Football fever is raging here in Bagarmossen today. New Order, Robin Hall and Jimmie MacGregor, the Lightning Seeds and Jorge Ben Jor are on constant repeat on the gramophone.
And yesterday in a Södermalm chazza I caught sight of something that made my week.
An exquisite, Stanley Matthews thermos flask Who needs a Joy Division Oven Glove when you’ve got one of those?
My son was pleased as Punch when I have it to him, even if he hasn’t a Scooby about the legendary Wizard of the Dribble.
The artwork is from the March 1953 cover of Charles Buchan’s Football Monthly, the first quality, post-WW2 football mag. This article by Simon Inglis is an excellent read.
“Launched in September 1951 – at a time when all British males, players included, still had to complete national service – Charlie’s brainchild was football’s first ever glossy. Its arrival, just as the Festival of Britain exhibition was winding down on London’s South Bank, coincided neatly with the nation’s transition from post-war austerity to a bolder, brighter future. The only mystery is why such a publication took so long to appear.
If football’s popularity is measured purely in attendances, rather than by grassroots participation or piles of dosh, the postwar period witnessed the game’s zenith. At their peak in 1948-49, attendances topped an astonishing 41 million. Yet despite this popularity, something was missing.”
So what glorious pop culture memorabilia do you own? Or wished you owned if you could afford them?
A James Bond dinky toy complete with ejector seat? A Beatles Fan club membership card? A Half Man Half Biscuit Biscuit Tin. An Elvis Presley pillowcase. Jabba the Hutt jim jams?
What’s lurking at the back of your wardrobe?
Here’s that article.
https://www.wsc.co.uk/stories/remembering-charles-buchan-s-football-monthly-the-pioneering-football-magazine/?fbclid=IwZXh0bgNhZW0CMTAAAR2fJZXTWlIsKmShW0Nwklxc8n8trdCR6h8GJWN2bE_H_mnu1B2-x3JQewk_aem_vGPYA3iW1aKKjHljuQD9Ow
Here’s Stanley in action.
Spare a thought for poor old Stan Mortensen whose hat trick is over-shadowed by the “Matthews’ Final” tag.
Towards the end of his life, he used to remark of his burial, “I suppose they’ll
be referring to that as the Matthews’ Funeral
I do have a reissue of the Bond Dinky car, a pair of Gong potheaded pixie boots and a lead from Abbey Road.
I had the James Bond Aston Martin with the ejector seat, bullet shield at the back, and guns at the front. Also has the Lotus that transformed into the submarine (it didn’t actually float under water though, just sunk to the bottom of the bath).
The yellow 2CV from Octopussy had no fangled gadgetry.
Also had an early Batmobile with rubber tyres, and flames that went in and out as it rolled along.
Once again, the similarly-vintage Rij saves me the bother of typing…
Pride of place in my collection is the Elvis chess set. Elvis is of course the King, Priscilla the Queen and Graceland is the rook. I also have a Godzilla Pitch Repairer (it’s for fixing divots on golf greens) that I purchased in Japan. That’s still in it’s wrapper, no way I’m getting that dirty.
Two blue Ferrari Dinky racing cars. No idea why I have two. Those and a few books are all that remain of my childhood.
There are some wonderful items being mentioned. Love that Elvis Chess Set @Cookieboy.
https://www.chessbaron.com/product/TH2099/
What I like about our thermos is that it is a piece of merch invoking a time when merch did not exist. Or did it?
This article provides an overview of rock music merch.
https://insights.fluidbranding.com/blog/from-elvis-to-kanye-heres-everything-you-need-to-know-about-band-merch#:~:text=The%201940s%20to%201960s%20sees,that%20music%20merchandise%20took%20off.&text=It's%20thought%20teenagers%20created%20the%20very%20first%20example%20of%20band%20merch!
But what about other areas such as opera, theatre, elections, music hall, sports, state funerals, public executions….? Surely there were always wide boys ready to make a few groats?
We know that there was merchandising at the Globe Theatre thanks to the Bard of Avon and his masterpiece: The Merchtable of Venice. Those groundlings bought souvenir T shirts like there was no tomorrow!
Here’s bit of merch that I suspect none of you own: a Boris Johnson T shirt.
https://www.fruugo.se/boris-johnson-homage-t-shirt-for-boris-fans-present-till-brexit-supportrar-nyhet-present-till-kvinnor-inspirerad-av-brittisk-politik/p-301695844-675787274?language=sv&ac=ProductCasterAPI&gad_source=1&gclid=Cj0KCQjwkdO0BhDxARIsANkNcrcmJVK_d50_6jmKb_AdXVwZYFCwl1GWZ9mD8VAV0csWGAJtcNu8f9QaAn6CEALw_wcB
I wouldn’t even use that t-shirt for mopping the floor.
That chess set is way too fancy, mine is very cheap and nasty which is very fitting. This is mine here… https://www.amazon.com.au/Elvis-Chess-Set-Collectors-Tin/dp/B0012CEDGM
Talk about politically incorrect!
Cigarette cards date back to 1875.
“Between 1875 and the 1940s, cigarette companies often included collectible cards with their packages of cigarettes. Cigarette card sets document popular culture from the turn of the century, often depicting the period’s actresses, costumes, and sports, as well as offering insights into mainstream humour and cultural norms.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cigarette_card
And then there were the Brooke Bon PG Tips cards:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brooke_Bond#:~:text=From%201954%20until%201999%2C%20packets,the%20internationally%20acclaimed%20bird%20painter.
“From 1954 until 1999, packets of Brooke Bond tea included illustrated cards, usually 50 in a series, which were collected by many children. One of the most famous illustrators of the cards was Charles Tunnicliffe, the internationally acclaimed bird painter. Most of the initial series were wildlife-based, including ‘British Wild Animals’, ‘British Wild Flowers’, ‘African Wild Life’, ‘Asian Wild Life’, and ‘Tropical Birds’. From the late 1960s, they included historical subjects, such as ‘British Costume’, ‘History of the Motor Car’, and ‘Famous Britons’. The last series in the 1990s concentrated on the Chimps of the TV adverts.”
Got quite a few of those.
Ditto.
You can pick sets up on eBay for surprisingly low prices
I don’t think there were any merch tables at the Battle of Waterloo.
But if you want some Napoleonic merch in 2024, this site is for you.
https://www.napoleon-souvenirs.com/en/
These broadside ballads were the topical songs of the time.
https://dpuspecialcollections.omeka.net/exhibits/show/imminent/broadsides
That page is a real find, Hubert. Hats off to The DePaul University Library
They really go into fascinating detail about the British reaction to and anxiety about the Napoleonic threat.
That Bonaparte chap cast a long shadow! Fear of the “Bogeyman” lives on in children’s culture to our own day.
In the days when public hangings of notorious felons took place, it was common that pamphlets recounting the person’s crimes in full gory detail, would be sold to the eager crowd.
Excellent comment,@Mike_H. Gallows merch was doubtless a nice little earner.
It led me to the tragic tale of William Dodd, the “Macaroni Parson”, who was hung at Tyburn.
https://dailybritain.wordpress.com/tag/forgery/
Now, here’s a whole thesis on Elizabethan rogue pamphlets. Hours of interesting reading!
Writing Rogues: Cheap Print Representations of Deviance in Early Modern London
By Eleni Liapi
https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/19909555.pdf
Even before they got to the scaffold, the public were fascinated by notorious criminals-
I’m sure I read somewhere that condemned felons would sell their story to the highest bidding scribe, to get a little money for their dependants.
Thanks @Mike_H.
That comment led me to several interesting pages about Tyburn.
This one covers the rituals of executions rather well.
https://tyburntree.wordpress.com/tyburn/
It mentions the “chapbooks” that were very popular with the audience.
“Execution was an aesthetic as well as emotional experience. The ars moriendi tradition enjoyed a strong revival under Elizabeth and the Stuarts; how one died was as important as how one lived. The execution ritual was an instrument of the state but was a highly personal statement for the individual as well. The public clambered for chapbooks containing accounts of the condemned’s behavior and the wisdom of their last words. The executions scene, like plays, were “read” by audiences of the time and almost always moralized. Most accounts editorialize the final performance of the condemned as successful (died well) or disgraceful (died badly). Pamphlets recording last dying speeches were more a literary genre than a form of journalism and were so popular that they continued until the 18th century.”
So what is a chapbook? Wiki can help us.
“A chapbook is a type of small printed booklet that was popular medium for street literature throughout early modern Europe. Chapbooks were usually produced cheaply, illustrated with crude woodcuts and printed on a single sheet folded into 8, 12, 16, or 24 pages, sometimes bound with a saddle stitch. Printers provided chapbooks on credit to chapmen, who sold them both from door to door and at markets and fairs, then paying for the stock they sold. The tradition of chapbooks emerged during the 16th century as printed books were becoming affordable, with the medium ultimately reaching its height of popularity during the 17th and 18th centuries.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chapbook
Here’s a fascinating look at chapbooks intended for children:
https://speccollstories.ncl.ac.uk/children-and-chapbooks-a-middle-modern-encounter/index.html
Here you can see a few.
They were tiny!
Now some historical background.
This long article on chapbooks begins with an engraving of a “chapman”, a travelling salesman who sold chapbooks.
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/48800/48800-h/48800-h.htm
Well I never! What a hopeless chap I am! I’d never heard the term chapbook before this morning. Now I discover there’s all kinds of material about them on-line.
Scottish chapbooks, for example.
https://www.pure.ed.ac.uk/ws/portalfiles/portal/11876642/_Little_Story_Books_and_Small_Pamphlets_in_Edinburgh.pdf
The modern word “cheap” derives from “chapman” and is related to the Scandinavian word köp and köpman!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chapman_(occupation)
Who’d have thought that a thread about Stanley Matthews would take us to Tyburn??
Reminds me of Alec Guinness writing his memoirs the night before he is to be executed in Kind Hearts And Coronets. Top film of course, but always thought it convenient that it required such a convolution to catch him out. But now you make it seem like it was a common enough thing for a condemned villain to do..
Actually Dennis Price who had offed SAG numerous times.
KHAC is up there with A Matter of Life and Death as best British film ever
Here’s that final scene.
This might encourage you all to go and watch it.
Poor old Dennis Price. Such a singular talent and such a sad life
You are on to something there, @Sewer Robot. The confessions of a condemned person as a minor literary genre. There’s probaby a name for it.
Tring to find out led me to this paper about Dickens and public executions.
https://repository.library.georgetown.edu/bitstream/handle/10822/558266/Brandwood_georgetown_0076M_12287.pdf;sequence=1
“A vocal opponent of public execution throughout his career, Dickens deplores
the dramatization of capital punishment in numerous letters and public statements;
the culture of carnival surrounding the scaffold produces a corruptive theater, he
claims, in which the criminal can attain a “monstrous notoriety” at the moral
expense of the crowd (Letters 224). Public hangings in Victorian London routinely
drew audiences of 3,000 – 7,000, with particularly infamous criminals attracting
30,000 – 40,000 and even, by some reports, up to 100,000 spectators (Gatrell 7).
The “dark and dreadful interest” that drew such numbers to Tyburn and Newgate,
according to Dickens, reflects “a law of our moral nature, as gravitation…in the
structure of the visible world”; if this propensity is natural, however, its indulgence
is nonetheless morally degenerative, “odious, and painful” (Letters 220, 218).”
Victor Hugo was another opponent of the death penalty and wrote a short novel about a condemned man
https://www.everand.com/book/510143436/The-Last-Day-of-a-Condemned-Man
Yes, Dennis Price. But the film is those memoirs played out on screen, it is a story telling device, but, for me, a perfect one.
Ealing Studios’ other brilliant narrative device was the Mervyn Johns story that began and ended Dead of Night – another magnificent UK film
There will be a fight in our family when my Dad eventually passes.
Original Eagle annuals. Jeff Arnold and the Riders of the Range. Original 50s Beano and Dandy. Superboy. Plus I think Tiger.
Unfortunately my brother is 5 minutes away, so he’ll have a decent head start
Here’s a wonderfully learned and entertaining blogger, Professor Hedgehog, (aka Caroline Murray) with some observations on chapmen, bankruptcy, pedlars, “onion johnies”, Eastcheap etc.
https://professorhedgehogsjournal.uk/
She’s a wolrd-class meanderer. Right up my street!
Ealing Comedies! What a great opportunity for some retroactive merch!
There are so many fans here on the AW
T shirts, posters,props.,,,
My mind boggles!
“I shot an arrow in the air … she fell to earth in Berkeley Square ”
Not quite there but you get the AI drift.