An American Sewing Machine

Every young girl's dream...

The New Home sewing machine was from America, but these postcards are both French. Here is the history of the company with lovely old illustrations, I imagine that some of them were postcards too..

By coincidence

I came across this postcard today depicting a terrible storm back in 1904 in a town in the North of France. As a result of a storm, high winds and a deluge of rain, the little river that went through the town turned into a raging torrent. Houses that overhung the river were destroyed as their foundations were washed away. There was plenty of flooding and damage throughout the rest of the town too. 21 people died that day. A reminder perhaps, that we have always been at the mercy of nature.
(Whether the government be right or left!)

The wreck of the 9th Avenue

I did a double take when I discovered the date of this accident on the elevated railway in Manhattan – September 11th 1905. The account of the accident

Edward VII

King of the United Kingdom and the British Dominions and Emperor of India from 22nd January 1901 (Crowned 9th August 1902), until 6th May 1910. His mother, Queen Victoria, excluded him from political power and so until almost the age of 60, he led a fashionable leisured life. Once King, he modernized the British Home Fleet and army medical services and reorganized the British army. He fostered good relations with other European countries, especially France, but his efforts could not prevent the outbreak of the First World War 4 years after his death. (Information thanks to Wikipedia)

Wikipedia says that he was crowned 9th August 1902, whereas the postcard says June 26th. Which is correct? The coronation was scheduled for 26th June, but the King needed an emergency appendectomy operation and so the coronation was postponed by a few weeks.

Footage of his coronation coach

Without this man my husband would never have existed.

This is the carriage of the King of Norway Haakon VII on a visit to Paris in 1907. His Queen, Maud, was one of Queen Victoria’s many granddaughters.

During World War II, the King refused to co-operate with the Nazis and send all of the young men to labour camps. Amongst those young men was my late father-in-law, who later escaped to Great Britain and joined the Air Force. He met a young lady who was later to become my Mother-in-law...

Globe-Trotters

On the 31 March 1901 the Bulgarian journalist Pierre Bonnef set out with his wife, Georgiza, to walk around the world. The idea of the walk was to meet the people from the countries they passed through. They were armed with papers from the Bulgarian Ministry and the consulates of Great Britain, France and Austria amongst others. They funded their voyage by selling postcards like this one on the way.

 They passed through Bayonne in the South of France on the 14th May 1904. They intended their travels to last for around 15 years. I hope that they arrived home safely before the outbreak of the First World War.

We couldn’t find anything about their journey on the internet so I thought that I would create this little space in their memory. If you have any more information on them, please leave a comment.

The sinking of the Hilda

The night of the 18th November 1905 was a night of snow and storms.  Conditions were so bad that the men on the Grand Jardin lighthouse didn't see or hear that the steamer, Hilda was in distress close by.  They didn't even hear when her engines exploded.

125 men died in the icy waters, they were aged between 12 and 45. There were 6 survivors.  One crewman; Mr Grinter (Greender?) and 5 Johnny Onions.  Young men from Brittany who had crossed to England in July to sell their onions door-to-door and were now returning home.  Their names were Paul-Marie Pen(n), Tanguy Laot, Olivier Caroff, Louis Rozec and Louis Mouster.

Do you remember this?

I was born 8 years after the Kon Tiki Expedition, but during my school days we were captivated by the story of Thor Hayerdahl and his crew on their voyage across the pacific ocean.

This is what is known as a semi-modern postcard. Often in black and white and sometimes in colour, they are gaining in popularity as people remember how things used to be when they were young through the postcards.

At this very moment there is a modern expedition, An-Tiki,  led by an 84 year old to raise money for Water Aid. They set off on January 30th and are crossing the Atlantic ocean. There is an An-Tiki blog and website.

Before the fire

We managed to acquire some very rare, old postcards of the Réunion Islands. The cards are all in very poor condition, but still very collectable.

Here’s one of them. People are leaving church after Mess. The church burnt down in 1905 and the postcard says that the picture was taken before the fire. It’s interesting to see that the card was written on February 16th 1905! There was also a cyclone on the island during the early years of the 20th century.

A link to the Réunion department of our store.

The man who could have been King

Philippe Duke of Orleans would have been the King of France if it weren’t for the French revolution. He was very interested in wildlife and nature as well as writing.

He owned a property near to Evesham in Worcestershire (UK), Wood Norton. Which is where I come in. He had his own zoo there and when my father was asked to clear some ground there in the 70s, I remember him coming home and telling us that he’d dug up bones of the animals that must have been in the zoo. Wood Norton was also used as a training centre by the BBC at the time that I worked in the bank at Evesham. We saw students from all over the world – oh happy days.

Back to Louis Philippe Robert d'Orléans, he was born in 1869 in England and died in 1926 in Sicily. At one point he was put in prison for returning to France from where he had been exiled, but was granted his freedom after a few months. He never returned to France.

I know that there was a wedding of some importance at Wood Norton. I saw photographs at the museum in Evesham. The town was honoured on that occasion by the visit of Edward VII no less!

Life continues

Another view of the Eiffel Tower during the floods of January 1910, but the main subject is the steam train making its way through the water…

Click on the image for a better view

Paris 1910

One hundred years ago this month Paris was flooded. There were plenty of postcards depicting the event which caused a lot of damage, but what is more interesting is the back of the postcards. Ordinary people telling their friends in other parts of the country that they were safe. Can you imagine the state of the water which invaded people’s homes? The smell?

Just one of the streets that were flooded

The railway station at Orsay resembled a swimming pool.

The Navy was even called in to help

The Eiffel tower contemplating its refection

Lady taxi drivers

In 1906 Paris saw the first lady taxi drivers. There was a lot of interest in these brave women. They soon learnt to drive motorised taxis too. I was pleased to find an excellent history in English which explains their story in more detail. Does image number 8 look familiar? Picture number 30 is of special interest to me.

The (very) old house

This house was built in the 13th century, 700 years later a postcard was made of it and just over a hundred years after that the house appears on my blog! I couldn’t find any trace of the house today, although the tourist office looks as if it perhaps could have been….

It reminds me of a mushroom somehow.

A little history

It’s the little treasures that pop up unexpectedly which make postcards so enjoyable. This is a card from Sillé-le-Guillaume and was sent in 1911. It’s not an image that I would have normally chosen to put here. Recently I’ve been discovering a little more about coloured postcards which has made me more interested in the history of postcards. At the bottom of this postcard is the name of the publisher, nothing unusual except for the claim that the company produced the first illustrated French postcard in 1870.

The Château today

Saint Catherine

I couldn’t understand why we’d collected so many Saint Catherine cards. They were addressed to girls with lots of different names, but not Catherine!. My favourite English student who is a retired history and geography teacher (history and geography are taught together in France) was able to explain the tradition. There are several St. Catherines on the French calendar, but one in particular in the autumn is the patron Saint of unmarried maidens. This is why lots of young girls used to send cards to each other on the celebrated day. Today, I think it would be hard to find a St Catherine card to send.

This one is a ‘semi modern’ card sent between friends.

La Rochelle Ladies

These ladies are typical of the women who worked along the shore at the beginning of the 20th century. There lives would have been very hard. The climate is cold, damp and very windy in winter and the summer sun is very hot. Throughout history the women of La Rochelle have been special, The first was Eleanor Of Aquitaine who owned la Rochelle, she married the King of France and later the King of England. I’m sure that the women of La Rochelle would have played a courageous part in the sieges where many Rochelais lost their lives. The women of La Rochelle were also amongst the most determined passengers to the Americas.

Later on, some of the ladies of La Rochelle were to become famous amongst sailors and ships crews from all over the world….

Death of a gangster

Now this one is a very interesting postcard. Here you see the French police carrying away the still alive body of the notorious Jules Bonnot. He met his end on April 28th 1912, after a shootout. The house he was hiding in had been surrounded by 500 police officers, soldiers, fireman, military engineers and a lynch mob. After firing for sometime the powers that be decided to dynamite the building, Bonnot was badly wounded and the police shot him 10 times in the upper body and once in the head. HE WAS STILL ALIVE when they removed him from the building (see card), the lynch mob was told that he was already dead.

What had he done to deserve such an end? He was a member of the notorious Bonnot Gang a band of anarchists who make Bonnie and Clyde look like angels. They were also the very first gang to use a getaway car! I got all of this information from Wikipedia so if you’d like to read the story in depth read Jules Bonnot and the Bonnot Gang.

For Willow...

While I was sorting through some more cards I was really pleased to come acoss this one. Does the one with the white hair remind you of someone? Now we know why his hair was flat.

La Faction

These three rebels are from the resistance in Brittany. Some one wrote to tell us that there was an uprising when the Breton language was forbidden in schools and in churches in 1902. Today, school children in Brittany have Breton taught to them as part of the curriculum.

The card was sent early in January 1925 to wish the receiver a Happy New Year.