‘‘It’s on the cards’ Victorian and Edwardian Postcards -Vanessa Mann
Vanessa Mann started her talk by pointing out that between 1902 and 1910 there were 6 billion pieces of mail passing through the post office, and the majority of these were post cards. In cities there were 5 deliveries a day, so a post card sent making an arrangement to meet in the evening could be posted on the same morning. Her interest in post cards is not only the illustration on the front, but the messages on the reverse, and the people involved in these. She has traced a number of those who wrote the messages, and the recipients and through this has been able to hand these cards and messages onto their descendants, and she suggested that post cards were the first example of a social medium, distributed across time and place. The talk was illustrated with examples of the pictures on the post cards and the messages
