Song Cards A Brief History. Bamforth Postcards

This unique War time greetings card exploded in popularity during the first world war and saw huge amount published between the years 1914-1918.  The Postcards were sent by loved ones to 'their boys' at war.

The cards themselves are all much the same comprising of a verse or complete song from popular song and hymns of the time and a sentimental  picture.. The postcard were normally part of a set of 3 or more however there are many that had just a single card in the set.

Many publishers printed these wonderful postcards at the time but four really stand out as the main suppliers, Bamforth, Tuck , Valentines and Rotary.

A typical Bamforth Card 

For This blog I will be focusing on the the Work of Bamforth

James Bamforth Started his photographic career as a portrait photographer 1870 and started making slides in 1883, he was popular and on the cutting edge of the photographic world and towards the back in of the 19th. century he started making moving pictures, this was continued from 1913 to 1918 and to this day Bamforth are considered on of the Pioneers of moving pictures.

Between 1900 and 1920 Bamforth had two main ranges the live model comic postcards and the live model Song cards, during that time Bamforth printed a staggering 600 sets of Song Postcards.  From 1920 onwards Bamforth became world famous for their Saucy comic cards

An example of an 1930's Comic Bamforth Postcard.

Outside the world of postcard collecting and dealing song postcards are relatively unknown which I feel is shame as some the cards are form a huge part of the country's social history.

Over the last few years I have seen a vast amount of these cards and I have always be able to find a collector that wants them, I generally find that these song Postcards can be divided into a few sections

• Hymn.  James Bamforth had a religious faith and that is clearly seen in the early days of the song cards.  Hymns would be printed in verses and many were republished over the years with different pictures and formats such as "The Rosary" by Ethalbert Nevin (1862-1901) which I alone have seen 7 different types and Bamforth themselves conform at least 10 different versions of the same Song 

• Romance.  These care were mostly regarding and missed love one or general love themes and by their nature they were by and large happy and upbeat

• Heartbreak.  If Romance were upbeat and happy these Postcards were anything but! showing both male and female models, distressed and heartbroken at being left or jilted but their sweetheart.  many used a collage effect showing the models dreams or thoughts - perhaps sending this to your former sweetheart was the sad face at then end of a text message of it day!? I have also added bereavement to this section but it could have had a section all of its own

• War Related.  These cards pictured both male and female models and were hugely popular during the First world War.  Strangely they seemed to depict a longing to be away from the war rather than the more common prints of the time style of a Call to arms classic Cards would be "It's a Long way to Tipperary"

• Regional.  Mostly Irish and Scottish music that were popular at the time one of the classic examples of this would be song set to the poems of Robert Burns 

• Home / Family/ old times.   I wasn't sure how to name this one as most of the cards seem to show a longing or nostalgic view of the old days, these grew in popularity when smaller towns started to expand and populations of big cities grew rapidly some of the classic cards would be "Home Sweet home"  

• America. The frontier spirit of 19th century America is reflected in a goodly number of song postcards. “Down Home in Tennessee” (Walter Donaldson, 1915) is a sung by a fellow on his way home to the old south. The first card shows him sitting on his suitcases at a train station, and the successive cards show how he will be welcomed at home. Other songs depict pioneers around a camp-fire or in a rustic American cabin, again longing for home

• Workplace/social commentary.Other songs comment on the workplace: several songs were written about the difficulty and danger of working in the mines. “Don't go down the Mine Dad" depicting a child's very real worry at not seeing her dad again

well That is all I have time for today, I have had fun looking through and researching the wonderful forgotten world of the Bamforth song Postcard

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