Advert - Star cigarettes (1934)

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This 1930's advert for Will's Star cigarettes features Evelyn Laye whose career included musical comedy, operetta, films, TV and pantomime. She died at 95 in 1996

'Princess Charming' was a 1934 film with Max Miller, Finlay Currie and Henry Wilcoxon supporting Miss Laye.

Advert - Shredded Wheat (1930's)

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Shredded Wheat 1930's style. I'm not sure about the gooseberries though, sound a bit healthy for my liking.

Advert - Zee-Kol Ointment (1934)

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1934 advert for Zee-Kol which claims to cure a range of horrible skin diseases in a night. According to Wikipedia (and therefore it must be true) George Herbert, 5th Earl of Carnarvon (1866 – 1923) was an English aristocrat best known as the financial backer of the search for, and the excavation of, Tutankhamun's tomb in the Valley of the Kings. His death from erysipelas led to the story of the 'Curse of Tutankhamun'.  He should have used Zee-Kol.

Advert - Riley Adelphi car (1930's)

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The Riley 1.5 litre Adelphi was produced from 1936 to 1939.

Advert - Rex Coronation Souvenir records (1937)

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On 12th May 1937 the Coronation of King George VI was held at Westminster Abbey. This advert was published on 13th may 1937.

Note that the records came with a full-colour picture label e.g.

Advert - Philco Radio (1936)

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1936 advert for a Philco type 444 'The People's Set' bakelite wireless. The auction house Bonhams sold one in 2009 for £144 although another website suggests a going price of £495.

Cutting - Olympia Motor Show (1935)

17th October 1935

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The future King Edward VIII, as Prince of Wales, opening the Olympia Motor Show on 16th October 1935.  

If you were in the market for a shiny new 1936 car then why not try the Riley Kestrel 6 at £450 and only £7 10s a year road tax? Rover had 9 models ranging from a 10 horsepower model at £248 to a 14hp at £415. The cheaper Austin range had 12 models between £120 and £187 or 20hp Alvis for a whopping £800. 

For those must have accessories who could resist a trip meter which computes average speed  and times the car over a set distance down to 1/5th of a second?

Cutting - Lady Drummond Hay reports from the Hindenburg (1936)

8th May 1936

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The 'Maiden Voyage' of the Hindenburg airship from Germany to the USA in May 1936. It wasn't actually the first commercial trans-Atlantic flight that the Hindenburg had made; it had been to South America earlier in the year. 

Lady Drummond Hay was a journalist for William Randolph Hearst's newspapers. She had covered the 1929 Graf Zeppelin Around the Globe flight sponsored by Hearst and a marvellous documentary film of the flight and her participation can be seen on good old YouTube. 

The 'Saint' author Leslie Charteris was among the many celebrities on the Hindenburg flight and a very entertaining fictional account of his fictional investigation into a fictional murder on board can be read in Max Allen Collin's book 'The Hindenburg Murder'. 

It was at Lakehurst almost a year to the day later that the Hindenburg crashed in flames on 6th May 1937 and in doing so ended the era of the great passenger airships.

For anyone interested in the so called 'Maiden Flight' I recommend this website.

Cutting - Gordon Richards Wins St Leger (1937)

8th September 1937

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Gordon Richards won his first race as a jockey in 1921 and went on to ride a further 4869 winners before retiring in 1954. He was Champion Jockey in 26 years and was knighted in the Coronation Honours in 1953. This race, the 1937 St Leger, can be seen in a Pathe newsreel on YouTube.

Advert - Postal Bargains (1936)

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Christmas postal bargains from 1936. A sugar dispenser for Auntie Flo? The Pip cigarette puter-outer for Uncle Silas? And, of course, the Ni**er Money Box for your favourite nephew? I wonder what the Dragons would make of the Spork?

Cutting - Tommy Farr from Happy! (1937)

8th September 1937

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If you thought punning headlines were a modern invention think again.

Tommy Farr was born in Blaenclydach in 1913 and had a boxing career from from the age of thirteen until 1953 during which he had 84 wins, 34 losses and 17 draws. He fought as a Light-heavyweight up until 1936 and then switched to Heavyweight. Ted Broadribb managed him from 1935 but they didn't get on and the American trainer Babe Culnan took over after the failed attempt to take the World Championship off Joe Louis in August 1937. Broadribb went on to manage (and become father-in-law of) Freddie Mills among others. 

Advert - Oldsmobile car (1939)

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Another car leaping out of the page at you. From a 1939 US paper this is an Oldsmobile for $939 - except for State taxes and local taxes and optional equipment and accessories.

Cutting -First Evacuation of Schools (1939)

28th September 1938

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This is an aspect of the World War 2 London evacuation of children just 3 weeks after the outbreak, that I've never come across before. The use of the words 'cripple' and 'little cripples' as well as describing other kids as ' normal children' would have gone unnoticed at the time but rather jar these days.

Cutting - Police Moves in Gang Murder (1936)

29th January 1936

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The bullet-riddled body of Emile Allard, an elderly itinerant jewellery dealer, was discovered

under a hedge near St. Albans on 23^rd January 1936. The police believed he had been taken to the spot by car either already dead or shot at the scene.

Police soon discovered that Allard, a French-Canadian also known as Max Kassel, had French criminal connections and had been imprisoned for 8 months in France for sex trafficking. They suspected the murderer or murderers had fled to France possibly by plane.

Later in the year French police arrested and charged a man, George Lecroix (aka Roger Vernon) and a woman, Susan Betrand (aka Susan Naylor) with the murder and rather than extradite them to England, tried them in Paris. He was found guilty and got 10 years.

Neither the murder of the prostitute Josephine (French Fifi) Martin the previous November nor that of the French acrobat Martial Lechavelier were ever solved.

Advert - 'Limelight' film (1936)

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An unusual spot coloured advert from the Sunday Mercury dated 9th August 1936 for the film 'Limelight' starring Anna Neagle which was renamed 'Backstage' when it was released in the USA in 1937. She married the Director Herbert Wilcox in 1943.

Cutting - Earthquake in Horsham (1937)

8th September 1937

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The earthquake around Horsham in the early hours of the 8th Spetember 1937 was reported, at the time, to be of intensity 5 on the Rossi-Forel scale (moderate tremor). It was one of a clutch of earthquakes - 9th July around Walsall, 20th July and 4th December Perthshire, 21st March 1938 Edinburgh and more severe shake in Ghent, Belgium on 11th June that was felt in Kent.

Advert- Hudson automobile(1938)

The 1938 Hudson Six almost drives out of the page at you. The Detroit based car company had been making Hudsons in Brentford, England since 1925.

Cutting - Death of King Alexander of Yugoslavia (1934)

August 1934

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The Paris Peace Conference had created Yugoslavia after WWI. It was made up of territory that including Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro and Macedonia, and this mish-mash of nationalities made it almost impossible to hold together. It was dominated by the Serbs and ruled by the Serbian King Alexander, but after years of turmoil and violence, he abolished the original constitution, made himself dictator.

The assassin, Vlado Chernozemski, was a Bulgarian who belonged to a Macedonian revolutionary organisation, which wanted to secede from Yugoslavia. After shooting the King he was cut down by a French mounted officer with a sabre, and then beaten to death by the crowd. 

Louis Barthou may have been shot accidentally by a French policeman in the confusion of the moment.

Young Peter fled Yugoslavia when Germany invaded during WWII and set up a government in exile in England. In 1945 he was deposed by Communists and fled again this time to the USA where remanined until he died in 1970.

Cutting - Sawn-Up Body Riddle (1938)

4th February 1938

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After the man’s torso was found in the Severn near Haw Bridge, Tewkesbury, Gloucestershire, the river was dragged and police turned up two legs and two handless arms. Home Office pathologist Sir Bernard Spilsbury carried out a post-mortem on the torso and other remains and decided they belonged to a missing man, Captain William Butt of Cheltenham.

Brian Sullivan, the son of a nurse who looked after Butt's invalid wife, had committed suicide a few days after the Captain's disappearance in January and his bloodstained coat was found under the floorboards of the house.

Further searching failed to find the head and hands of the body, and the inquest left the identity of the remains and cause of death officially open. The crime has never been solved.

Advert - East Ham Palace Variety (1930's)

Roy Fox was an American band leader who moved to England in 1930 and included the more famous Al Bowlly as vocalist with one of his bands. 

By 1948 the Grip Quartet was appearing in the Cirque Medrano alongside 12 polar bears. 

I don't think Britain's Got Talent has yet to feature a Japanese Foot Juggler like Taro Naito. Where he got the feet from I don't know.