 with almost eight hundred beds – and another in Johannesburg with just over five hundred beds – finally a Stationary Hospital, actually called Winburg, operating from just slightly earlier, and only having 150 beds, though these were often the earliest of all hospitals and it may have just grown into one of the other sites.