Post by Budleigh on Jul 26, 2011 7:58:45 GMT
From the late-Victorian period up until the 1930’s, it was usual to send an in memoriam card to someone who had had a bereavement in the family, although this practice has gone by the wayside somewhat in modern times.
It wasn’t long before football caught up with this idea and local printers started knocking-out similar cards after a defeat, generally in an important FA Cup game or after a relegation match, making out that the situation had, somewhat dramatically, caused the death of the club.
They were often rushed out to sell as the crowds left the ground and so the printing wasn’t of the highest standard, and the local printer may even have had one for each team ready to sell, depending on the result on the day or bought in pre-printed cards adding the losing teams name at the last moment, quite possibly with a portable press.
Due to the often poor quality of the cards most were discarded within days of their purchase and allied to the fact that this craze for these cards only lasted a short while up until the 1920’s, they have become somewhat of a rarity.
An often used image was the horse-drawn hearse, which I’ve seen on a number of these cards relating to teams from Manchester City to Pegasus. This is the image used on the card shown here which is decrying a loss for Torquay in the Cup.
As the actual game isn’t mentioned it can only be guessed at, but my bet would be it is from the first time we played in the FA Cup as a league side and lost at Exeter on the 8th of December, 1928.
It wasn’t long before football caught up with this idea and local printers started knocking-out similar cards after a defeat, generally in an important FA Cup game or after a relegation match, making out that the situation had, somewhat dramatically, caused the death of the club.
They were often rushed out to sell as the crowds left the ground and so the printing wasn’t of the highest standard, and the local printer may even have had one for each team ready to sell, depending on the result on the day or bought in pre-printed cards adding the losing teams name at the last moment, quite possibly with a portable press.
Due to the often poor quality of the cards most were discarded within days of their purchase and allied to the fact that this craze for these cards only lasted a short while up until the 1920’s, they have become somewhat of a rarity.
An often used image was the horse-drawn hearse, which I’ve seen on a number of these cards relating to teams from Manchester City to Pegasus. This is the image used on the card shown here which is decrying a loss for Torquay in the Cup.
As the actual game isn’t mentioned it can only be guessed at, but my bet would be it is from the first time we played in the FA Cup as a league side and lost at Exeter on the 8th of December, 1928.
