Postcard of the Day No. 97 - Trolley to the Shore, Norwalk

Another snapshot of long lost transit. This is what was known as an open car on a trip to the coast in the small town of Norwalk, Connecticut. Probably from around 1900. Well patronised - an informal gender segregation seems to be in operation with female passengers occupying the front two thirds of seats while the men are confined to the back. Hats are universally worn. The streetcar styling borrows from the architectural language of the municipal bandstand and the seaside pavilion. Despite some smudgey blemishes and variable print quality, there’s a lot of well defined detail to be seen. The uniformed motorman and his nattily dressed acolytes form a commanding trio at the helm. Behind them, the respectable ladies of the town follow on, their modesty protected by high necklines and low hemlines. Some make little effort to conceal their discomfort at having their likenesses mechanically recorded while others display the frozen expressions that come with long exposure to the camera lens. The Norwalk Street Railway was swallowed up in 1900 by a larger rival which in 1906 leased all operations to the mighty New Haven Railroad - a reminder that rapid turnover of ownership is not unique to our own times. Open sided streetcars, known as toast racks in Britain, were popular across the world and a selection are shown here - from Honolulu to Stockholm, from Malta to Cairo and from Rothesay to San Antonio. 

Uranium 1955

It’s not often that an opportunity like this comes along but readers of the Saturday Evening Post in 1955 were offered the chance to prospect for Uranium deposits and, if successful, establish their own extractive industry and become fabulously rich with the sort of wealth that enables you to assemble a collection of Renaissance altar pieces and set up your own charitable foundation in support of right wing causes. Sadly most purchasers of the El-Tronics Geiger or Scintillation Counter would have to be content with the promised fun and excitement to be enjoyed in the pursuit of elusive deposits of heavy metal. For the recreational Uranium hunter the best buy would be the Three Range Portable device at $99.95, bringing a sense of purpose to family outings and country rambles. A pocket-size version at only $21.95 was available to those with only a casual interest. At the top end the serious prospector could stagger into the great outdoors, equipped with the Master Scintillation device - just a nickel shy of $1000. There’s no way of knowing just how many readers were persuaded to purchase these devices but some of them must have survived - long enough perhaps to become collectors’ items for Cold War connoisseurs and turn up for valuation on PBS Antiques Roadshow.

Storm Dennis

Storm Dennis continues its rampage but soon it will be history. Somewhere off the coast of Newfoundland the next storm will be forming and our weather forecasters will be salivating at the prospect of alerting us to the perils of Storm Ethel or Eric (in reality it will be named Ellen) as they conjure up another national drama and place themselves at the heart of it. As a name, Dennis left much to be desired - in its innate modesty, it could never carry the weight of menace the forecasters strained to convey. Dennis is a fine name for a double-entry bookkeeper from South Ruislip, not a stupendous storm of epic proportions bringing chaos and destruction in its wake. Storm names for 2019-2020 were devised as a joint effort by the UK Met Office, Met Éireann, and the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute and announced last September. Many of the chosen names are as underwhelming as Dennis although if things get really bad we can eventually look forward to Storm Piet, which will forever be known as the Mondrian Storm. Public submissions are invited, always a mistake - witness Boaty McBoatface. Any suggestions from me are unlikely to get far but if by some miracle they were adopted you may find yourself nailing up your windows and doors as Storm Dracula, Damoclese, Dreadnought, Deuteronymy, Demosthenes or Dumbledore approaches. 

Off the Shelf - Villages of Vision, Gillian Darley

There are three editions of Villages of Vision on the shelf, including the hardback version from 1975. But this paperback from Paladin Books, issued in 1978, is my personal favourite. It came with a superb cover illustration by much under-rated artist/illustrator, Tony Meeuwissen, of meticulously painted vignettes of vernacular detail presented as if they were Victorian scrapbook stickers, seeming as fresh and inventive today as it did more than 40 years ago. The intersecting themes of this book embrace social history, industrial architecture, garden cities, capitalist paternalism, rural life, utopianism, philanthropy, political activism and noblesse oblige as the writer explores the subject of planned settlements and communities in the British Isles. It tells a story of good intentions, unfulfilled ambitions, broken dreams and social experimentation that extends into every corner of the country. A cast of mill-owners, Quaker businessmen, charlatans, utopians, idealists, and social reformers march across the pages. The Gazeteer has been an essential guide and companion on many a journey leading to such destinations as Saltaire and Port Sunlight, Bedford Park and Akroydon, Blaise Hamlet and Tremadog, and Edensor and Letchworth. Some of these trips have inspired posts on this blog, including Bedford Park, Blaise Hamlet, Saltaire, and Port Sunlight. The author is writer and broadcaster, Gillian Darley, whose 2003 book Factory has been equally inspirational. For the last 6 years Gillian Darley has been President of The Twentieth Century Society.

Postcard of the Day No. 96 - Kentish Hop Pickers

The Kentish Hop Pickers formed a migrant labour force who travelled south from London to gather the seasonal crop every summer. Special trains run by the London, Chatham and Dover Railway would deliver entire families to the hop fields and the event was a major milestone in the working class Londoner’s calendar. Others would make the journey on the back of a lorry, piled high with bundles of bedding, pots and pans, and associated paraphernalia for survival in the Kent countryside. For many it was their only experience of rural life and a rare exposure to unpolluted air. Newspapers and magazines would record the event in a tone of sentimental familiarity, portraying the hop pickers as cheery ruffians, stout of heart and spirit, and always ready with a Cockney quip. Some typical press coverage can be seen here on the British Library blog. Postcards were produced in great numbers and presented a rare opportunity for the workers to be in front of the camera and see their likenesses mass produced for sale to the public. Pathé News cameras were often on hand to record the great exodus and the heartwarming spectacle of the labouring classes doing their bit for the nation’s beer drinkers.

In the postcards we see the full age range of the workforce from grizzled grandparents to babes in arms. Only a handful of children and young women defy tradition and go bare-headed - every man of working age shelters under a flat cap, a sun hat, or a bowler. The only collars and ties to be seen are worn by the Tallyman and his assistant whose job was checking and weighing the hop baskets. Some groups are posed with great solemnity, their faces frozen and devoid of expression - elsewhere, in less formal groupings, we get a sense of individual character and personality, some look exhausted while others look relaxed and cheerful. Most surviving participants, by now well past middle age, look back with fondness, recalling an exhilarating sense of exchanging the routines of city life for weeks of adventure in the great outdoors. These are the voices of those who took part as children - the views of those who laboured in the fields may well have been different. 

Galeries Lafayette Summer 1932

Parisian department stores have a long tradition of the pursuit of extravagance and opulence in terms of display and product range. Galeries Lafayette had been trading on Boulevard Haussmann since 1912 and was famous for its central circular atrium capped by a spectacular Art Nouveau glass dome. This catalogue dates from 1932 just as the Great Depression was making itself felt in France - unemployment soared as economic growth stagnated. Fertile ground for the extreme Right, which surged on a rising tide of xenophobia and Anti-Semitism. The point of a department store was to cater to every conceivable customer desire and the 1932 offer extended to over 180 pages of hand drawn illustrations and blocks of descriptive text. Customers based in provincial France could keep pace with Parisian taste using the mail order form to bring sophistication to their doorsteps. Production values were modest with colour confined to the cover and letterpress printing on cheap paper. The range of goods is still impressive with clothing and footwear to the fore - but space was also found for the more obscure items such as communion dresses, baby carriages and reliquaries. The receptive reader would be engulfed by this avalanche of delights, an oceanic vision of plenty, poised to shower its blessings in return for the most modest of financial outlays.