Valentine's Cards showing Manx Views

Introduction

Valentine's of Dundee were a major producer of postcards, they issued their first in 1897 and produced more view-cards than any other publisher. They have a longer history as photographers - James Valentine (1815-1879) studied photography in Paris before joining his father's printing firm (which had started in 1825 and engraved blocks for printing linen) ; he exhibited photographic portraits from at least 1856. They produced many cartes-de-visite from the mid 1850s and photographic views (paper as well as magic lantern slides) from the mid 1860s, thus they had a large stock of images on which to draw when postcards became popular. A limited liability company was founded in 1900 and went public in 1907 under the title Valentine and Sons. By the 1950s and '60s it had concentrated on Greetings Cards, and was taken over by John Waddington in 1963; postcard production ceased in 1970. The monochrome image archive was donated to St Andrew's University.

The following is a first attempt to provide a database of postcards of Manx views issued by Valentine's - I must ackowledge the great help provided by Mike Kelly in allowing me access to his database, all errors in the following are however mine! My own estimate is that pre WW1 a little over 1% of Valentine's cards were of Manx Views.

The first cards did not usually carry a number but post c.1903 their cards contained a small JV logo and a reference number - generally bottom right hand corner; prior to this there would have been an internal registration number which may not be that used for a later card. Cards number 61014-74339 apparently date 1908-1912 but the detailed information is missing from the archive. The years indicated are my best guess based on grouping batches; they appear to be consistent with the views portrayed but without having had the opportunity to examine the Valentine archive I may be out by a year or so. It may be possible that the photograph is of an earlier date then the rest of the batch, I don't know whether Valentines bought in images from freelance photographers or always used their own staff - a couple of the Ramsey cards look very like the work of G.B. Cowen. The earlier 4 figure numbers were, I think, originally intended to be sold as photographs to be stuck in scrapbooks (I have a few such images) but those with 5 figure numbers appear to have been taken with the intention of producing postcards. In a few cases earlier images may have been replaced by a later one but retaining the original number; one obvious case would appear to be the substitution of a picture of IOMSPCo vessel Snaefell IV for Snaefell III lost in WW1. Some images may have been artistically updated (e.g. to remove obvious anachronistic items) to extend their life but apart from a few augmented storm scenes I have not found this in any Manx view I have seen.

Sometimes the images are also used by other issuers - the MANxxx numbers refer to those cards issued by the Manx Electric Railway.

Many of the photographs were used in collected views, - 128 Views, 150 Views of the IoM, 165 Views of the IoM and 180 Views (c. 1930) - these kept the number though not all numbers were visible after photo reduction and some of their numbers are very hard to decipher, in particular 5's and 6's are easily confused).

Most cards in my (admittedly small) collection are un-posted, and thus undated, those with readable postmarks are shown as card (date) - however all cards shown here are either in Mike Kelly's collection or personally seen by him in other collections.

The on-line archive at St Andrew's quotes a registration date against the card - these I have shown as ®XXXX - however whilst those post c.1904 (which is about the time the postcards carried an identification number) agree with the view those pre 1900 are I think more questionable, as several of those which can be dated by reference to buildings etc are at least 12 years post the supposed registration date, these are indicated with a '?' following the ®date. It is of course, possible that later images were substituted for obsolete images (? Port Soderick) but in a few cases (eg Palace Dance Hall) there was no real reason to portray the view at an earlier date. Some of the views, especially of waterfalls, are virtually undateable (and in fact some would be the same today), others could be dated by comparing a sequence of photos.

Post-First World War Valentine cards (earliest recorded 1920) bear a date code in the stamp box. Up to 1940 this was in the form of the year followed by the issue (e.g. 36-1, 38-2), but from 1941 was changed to a letter. Different styles of cards might well have different titles for the same photograph.

Database

[v] = vertical format. Titles in []'s are not present on the card but given in the text of the collected views otherwise they are my interpolations to give the earliest possible date. StA = online image at St Andrew's

4-Figure numbers

These appear to be pre 1901 - the X refers to the size.

5-figure numbers

6-figure numbers

Numbers above 100,000 were allocated to Foreign view cards - thus when the Home (UK + Ireland etc) reached 99,999 the new numbers had to be above the foreign numbers Numbers above 200000 would appear to be 1927 and later .

Letter + Number

View cards numbered A.xx & R.xxx date post 1934 (A refers to Scotland, R to Ireland & Isle of Man). The A. may also refer to the Art series (ie reproductions of painted views) - there are many many more than these - my own interest is generally pre 1918 thus I have not devoted any time to these later views.

References

The archive is held at St Andrew's University - see< http://www.archiveshub.ac.uk/news/03021901.html > - a library of images can be searched at http://specialcollections.st-and.ac.uk/photo/controller/showleaves

Books using images:

 DC1996 : Douglas Centenary 1896-1996 (ISBN 1 873120-21-4)
TWOI Our Heritage: that was our Island 1995 (ISBN 1-899932-00-3)

Any comments, errors or omissions gratefully received The Editor © F.Coakley , 2001