One of the defining characteristics of the decades which formed the heyday of the cigarette and trade card were the three major military engagements which the United Kingdom took part in: the Boer War, and the First and Second World Wars. Each of these was depicted in the production of many card sets, which not only sought to reflect the situations which these conflicts threw up, but also to play a part in the overall war effort of the country.
Even before 1900, military themes were popular ones on card issues. Liebig had issued a set of extra-large cards of British Army Uniforms in 1889. These beautifully illustrated cards are now very rare, and are usually bought individually, with a typical price being around £80 per card. In 1895-7 Player brought out 100 Soldiers of the World. There are a number of varieties of this issue, with different coloured backs. While these sets depicted contemporary uniforms, those interested in the history of army battledress can find sets such as Carreras’ 1937 issue of History of Army Uniforms, which can be bought for around £25. Included here were such delights as General Monck’s Regiment of Foot, formed in 1650, which later became the Coldstream Guards, and the Honourable Artillery Company, now the oldest existing regiment in the British Army. Cope’s British Warriors series of 1912 maintained the militaristic theme, with depictions of men in uniform going right back through the ages, with card 1 showing the Ancient British Warrior. As well as tobacco companies, other manufacturers put out sets of military history cards, such as chocolate company Fry’s Days of Nelson and Days of Wellington, both from 1906. There are reprints available of both sets at a low price.
Between October 1899 and May 1902, the British Empire was engaged in a war against the Boers of South Africa represented by the South Africa Republic (Transvaal) and the Orange Free State. Despite early successes from the Boers in besieging Ladysmith, Kimberley and Mafeking, Britain experienced an improvement in fortunes in 1900 under Lord Roberts and Lord Kitchener who relieved these cities. The former was represented in many sets, such as Hill’s Boer War Generals of 1901 and Ogden’s Guinea Gold cards from the turn of the century. The Boers reverted to guerrilla warfare under leaders such as Louis Botha and Jan Smuts, which meant it took a further two years to arrive at a point where Britain could claim success. As guerrilla fighters did not wear uniforms, much of the population was housed in concentration camps, where disease was rife. The card manufacturers did not highlight this aspect of the war, choosing instead to issue patriotic sets such as Pritchard & Burton’s Boer War Cartoons of 1900, showing British heroism and initiative.
As well as the military leadership being commemorated for their achievements, many of the 78 men who were awarded the Victoria Cross during the conflict were commemorated in 5 sets of 25 cards each issued by Taddy & Co across the conflict. In addition, these sets depicted scenes of heroic actions leading to the winning of the VC across other late-nineteenth century imperial wars. Although very rare, they have been reprinted and the full set of 100 cards can be purchased in reproduction form for around £25. One of those featured was Private George Ravenhill (1872-1921), who was serving with 2nd Battalion The Royal Scots Fusiliers when he won the Victoria Cross. His citation in The London Gazette of 4 June 1901 declared:
At Colenso, on the 15th December, 1899, Private Ravenhill went several times, under a heavy fire, from his sheltered position as one of the escort to the guns, to assist the officers and drivers who were trying to withdraw the guns of the 14th and 66th Batteries, Royal Field Artillery, when the detachments serving them had all been killed, wounded, or driven from them by infantry fire at close range, and helped to limber up one of the guns that were saved.
Ravenhill was wounded in the forearm during the attempt to save the guns. He received his cross from the Duke of York on 4 June 1901 at Pietermaritzburg. However, within a few years his fortunes had turned. Ravenhill’s VC was forfeited in 1908 after he was imprisoned for the theft of scrap metal worth just 6 shillings and could not afford to pay the 10 shilling fine. His VC pension was also withdrawn. His medals were sold at auction at Sotheby’s for £42 in December 1908.
By 1911 Ravenhill, his wife and four children were inmates of the Aston Union Workhouse in Birmingham, and in June of that year three of the children were shipped to Canada to begin new lives, so as not to be a burden to local ratepayers. He re-enlisted in the army in 1914 and served until being medically discharged in 1916. He later died in poverty at the age of 49 in Birmingham. It is not known where he is buried.
Player issued a prominent set of 25 Army Life cards in 1910, demonstrating a broad range of activities that members of that service undertook, such as practising bayonet fighting, laying down a field telegraph line, and jumping with led horses. Card number 15 depicted the Cyclists Scout Section, about which we are informed:
Cyclists are a very great advantage for scouting and the carrying of despatches, and a good deal of encouragement is given to the exercise of this sport in the Army. There are certain recognised cycling sections in which men receive an allowance for machines. Commanding officers now permit of regimental funds being used to purchase in large quantities, and they are supplied to serving soldiers at a low figure on the hire-purchase system.
By the outbreak of war, there were fourteen Cyclist battalions, occupied mainly on coastal defence work. This author’s own grandfather served with the Essex Cyclist Battalion before being despatched to the Western Front to fill the gaps left by the mounting casualty lists.
The period before the First World War also saw the issue of a number of naval sets. In 1905 Wills brought out a series of cards devoted to the exploits of Lord Nelson and in the same year Player brought out a set of 50 cards entitled Life on Board a Man of War, 1805 & 1905 which contrasted the experience of Nelson’s navy with the modern day one. 1909 saw Wills issue Naval Dress and Badges, and a set of the same name was issued by F. & J. Smith in 1911.
As the naval arms race between Britain and Germany escalated, in 1910 Wills celebrated the development of the faster and more destructive warships with an issue of 25 cards on The World’s Dreadnoughts. Many of the vessels were to see action at the Battle of Jutland in 1916. In 1911 the same company brought out Celebrated Ships, 50 cards with a mixture of military and non-military vessels.
Player highlighted a different angle of naval ships in 1912, with an unusual set of 25 Ships’ Figureheads of warships. Until the late 1800s all the Royal Navy’s ships carried a figurehead, such as the rather forbidding one of Winston Churchill’s ancestor, the Duke of Marlborough. Currently this set can retail for around £65.
The coming of the Great War in 1914 also produced a plethora of military related sets. Player immediately brought out a set of 25 Victoria Cross cards in 1914, which now retails at around £70. It was the Gallaher company of Belfast, manufacturer of Park Drive cigarettes, which issued the greatest volume of war cards during this period. They produced two sets of 100 cards each in 1915, then eight sets of 25 cards each of Great War Victoria Cross Heroes as the awards for acts of bravery mounted up. It is very difficult to find complete sets at an affordable price, but fortunately all have been reproduced in collectable format in the past couple of decades. These cards were issued at a time when every village and every street had someone going off to war. There was no television or even wireless to give families at home an idea of what the war looked like, so cards such as these played an important role in public information. The general war cards covered topics as diverse as dugouts, aeroplanes and observation balloons, as well as more esoteric information like the Japanese method of carrying the wounded and Serbian artillery hauled by oxen.
One of the cards in the Victoria Cross series featured Captain Noel Chavasse RAMC. Chavasse was the son of the Bishop of Liverpool and had, alongside his twin brother Christopher, represented Great Britain at the 1908 Olympic Games over the 440 yard dash. Having trained as a doctor and run youth clubs in Liverpool for disadvantaged youths, he joined up in 1913 and rose to the rank of captain, attached to the 1/10th (Scottish) Battalion of the King’s (Liverpool Regiment). Having already been awarded the Military Cross for gallantry at Hooge in June 1915 and mentioned in despatches in November of that year, on 9 August 1916 his actions at Guillemont earned him the VC. The card tells us:
During an attack he tended the wounded in the open all day under heavy fire, in view of the enemy. Next day under heavy shell fire he carried an urgent case for 500 yards into safety, being wounded in the side. The same night he took up a party of twenty volunteers and rescued three wounded men.
Chavasse’s heroics were not to end there, as between 31 July and 2 August 1917, he won a bar to his VC, one of only three people to do so in British military history. Tragically he died of wounds at Branhoek on 4 August 1917 and today the city of Liverpool’s Victoria Cross memorial is a bronze statue portraying Chavasse’s action, situated in Abercrombie Square outside his father’s bishop’s residence.
Wills was also prominent in the issued of war-related cards. One very attractive set was the Military Motors series of 1916, which depicted transport from the British, French and Belgian armies. The first cards in the series were produced as normal, but later printings carried the moniker Passed for Publication by the Press Bureau 21-9-16 due to the requirement for all printed matter to be authorised by the government. One interesting example from the set is the British Motor Raft. The card informed the public that:
The Motor Raft, or Flying Bridge, is used for conveying motor cars, &c, across a river. The raft, on which the car is securely based, is attached to a long buoyed cable, longer than the width of the stream, and fastened to a rock or tree farther up the river. A lighter rope is tied to the cable, close to the raft, and taken over to the opposite bank; the raft is pulled across and unloaded. The rope is then played out, the force of the stream swinging the raft back to its starting place ready for another load.
Their 1917 set Britain’s Part in the War can be purchased for a very reasonable £25 for the set of 24. They include subjects such as A Tribute to India, A Tribute to the Mercantile Marine and A Tribute to the Royal Naval Air Service. The central theme was to recognise the broad range of effort from many quarters, a perspective worth bearing in mind as the war came to be seen through the prism of the Western Front experience during the following decades. During the war, women for the first time were encouraged into heavy factory work to fill the vacancies left by men who had joined the armed forces. Their work was recognised in Carreras’ Women on War Work, 50 cards issued in 1916 showing a variety of roles, including Making Shells, Postwoman, Preparation of Soldiers’ Dinners, Stoking a Boiler, Barrowing Coke, Instructing Recruits as to use of Travelling Field Kitchen and, intriguingly, Piano Finishing; Tuning and Touching.
In 1917 Wills issued a set of Allied Army Leaders, with portraits of famous allied generals in their brightly coloured uniforms. A complete set of 50 would cost in the region of £90 today. A set which saw the war from a different angle was Hill’s 1917 issue of Fragments from France. These were a series of cartoons produced by Captain Bruce Bairnsfather which had originally appeared in The Bystander and subsequently in book format. The message on the cards is, ‘There can be no better reflection of the bright spirit of the Empire’s gallant sons than is depicted in these sketches, drawn by one who himself had endured the grim reality of war.’ Bairnsfather had served with the Royal Warwickshire Regiment in France until 1915, and had been hospitalised with shell shock and hearing damage following the Second Battle of Ypres. He was posted back to the 34th Division HQ in the UK and developed a cartoon style which is still popular to this day. One of the set, Coiffure in the Trenches, shows one soldier cutting his comrade’s hair while a large bomb flies overhead. The caption on the back reads, ‘Keep yer ’ead still, or I’ll have yer blinkin’ ear off!’
Another popular cartoon series was that produced by Louis Raemakers, a Dutch artist who worked for the Amsterdam Telegraaf in neutral Holland. He took a vehemently anti-German stance and a price was put on his head. He moved to the UK and was employed by the British War Propaganda Bureau. Part of this work was issued on a set by Carreras titled Raemaeker’s War Cartoons in 1915. Containing more overt propaganda than Bairnsfather’s cartoons, one example depicts Christmas Eve during wartime, with Mary burying her head in her hands and an anxious-looking Joseph using his carpentry skills to barricade the stable, as the infant Jesus lies in the manger.
In 1915 Wills brought out a series of 12 cards depicting the well-known recruiting posters of the time and in this way made a further contribution to the war effort, disseminating the recruitment drive to the smoking public. One can speculate how many men were swayed by these cards reinforcing the propaganda drive to fill the armed forces with willing volunteers, before the introduction of conscription in 1916. E.&W. Anstie of Devizes brought out a number of silk portraits including studies of the King and Queen, and Lord Kitchener, who was to lose his life at sea in 1916. Edwards, Ringer and Bigg of Bristol issued a very interesting set of 50 sectional cards which, when put together, made up a complete war map of the Western Front.
Many non-cigarette companies produced trade cards during the war. The Edinburgh firm of Alex Ferguson issued a visually appealing set of 41 VC Heroes and Needlers the confectioner issued a Military Series to go with their Military Mints. Therefore the collector wishing to specialise in collecting cards related to the First World War has a great deal of scope, with the above being just a small selection of cards relating to that terrible conflict. A collection may start with a few inexpensive reprints of famous sets and can extend to one costing many hundreds of pounds depending on the depth of interest and available funds.
However, by 1917 the production of cards was halted due to a shortage of raw materials, so that ended the issue of war related sets. Throughout the 1920s there was a general dearth of military related cards as the British public sought to put behind it the bitter memories of the recent conflict.
The issuing of military cards began to gather pace again the decade preceding the Second World War. In 1929 Player issued The History of Naval Dress, a set of 50 colourful cards covering all aspects of the topic from the thirteenth century right up to the 1930s. A slightly different take on the military card was taken by Mitchell in 1932 with their A Model Army set of 30 cards. They were issued in ‘punch-out’ style, with the soldiers on the cards able to be displayed in upright form to create a model army. This rather wonderful set includes, among other things, an anti-aircraft gun, a dragon tractor with field gun and crew, and a Scottish infantryman in service dress.
Although not a military set, the 1939 Pattreiouex set of Britain from the Air contained photographs which were so accurate that it was claimed they were collected in Nazi Germany and passed over to the military to use. According to Roy Genders in his Guide to Collecting Trade and Cigarette Cards (1975), they were said to have been studied by Goering’s Luftwaffe staff before the aerial bombardment of Britain in 1940. The set contained photographs designed to show the beauty of Britain’s landscape, such as Beachy Head, Brixham Harbour and Chesil Bank in Dorset. However, all these places were also important strategic points of coastal defence, therefore it does seem unfortunate timing to issue them the year that war broke out. Another card in the set is a very accurate aerial view of Buckingham Palace, a target of Luftwaffe bombing.
Two sets which demonstrated the range of jobs within the Royal Navy were Gallaher’s The Navy issue of 1937 and Wills’ Life in the Royal Navy of 1939. The latter set included a card depicting the all-important ‘Rum Issue’, with the accompanying text noting that:
In Tudor time sailors were entitled to a ration of one gallon of beer, but great difficulty was found in keeping the beer from going sour at sea. For this reason wine was issued to ships in the Mediterranean in the 17th century, while on other stations, and especially the West Indies, rum became the official beverage. Before 1740 the ration of rum was served neat, but in that year Admiral Vernon ordered it to be diluted with water, and it became known as ‘Grog’ – ‘Old Grogrum’ being the Admiral’s nickname. Until recently the proportion was three parts of water to one of rum, but it is now two to one. Men are allowed to take a cash allowance in lieu of the rum issue if they so desire.
Player’s Modern Naval Craft of 1939 shows the battleships and carriers belonging to the great naval powers on the eve of war, and was used by the German navy to identify British warships. The same year, Player issued a large set of 25 cards of British Naval Craft. Most of these vessels, including HMS Repulse, a ship built in 1916 and which had served at the Second Battle of Heligoland Bight in 1917, were to play a part in the Second World War. Repulse had protected international shipping during the Spanish Civil War of 1936-39. During the Second World War she saw action in Norway in 1940 and was involved in the hunt for the German super-battleship Bismarck in May 1941. Repulse was then put to work escorting a troop convoy round the Cape of Good Hope in late 1941 before being transferred to East Indies Command. In November 1941, she joined Force Z to combat Japanese aggression in the Far East. However, on 10 December, just three days after the attack on Pearl Harbour, Repulse and HMS Prince of Wales were sunk by Japanese aircraft, thus leaving Malaya open to Japanese invasion and the subsequent fall of the peninsula on 15 Feburary 1942, meaning capture and harsh imprisonment for 120,000 British and Commonwealth troops.
In 1938 the government authorised Wills, Ogden and Churchman to put out a series of Air Raid Precautions cards. The first two sets ran to 50 cards while the Churchman set was 48. They covered the themes of Planning a Refuge, Incendiary Bombs, Fire Fighting, Gas Attack, Air Defence and a Civilian Anti-Gas School.
There was a foreword written by Samuel Hoare, the Home Secretary, who advised:
This series of A.R.P. cigarette cards shows in clear pictures some of the things that the Government and the Local Authorities are working out of the protections of the general public, and also some of the things that each member of the public can do for himself in time of emergency.
As Home Secretary I am responsible for a Home Defence Service which might affect the life of any person in the country, and I therefore welcome these cigarette cards for the manner in which they bring home to the householder and his family what they can do for themselves.
Air Raid Precautions are not mysterious. They are based on commonsense suggestions and the essential things recommended cost very little and demand ingenuity and improvisation rather than expenditure. Even some of the more elaborate recommendations can be carried out quite easily in co-operation with a neighbour.
I commend a study of these cards to your attention.
The significance of the development of air power in the fighting of modern wars was recognised in many issues. Probably the best-known is Player’s Aircraft of the Royal Air Force series with accompanying album in 1938. This included the aeroplane that was to become the iconic symbol of Britain’s ‘Finest Hour’ in the Battle of Britain two years later, the Spitfire. We learn that:
The ‘Spitfire’ is a single-seater fighter monoplane in which many of the lessons learned by Supermarine Aviation (Vickers), Ltd., in producing high-speed seaplanes for the Schneider Trophy Contests, have been incorporated. All-metal stressedskin construction has been used. The pilot’s cockpit is enclosed and a retractable undercarriage is fitted. Power is provided by a Rolls-Royce ‘Merlin’ 12-cylinder liquid-cooled engine, and the Spitfire has been claimed to be the fastest military aeroplane in the world. Performance figures are not available. The aircraft has a wing span of 37 feet and a length of 30 feet.
Although there were no cards issued in the UK during the Second World War which charted the course of the conflict, as there had been in the first two wars of the twentieth century, following the end of hostilities a few sets were brought out which highlighted some of the significant personalities and events that had recently occurred. One set issued during the challenging years of post-war austerity, but which harked back to the recent successes of the war, was British War Leaders (1950) issued by Lingford, a company which produced home baking products. The collection of 36 cards celebrates some of the military leaders who made victory possible. They included Sir Hugh Dowding, head of Fighter Command during the Battle of Britain, Lord Louis Mountbatten, Supreme Allied Commander in South East Asia, and Field Marshal Montgomery of El Alamein, under whom the author’s father served as part of the 7th Armoured Division (Desert Rats) from El Alamein through to Berlin. Interestingly, given subsequent disquiet aroused by the carpet bombing of Germany by the RAF, the Commander-in-Chief of Bomber Command, Arthur Harris, is included.
One of the author’s earliest memories of a public event was watching Montgomery’s funeral on television in 1976. A mint set of these cards would cost in the region of £60. Montgomery also featured on card 35 in Brooke Bond’s Famous People, 1869-1969 set and we are told:
As a child, Bernard Montgomery lived for 11 years in Tasmania, where his father was bishop. He later joined the army, and in 1914 he was badly wounded in a bayonet charge. He soon made a reputation as a successful trainer of troops. In 1942 he was rushed to Egypt to command the Eighth Army; he defeated the German Field-Marshal Rommel at El Alamein and drove the Italians and the Germans out of North Africa. His success lay in meticulous planning and his ability to inspire confidence in the men he led. In 1946 he was created a Viscount.
Since 1945, many military related sets have been issued for keen collectors. In 1970 Bassett brought out 25 Victoria Cross Heroes in Action cards, showing dramatic scenes, which led to the ultimate bravery award. From an American standpoint, in 1965 Topps issued the 66-card set, Battle, the story of World War II, a particularly graphic set which has been described as ‘bold, bloody and beautiful’. One card depicts the beheading of a prisoner of war by a member of the Imperial Japanese Army. This was another set for which the artwork was created by Norman Saunders, who had served with the US Army in the far east during the war, although with the Army Corps of Engineers rather than as a PoW. Individual cards in the set can be purchased for £5-10, although some cost much more, especially with a high PSA grading.
This chapter has focused on the main wars of the twentieth century. However, many cards are available on conflicts such as the American and English Civil Wars, and themes such as weaponry and uniforms through time, and many collectors specialise in military-based cards, with sets available to suit all pockets. pockets.Bottom of Form
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