These two postcards from an extensive series published c.1904 are each made up from several different photographs, to create a collage of confusion on the rink!
Entitled ‘Some Funny Sights are Seen Here’, this postcard, produced by Davidson Brothers of London, was posted from Earls Court in March 1909. It offers a good view of the four-wheeled skate that made the sport so popular.
Although the use of wheeled skates can be traced back to the streets of Holland in the eighteenth century, roller skating as we know it today was introduced into America in 1863 using the four-wheeled skate invented by James Leonard Plimpton of New York, and quickly became a very popular pastime. It had crossed the Atlantic by the early 1870s, and in 1876, one William Bown of Birmingham patented a much-improved wheel design. In the following year, Joseph Henry Hughes, another Birmingham inventor, patented a further development using bearings to improve the smoothness of rotation (technology that later found many other applications).
‘Rinking’, as the sport was widely known, became the subject of a considerable number of humorous postcards; since falling over was seen as an unavoidable part of the experience, many of the cards show just that!
Rinks were opened in Norwich, London, Plymouth and elsewhere in Victorian times, some using concrete floors, while others used wood.