Three-quarter portrait on RPPC. Private Collection.
Cryptic message on front of RPPC. Personal Collection.
What would your reaction be if you received a postcard with this message?
This is only *one* of the Daw family
other one has got worms the other fleas, by gosh, x
I’m going to pull out.
Just what happened to this person to send this cryptic message? Was it a jab at those people? Was it a disgruntled lady about to give up looking for a potential suitor in one family? With a little bit of imagination I could write a short with this postcard. It gave me a chuckle.
I prefer RPPCs with writings on over the pristine ones. They’re like small windows into the lives of their owners; snippets of how people used to communicate their feelings.
To Mrs Lib. Ashman Barber & W.V.Barber. Post dated Oct. 17 1905
Well, the worm and flea-free one of the Daw family is pretty good looking, wouldn’t you say? Or was his name Fred Ashman as was later annotated? Or is the sender Fred Ashman and those boys really had worms and fleas? Ah! Mystery unsolved. A little digging on ancestry sites may solve the identity of the sitter.
Bowlers And High Collars 
March 27th, 2015 at 2:58 am
Interesting card and comments, it would indeed be interesting to discover the origins of the comment and just who the sender was and their motivation but like many cards of the era they remain lost in the mists of time.
I partly agree about cards being written on, I enjoy reading the comments on the back especially the ones from lovers, wondering whether they lived full and happy lives or like so many swallowed up in the Great War. However I do hate writing on the front that encroaches on the image and where I’ve had to purchase that card because it isn’t in my collection I try to remove the text before posting. Revisionism at its best lol
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March 27th, 2015 at 3:06 am
I hate writings on the front too, if the space wasn’t meant for it! Alas, a lot of people wrote names right on the picture, often with an X. I can stand it if it’s a nice signature though. I have a CDV of a boy where someone wrote ‘a boy’ in front. No shit, Sherlock! Haha! It’s in pencil and I’m seriously considering removing it not just digitally but also on the actual photo.
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March 27th, 2015 at 3:15 am
Lol good to find a like minded person, the only exception is my autographed cards, then I have no objection
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