Transportation was a consistently popular theme of the cigarette card era and has continued to be so in other trade issues since the Second World War. The decades between 1880 and 1940 saw a revolution in the ways in which people could move from one place to another. At the forefront of these developments was the invention of the motor car, a mode of transport which had come within the reach of millions by the 1930s. In addition, humans could take to the air, powered by engines, for the first time, and by the late 1930s were regularly travelling across the globe. The era saw the development of huge ships, which set records for travelling between the continents, often in opulent luxury. Finally, rail transportation continued to improve, with the apogee of the steam age coming when the Mallard broke the speed record, reaching 126 mph in 1938.
Since 1945, developments in all forms of transport have made the world shrink even further, with these changes reflected in card issues which are both visually appealing and informative. A collection devoted to the whole theme of transportation, or subthemes within it, can make a long-lasting and rewarding focus for an assembly of cards.
The Wright Brothers’ first flight, made four miles south of Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, on 17 December 1903, helped to catapult aviation into the modern age. This event was featured on many cards, including the Lambert and Butler set History of Aviation from 1932. Cigarette cards went on to showcase the revolutionary developments which took place in aviation from that date up to the Second World War and beyond. The set containing this card can be purchased for around £50 online. Attractive sets of aviation-related cards include Lambert and Butler’s previous set on the topic, Aviation (1915), which can be purchased online for around £120 for a set in good to excellent condition.
In 1910 Wills issued a set of 50 Aviation cards which, due to their scarcity and popularity, can retail at £120 or more. The set included balloons and airships as well as early aeroplanes to show the full spectrum of development. They were issued immediately after Louis Bleriot became the first person to successfully fly an aircraft heavier than air over the English Channel. For this feat Bleriot was awarded a £1,000 prize by the Daily Mail newspaper, seeing off three rivals who were making contemporaneous attempts on the challenge. One of them, Hubert Latham, had been forced to land in the sea just six miles from reaching the target and was rescued by a French destroyer. He was taken back to France and a replacement aircraft provided for a second attempt.
Sarony’s A Day on the Airway set of 25 cards was issued in 1925. There was an appealing hardcover booklet issued in which to fix the cards, and is one of the author’s favourite items in his collection. The booklet contains a foreword by Sir Alan Cobham, KBE, AFC, which exudes evangelical fervour on the future importance of aviation. He wrote:
The man-in-the-street to-day looks upon flying as something extraordinary, as a great achievement, but I am convinced that the coming generation will regard flying as but a natural and ordinary means of transport and, further, that the child of today will learn to fly just as easily as the youth now learns to ride a bicycle without tuition. It is through the experience of the flying instructors and of the various flying schools throughout the country that the youth of to-day learns flying far more easily and naturally than his elder brother of 10 years ago. Therefore, it is obvious that the great development of aviation will be carried out by the coming generation which will accept the art of flying as a natural thing, rather than a feat.
In the past, and at present, Britain has been a nation of transporters – by means of her sailors and her ships Britain has opened up the trade routes of the world. Consequently, now this new form of transportation has come into being to augment the existing modes by developing speedy mail and passenger services, it is vital that, as we have been supreme on the seas in the past, we must be supreme in the air in the future. The first step towards this aim is to get public support for aviation and the only way we can get public support is to make people think ‘aviationally’ to bring up the coming generation to think in that manner. They must understand the possibilities, the necessities, utilities and beauties of flying. Therefore, I wish Nicolas Sarony & Co., every possible success with ‘A Day on the Airway.’ By issuing their cigarette pictures of aviation, they are not only helping the cause of flying, but they are thereby helping Britain.
Using photographs supplied by Imperial Airways, and a detailed commentary by aviation author Harry Harper, the set takes us on an aeroplane journey from Croydon Airport to Schipol Airport, Amsterdam. The first six cards in the set show the preparations airport staff and customers go through before the flight takes off.
One feature of the development of aviation was that it was not exclusively a male preserve. Many prominent female flyers were featured on cards, including Mary Lady Heath, Mrs Harry Bonny and Hull heroine Amy Johnson. Johnson featured in the Carreras Famous Airmen and Women series of 1936, although under her married name of Mrs Mollison, having married fellow aviation pioneer Jim Mollison in 1932. Johnson gained worldwide fame in 1930 when she flew 11,000 miles from Croydon Airport, Surrey, to Darwin, Northern Territories in Australia, to become the first aviatrix to achieve the round the world feat. In 1931 she and a co-pilot became the first to fly from London to Moscow in a day, and in July 1932, having recently married Mollison, she broke her new husband’s record for a flight from London to Cape Town. The Mollisons jointly set a record from London to India in 1935 but their relationship sadly ended in divorce in 1938.
During the Second World War, Johnson joined the Air Transport Auxiliary, transporting planes around Britain on behalf of the Royal Air Force. On 5 January 1941, while flying an Airspeed Oxford from Prestwick to RAF Kidlington in Oxfordshire, Johnson bailed from her plane and died in the intense cold of the Thames Estuary. Her body was never recovered and she is remembered today in both England and Australia by statues and public buildings named in her honour. There is also a replica of Jason, her Gypsy Moth plane, hanging from the rafters at Hull’s Paragon railway station.
The Zeppelin airship was first patented in Germany in 1895, and first flown commercially in 1910. By1914 the German Company, Deutsche Luftschiffahrts-AG (DELAG) was regularly carrying fare-paying passengers. The German military made extensive use of Zeppelins as bombers during the First World War, and over 500 people were killed in Britain during such raids. Following closely on the heels of the first transatlantic aeroplane flight, by July 1919 an airship was ready to undertake the first flight to America. This event was commemorated on a British Aeroplanes set. The R-34 had made some test flights over the North Sea and the Baltic to test its endurance during June, and it was decided to attempt the first Atlantic crossing under the command of Major George Scott. Scott’s crew prepared hot food using a plate welded to an engine exhaust pipe. As well as the planned crew, a small tabby kitten called ‘Whoopsie’ was stowed away on board and by the time Scott found out, it was too late to drop off the feline so she became the first cat to fly the Atlantic.
R-34 left Britain on 2 July 1919 and arrived at Long Island on the 6th after a 108-hour flight. One of the crew, Major E.M. Pritchard, jumped by parachute from R-34 to assist the landing crew in bringing the airship safely down. Four days later R-34 returned to England and served for a further eighteen months before damage caused by flying into a hillside on the North Yorkshire Moors and strong winds meant that she was tied down for the night outside the shed. Further damage caused by the weather meant she then had to be scrapped, after having made history so recently.
The later 1930s saw an avalanche of aviation sets, with Aeroplanes (Civil) from Players (1935), Famous British Airmen and Airwomen from Lambert and Butler (1935), International Air Liners from Players (1936), Empire Air Routes from Lambert and Butler (1936), Aeroplane Markings from Lambert and Butler (1937), Aircraft from Philips (1938), British Aircraft from Strathmore (1938), Aircraft of the Royal Air Force from Player (1938) and Aeroplanes from Gallaher (1939). Both the Strathmore and Gallaher sets had a distinct military emphasis as war loomed.
Some of these sets can be purchased for a few pounds, while others are advertised on internet sale sites for between £50 and £120. As aviation has continued to develop since 1945, so aviation sets have continued to be popular, with a myriad of issues from Brooke Bond, Lyons, Cadbury, Player and Amalgamated Tobacco. They feature developments through the age of the ‘super plane’ and into the age of space exploration. In conjunction with the pre-war sets, a specialist interest in collecting cards with an aviation theme would make a fruitful hobby, due to the number, range and quality of the cards. Although some of the sets from the 1920s and ’30s are relatively expensive for a good set, it is possible to start a collection of more modern issues for a few pounds a time.
Railways have held an abiding fascination for generations of people, and this has been reflected in the number of card sets issued on the topic. As early as 1901-2 Wills brought out a set of 50 Locomotive and Rolling Stock. This featured pictures of railway engines from around the world, and in the British context demonstrated the range of companies that existed at that time, prior to the nationalisation of the railways in 1948. There were nine major English railways and five Scottish ones and the set featured engines from companies such as the Great Western Railway, the Great Eastern Railway, the North Eastern Railway, and the Midlands Railway. Pictured is an early Victorian locomotive from the long-defunct London and Birmingham Railway
It was not just the engines themselves that interested people, but their construction in an industry which employed tens of thousands of people. Towns such as Swindon and Doncaster had huge engine construction sheds, and in 1930 Ogden produced a set of Construction of Railway Trains cards to educate people in the variety of jobs available in the industry. In a similar vein, Churchman’s Railway Working (2nd Series) of 1927 included such technical delights as Overhead Wire Electric System, Pantagraph Pick-up Gear and Air Brake Pump.
Among other popular pre-First World War railway sets are Lambert and Butler’s 25 World Locomotives of 1912, which can be bought for around £100. To commemorate the centenary of the opening of the Stockton to Darlington Railway, R & J Hill brought out a Railway Centenary set of 50 in 1925, followed by a set of 25 larger cards the same year. The former set retails for a little under £100 and the latter for around £50.
In 1927 Godfrey Phillips took a slightly different focus on the topic of railways, issuing a Model Railways set of 25. British railway enthusiasts could learn about trains from around the world due to sets such as Churchman’s Famous Railway Trains of 1929. The same company’s 50-card Landmarks in Railway Progress of 1931 took the collector right from Peak Forest Tramway of 1802, an example of the quarry and colliery tramways that were the forerunner of the locomotive railway system, through to the first train to break the 100mph barrier, the Great Western Railway’s City of Truro in 1904 and the electrification of major routes.
The apogee of the age of steam locomotion was reached in 1938 by the London and North Eastern Railway’s No. 6648 Mallard, a Pacific Steam Locomotive built in Doncaster. It holds the world record for a steam train of 126 mph, reached on a stretch of line between Grantham and Peterborough on 3 July 1938. Due to the impending war, the engine does not seem to have featured on any 1930s set, but it was included in a Mills’ Cigarettes series of British Locomotives from 1961.
While there had been technical developments in the production of steam, electric, diesel and petrol-powered vehicles throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the motor age can be said to have begun in Britain in 1896. This year saw the repeal of the Locomotive Act of 1865, which had required self-propelled vehicles on the road to be preceded by a man walking, carrying a red flag and blowing a horn. For this reason it had become known as the ‘Red Flag Act’. The repeal of this piece of legislation allowed for the development of motor transport in Britain. To celebrate, an ‘Emancipation Run’ from London to Brighton took place in November of that year.
In July 1895 the Daimler-engined Panhard and Levassor completed the first British long-distance motorcar journey from Southampton to Malvern. Levassor’s car was featured in Wills Famous Inventions series of 1915. Emile Levassor had already won the Paris–Bordeaux–Paris race in June that year in a time of 48 hrs 48 mins, an average speed of 15 mph. He was to die in 1897 at the relatively young age of 54, from injuries sustained while trying to avoid hitting a dog during the 1896 Paris–Marseilles–Paris race.
In 1896 the first exhibition of ‘Horseless carriages’ took place in London with ten exhibits, and by the time Lambert and Butler issued their Motors set of 25 cards in 1908, the British motor industry was in full swing. A good quality set of these cards is extremely rare, with a catalogue price of around £750, as it is the only known full pre-First World War UK issue on the subject. Lambert and Butler pioneered car issues after the war with their Motor Car set of 1922. Included in the collection was the original Model-T Ford and cars from Morris and Austin. Amongst other car manufacturers featured are some whose names have been largely forgotten except by motoring aficionados, such as Bean, Calcott, Swift, Rhode, Belsize and Charron-Laycock.
Like the interest shown in the mechanical workings of locomotive engines, the enthusiast of car mechanics was catered for with sets such as Morris’ Motor Series set of 25 cards in 1922, which included the Poppet Valve Mechanism and the Thermo-Syphon Cooling System. Another niche issue was Lambert and Butler’s Motor Car Radiators of 1928, a set which lacks the range of visual appeal of many collections but which can still command a price of £100 today. Further sets of cars were issued by Godfrey Phillips, with Motor Cars at a Glance (1924) and another series of Motor Cars from Lambert and Butler (1926).
British motoring underwent significant development in the 1930s, when affordable cars were becoming available for the masses. To cater for the increase in road usage, the Minister of Transport from 1934-7, Leslie Hore-Belisha, introduced a speed limit in urban areas of 30 mph and rewrote the Highway Code. He also introduced a driving test and a safety beacon at pedestrian crossings, which was named the Belisha Beacon in his honour. In support of this drive for road safety, Wills issued a set of cards with an air of authority in 1934. The set was titled Safety First, and the accompanying album stated that it was to ‘contain a Series of Cigarette Cards of National Importance’. The significance of the set was reinforced by the fact that the Hore-Belisha wrote a foreword to the album. In it he stated:
Parliaments may make Statutes and Minister may make Regulations, but individuals make roads safer by carefulness and courtesy... Sound knowledge of proper behaviour on the road, as set out in the Highway Code, is just as important to the pedestrian as to the motorist.
Anyone who spreads knowledge on this subject is helping in a national cause: and I am out to encourage all who keep the public interested in this matter whether they are public bodies or, as in this instance, a private firm. I wish every success to the ‘Safety First’ series of cigarette cards which show pictorially and vividly how often accidents occur from disregard of the Highway Code; and I welcome them more as the cards will be disseminated among the children, who are unhappily all too frequently numbered among the victims of road accidents.
Thus a cabinet minister was endorsing the use of the cigarette card to spread information vital to the public interest, and was noting the efficacy of the cards in appraising children of the dangers of the road. By way of example, card numbers 48 and 49 featured, in turn, a boy chasing a hoop into the path of an oncoming car, and two boys playing with a dog which has run out into the road across the path of a cyclist. For card 48, the advice on the back was:
Never chase a ball or hoop into the roadway as this youngster is doing. Should it happen to roll there, let to go, for it is better to lose a toy than to risk an accident that may maim you for life. When you are absolutely certain that the road is clear, and not before, retrieve your possession. Before stepping off the footpath look towards the oncoming traffic and take its speed into account. If you are at all doubtful get a policeman or an adult to signal the traffic to stop before you leave the footpath and step into the road.
For those who think the distraction of walking along a pavement totally engrossed in texting is a modern phenomenon brought about by the age of the smartphone, card number 46 shows the 1930s equivalent!
Player brought out two Motor Cars sets of 50 cards each in 1937 and 1938, with accompanying collectors’ albums, and although interest in motoring suffered during the Second World War due to petrol rationing, post-war card production resumed, with non-tobacco companies coming to the fore. Kellogg put out a series of 40 Motor Cars in 1950, with Brooke Bond’s The History of the Motor Car in 1968 being a very popular issue. Due to the volume in which they were produced, a good quality set of cards and accompanying album can be purchased for a few pounds. Perhaps, for the new collector seeking to develop a motor car based collection, this high quality set would make an excellent starting point.
Lambert and Butler extended their interest in motor transport with an issue of Motor Cycles in 1923, a time when such vehicles were popular due to the expense of purchasing and maintaining a car. This set can fetch around £150 today. Sweetule issued a set of Motor Cycles Old and New in 1963, and this set of 50 can command a price in excess of £80. These are among very few UK sets dedicated to this genre, although Wills did issue a set of Motor Cycles in New Zealand in 1926, and there are also various sets of Speedway racing. In addition, AZGEC issued a set of Superbikes of the 1970s and Panini issued a sticker set of Superbikes in 1988.
As well as the vast array of naval shipping cards already covered in chapter 3, card issuers brought out many sets devoted to non-military vessels. In 1925 R. & J. Lea brought out a set of watercolour cards titled Ships of the Sea which covered both sailing boats and the steamships of the world, from tea-clippers to the famous Cunard liner Aquitania. One famous ship was the Mauretania, which held the Atlantic Blue Riband for nineteen years, between 1909 and 1929. This was an accolade given to the ship with the fastest average time in making a westbound Atlantic crossing. Due to this longevity, it was featured in many sets, including a rather sinister perspective shown on Wills’ Celebrated Ships series of 1911, a set which can cost over £60. The holders of the Blue Riband up to and including 1929 were celebrated on a set of 50 cards issued by Ogden’s titled The Blue Riband of the Atlantic. This set can be bought for around £75.
Other cigarette card issues of ships include Mitchell’s River & Coastal Steamers, 70 cards produced in 1925. Wills’ Rigs of Ships was an attractive set of 25 large cards issued in 1929, which showed a variety of ships powered by sail. In 1934 and 1935 Wills issued two sets of 30 Famous British Liners, both attractive representations of some of the huge and opulent ships which navigated the oceans in that decade. Included in the second set was the RMS Strathnaver, one of five of the ‘Strath’ class of ships built by the P&O line. Due to their striking white markings they became known as the ‘The Beautiful White Sisters’. Strathnaver mostly ran the Tilbury to Brisbane route and had accommodation for over 1,200 passengers and nearly 500 crew. During the war, Strathnaver was requisitioned as a troop ship and carried over 129,000 troops between Australasia, Suez and Italy, including the author’s father who was transported from Glasgow to the Middle East before the Second Battle of El Alamein in 1942.
The year after Wills’ double set of Famous British Liners, Churchman brought out two sets of 16 large cards and 50 standard ones dedicated to one ship, the Queen Mary, arguably the greatest passenger liner ever built. Built at John Brown’s shipyard on the Clyde, she was launched by Queen Mary herself in September 1924. The set shows the design and construction of the vessel and different aspects of its exterior and interior once finished. Some degree of the lavish opulence in which first-class passengers could travel was shown on the card depicting the Observation Lounge and Cocktail Bar. The Liverpool confectionary firm, Edmondson & Co, manufacturers of Red Seal Toffee, issued a British Ships series of 20 cards in 1925, which currently sells for around £80.
After the Second World War, commercial shipping continued to be of interest to card collectors, with issues such as Morning Foods’ The Cunard Line of 1957 and Brooke Bond’s The Saga of Ships from 1970. Once again, these sets can be purchased for a few pounds, and could form the starting point for a maritime collection. Other issues from this period which are inexpensive are Tonibell’s World’s Passenger Liners (1963), Bishop Stortford Dairy’s Passenger Liners (1965) and Granoses’ Water Transport (1957).
One final mode of transport that should not be overlooked is the bicycle. As a means of commuting, and a vehicle to access leisure pursuits, cycling has had been a permanent fixture in the life of the nation for nearly two hundred years and has undergone a recent resurgence following British successes at the Olympics and in the Tour de France. One popular cigarette card set on the theme was Player’s 1939 Cycling. The set was compiled with the assistance of the editor of Cycling magazine, and charts the development of the bicycle from the era of the Hobby Horse through to light-weight racing machines. Two contrasting styles and eras of cycling are demonstrated in cards 8 and 28. In the former, we are shown the ‘Salvo’ Tricycle:
This picture shows James Starley, ‘the Father of the Cycle Industry’, riding the ‘Salvo’ Quadricycle (later made into a three-wheeler) which he designed to incorporate his invention of the differential gear in 1877. By its means the drive is transmitted to the two side wheels by an ingenious mechanism that allows the out wheel when cornering to over-run the inner wheel, yet whatever the varying speeds of the two wheels the drive to both is continuous. The Starley differential-gear principle is used to-day in every motor-car. Queen Victoria bought two ‘Salvo’ tricycles in 1881.
The Lady Cyclist card (1939) argues that the development of cycling had aided the liberation of women from the costumes and social expectations of the late-Victorian era, and extols the virtues of long-distance cycle touring, claiming that:
The modern girl cyclist is a picture of health and fitness and contrasts favourably with the narrow-waisted, over-clothed female riders of 40 years ago. The cycling girl has been one of the greatest influences in gaining freedom for women to act and travel independently, a right that was denied her grandmother. In the background is Ferniehirst Castle Youth Hostel, near Jedburgh, in Scotland. It is a fine relic of a Border stronghold and a ‘show’ Hostel of Scotland. Ferniehirst Castle is one of the chain of Youth Hostels linking Edinburgh to Newcastle.
Much of the social history of twentieth century Britain can be seen through the rapid developments in transportation which took place on land, sea and air. A card collection on this topic, or on sub-topics within it, would provide a colourful and engaging record of these changes.