Advert - John Pound Cabin Trunk (1923)

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This 1923 John Pound and Co. cabin trunk would probably exceed most airlines' weight limits empty. No, these were for proper travel by luxury liner or depositing dead bodies in at Charing Cross Station left luggage office.

Advert - Butlin's for Honeymoons (1950's)

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The 1950's were the heyday of Billy Butlin's holiday camps. He started building hotels in 1953, Blackpool and Cliftonville followed in 1955. Who'd want to be woken up on their honeymoon by a hearty 'Rise and shine' every morning?

Valentino admirer's suicide

Evening Standard dated Thursday August 26^th 1926

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Rudolph Valentino had died the previous Monday. See this post. Peggy Scott was variously described as an actress, dancer and scriptwriter but I can’t find anything online about her career. She had claimed to know Valentino but a representative of the late star attended Scott’s inquest and denied any connection between the two.

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After the General Strike of May 1926 the coalminers were no better off than before and continued their strike. By November it had fizzled out as workers at mine after mine were forced back to work as their Unions ran out of money. The tone of this article, especially the last ‘Down the Pit’ section is decidedly anti-miners and this may well reflect the opinion of the paper’s owner Lord Beaverbrook.

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Valentino’s body was laid out for public viewing in the Gold Room of Frank E Campbell’s Funeral Church in Manhattan, where others including Oscar Hammerstein and Enrico Caruso had also been displayed. The circus atmosphere that surrounded the lying-in-state, encouraged by the media presence, offended George Ullman and he stopped it after only 2 days. It turned out that the Fascist guards mentioned in the article were in fact a publicity stunt concocted by the Funeral Home’s management and that the wreath from Mussolini was bought in the Home’s own florists.

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Edward Creed had been the manager of a cheese shop and on the night of July 28^th his assistant left him to put the day’s taking in the safe and to lock up the shop. Several hours later the next-door neighbour thought he could smell gas coming from the shop and he called the police. They found Mr Creed dead and the gas jets on but unlit. The safe had been cleared of money. Witnesses placed 2 men loitering near the shop on the day of the murder and the police published descriptions but no one was found. The two women mentioned in the article were never traced and a verdict of ‘murder by person or persons unknown’ was returned at the inquest. The case remains unsolved.

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Krishna Murti (or Jiddu Krishnamurti) was born in 1895 in India and at the age of 14 was taken under the wing of Charles Webster Leadbeater and Theosophical Society who groomed him to be the new World Teacher. After training and a European education he travelled the World lecturing on esotericism, or hidden knowledge or wisdom that offers the individual enlightenment and salvation. In 1929 he split from the Theosophical Society, but continued teaching until his death in 1986.

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Presumably Sarah Carlisle was under 21, because I believe that Thomas H Grater was 24, having been born, according to the FreeBMD website, in 1902, and if they had both been over 21 they wouldn’t have needed any parent’s permission. A further search at FreeBMD shows Thomas marrying in 1930 to a lady by the name of Broughton. Sarah Carlisle is too common a name to pin her down.

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I remember hearing these SOS messages at the end of news broadcasts and usually of the form ‘would so-and-so believed to be on holiday in the Lake District please contact their mother who is seriously ill’. They became redundant with the spread of mobile phones in 1990’s. 

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Yes you guessed it – it’s the drawing that made me post this, although a cold Barclay’s Lager would go down a treat today. It was brewed by Barclay Perkins of Southwark, not by a bunch of merchant bankers.

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The term ‘bandit’ seems to refer specifically to motorised smash and grab raiders. According to Robert Murphy’s very good book ‘Smash and Grab – Gangsters in the London Underworld’ the most famous girl bandit was Lilian Goldstein who drove for Ruby Sparks while they carried out numerous raids between 1922 and 1927.

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Quite what this fashionable young lady is doing with a coal-scuttle on her head is anyone’s guess, but then I know nothing about haute couture.

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Tunnels Bathing Beach was, and still is, a feature of Ilfracombe, North Devon. No helicopter rescues in those days. 

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I remember that when I was a kid it was common knowledge that stevedores at the London Docks, while unloading bananas from ships, were forever being attacked by tarantulas. There again it was common knowledge that if you trod on the cracks in the pavement the boogieman would get you.

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The famous songwriter Irving Berlin was a Russian-Jewish immigrant and Ellin Mackay was a Catholic heiress and daughter of the head of the Postal Telegraph Cable Company. Despite Mr Mackay’s objections, the couple were married at the New York City Hall on January 4^th 1926 and he subsequently wrote her out of his will. It took another 5 years for father and daughter to be reconciled.

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Nicholas Zographos was one fifth of the infamous ‘Greek Syndicate’ of gamblers who were a fixture of the great European casinos of the inter-War period. A detailed article on the Syndicate can be found here. Zographos died in 1953.

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An example of the art being created for the London Underground in the 1920’s. Charles Paine, whose name adorns this advert, produced posters and advertising artwork for the LU from 1920 until 1929. He was born in 1895 and died in 1967.

Jack Hobbs equals W G Grace's record

Daily Graphic dated Tuesday August 18^th 1925

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It’s time to make up for my various ignorant (in the sense of un-informed) comments on sport by posting a sport-themed front page.

The cricketer Jack Hobbs equalled W G Grace’s 126 centuries in 1925 but went on to get 197 first-class cricket centuries before his retirement in 1934, and this still stands as the record.

For those who, like me, didn’t know, W G Grace’s cricket career ran from 1864 until 1908, he was 50 years old when he retired and he was a qualified and practising medical doctor.

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King Feisal (now normally spelled Faisal) became King of Iraq after a plebiscite ‘rigged’ by British business interests, in 1921. Alec Guinness played him in the 1962 film ‘Lawrence of Arabia’.

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Typical of 1920’s tabloids, several pages are taken up with these short news items.

I presume the ‘manifesto’ distributed to the Limehouse householders was created by a painting and decorating firm.

The first automated traffic lights at junctions didn’t appear until 1927.

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This was the time when it was still seriously predicted that many people would use aeroplanes to get around the country instead of cars, buses or trains.

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Gertrude Ederle had been part of the US 4x100m Relay Gold Medal winning team in 1924. This attempt to swim the Channel ended badly when she was disqualified after a misunderstanding. Her support thought she was drowning and pulled her out. She said she was resting by floating face-down. She returned in 1926 and successfully completed a France to England crossing. She died in 2003 at the age of 98.

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The British and the weather! If it’s hot then it’s too blasted hot or they are worried its not going to last.

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Benito Mussolini’s National Fascist Party governed Italy from 1922 until 1943 with Mussolini as Dictator from January 1^st 1925. Soldiers with funny hats and bicycles may look like something out of a Carry On film but the Abyssinians (Ethiopians) weren’t laughing when Mussolini’s army and airforce invaded in 1936.  

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I don’t know how this story panned out but I suspect it was either suicide or an accidental overdose. Prussic acid is another name for Hydrogen cyanide and is extremely poisonous to humans.

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Radio broadcasting for entertainment in Britain, i.e. the BBC, was a little less than 3 years old in August 1925. The London transmitter was known as 2LO and Daventry was 5XX. Exciting trivia fact – the famous BBC Shipping Forecast began life on 5XX.

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This illustration accompanied the daily fiction serial in the Graphic. Two things, pen and ink illustration and fiction stories, which no longer enhance our tabloids.

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“By Gad, Sir! It may be cheap but it’s probably some damned foreign chow. Gives the memsahib Delhi-belly just to look at it. Pass the HP Sauce!”

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I never realised that we grew tobacco here in England. This picture was probably taken on Mr Brandon's Church Crookham tobacco farm, which was active from 1911 until 1937.

Random Ad - Southend-on-Sea (1920's)

This 1920's advert for the Essex coastal resort of Southend-on-Sea could well fall foul of the Merchandise Marks Act (replaced by the Trades Description Act in 1968).