Cats in Advertising

Cats have been used to advertise everything imaginable, from shoes, to groceries, hardware, and medicine. Here are two trade cards from the 1880s featuring cats. The first one is an advertisement for Dr. Thomas Ecletric Oil, used all around the world and equally good for man and beast. If that's not enough, it was used for internally and externally for coughs, croup, asthma, diptheria, rheumatism, lame back, and a number of other things. The ingredients included spirits of turpentine, fish oil, oil of tar, and red thyme.

 

 The second card is equally peculiar. The picture , with a caption of Declaration of Love, seems to show a cat swatting a monkey...or is that a dog with a very long tail? In any case, one of them is chained to the wall.

 
If you think this is a strange approach to selling stoves and hardware, check out the back of the card.

Stay tuned for more cat advertising cards next week.

City of Cleveland

Here is the Detroit and Cleveland Navigation Line's City of Cleveland by day and by night. The side wheel steamer was destroyed by fire shortly after it was built in 1907, but was rebuilt again by 1908. The Great Lakes steamer transported passengers between Detroit and Cleveland.

Here are the backs of the cards. I posted the second one first, because it has a message and some interesting cancellation stamps. The sender seems to have thought that a one cent was sufficient postage for a card from Detroit, Michigan to Mainz, Germany. It looks like it arrived postage due. I don't know enough about postal history though to be able to tell you why the amount stamped on it is 10 centimes instead of an amount in German pfennigs.

Here's the back of the first card.

Newgate Gap - Margate, England

Most of all I love postcards that show a snapshot of life as it was at that moment, people going about their business and perhaps stopping briefly to look at the camera. What happened just before the photo was taken? Did the man fall of the bike? Are the people on the iron bridge above watching this scene or looking out to sea? In any case, I would love to jump into the scene and take a walk to the refreshments shop, built into the rock face,  before I head down to the shore at Cliftonville, the coastal area of Margate, a town located in South East England.

This card shows the original bridge, built in 1861, a 42-foot span at an elevation of nearly 60 feet.  In 1907, a decision was made to replace the bridge with a new more ornate one.

Here's the back of the card. It's addressed to Mr. Chilvers, c/o Mrs Miles, Lower Lodge, Kingswood Manor, Burgh Heath near Epsom with a message that reads:

1 Princes St 

Margate

Dear Wilf

All right

Hope you are