Postcard Mania

On the Beach

Ah Blackpool, the bracing air, the salty sea spray...

via Blackpool Postcards by Antony Cutler on 04/08/10

A carte de viste from 1864 showing the crew and lifeboat on the beach   A selection of postcards showing people on the beach   Punch & Judy show. c.1905   Ventriloquist with a large crowd watching. c.1904   A nice beach scene from 1905    A busy beach scene from 1906 showing the boat men taking people out to the boats   A scene of children paddling [...]

Identify Crime/Robbery Related RPPC

This is a wonderful postcard. It's a real curiosity - it probably is a crime scene, but whether it's a crime of robbery or passion is perhaps moot. Anyway, as one of the contributors suggests, I reckon that the bloke in the bottom right hand corner IS the self same chap in the picture amongst the collection of things in the bottom left hand pane.


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It took me a minute to figure out what was going on in this multiview real photo postcard. It's a robbery crime scene including victim, recovered valuables & search party with bloodhounds! Is that the criminal in the lower right and maybe the house where to loot was recovered?

I would love to know the full story behind this postcard but it isn't identified as to location in any way. This is a real photo with AZO postcard back, other than that, the back is blank and the card is unused.

"Your L.S.D. Will Make Men Free."

This just goes to show what fascinating documents postcards are. They can offer such a wealth of information for the historian, professional or amateur. And it's not just the images depicted on them. No, in the case of this card it's the message on the back - L.S.D. referring of course(!) to the pre decimalisation British currency of pounds (L or £); Shillings (S) and Pence (D from the Latin Denarii). And the freedom? Well it's a WWII era postcard...


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The first scan shows a view of Elizabethan houses in London's central Holborn district. This WW2-era Tuck's card itself is rather unremarkable, but there's a slogan on the rear of the card (shown on the second scan) that at first seemed very odd to me -- "Your L.S.D. will make men free." Surely the respected, "Fine Art Publishers to their Majesties the King & Queen and Her Majesty Queen Mary" wouldn't include a seemingly pro-psychedelic drug slogan on the rear of their postcards!

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After a little research I learned that L.S.D. is not only the acronym for the psychedelic drug lysergic acid diethylamide (first synthesized in 1938), but also for "Librae Solidi Denarii," a shorthand version to indicate England's pre-decimal currencies of pounds, shillings, and pence. The "L" stands for the Roman basic unit of weight (libra), from which the British currency sign, or "pound sign"...