"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...
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!
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"...
via PostcardCollector.org - Vintage Postcard Forum - Blog Feed by Randy on 5/9/10
