The Postcard
A carte postale that was published by Stévenard of Boulogne-sur-Mer. The card was posted in Boulogne-sur-Mer on Friday the 2nd. September 1910 to:
Master J. T. Robertson,
Crescent Boarding House,
Claremont Park,
Blackpool,
England.
The pencilled message on the divided back of the card was as follows:
"Boulogne, 2nd. Sept./10.
Dear John,
We are enjoying ourselves
very much. The weather was
very calm when we came.
Love to Auntie Alice and
yourself.
Jim."
Boulogne-sur-Mer
Boulogne-sur-Mer is a coastal city in Northern France. It is a sub-prefecture of the département of Pas-de-Calais.
Boulogne lies on the Côte d'Opale, a touristic stretch of French coast on the English Channel between Calais and Normandy.
Boulogne is its département's second-largest city after Calais, and the 60th.-largest in France. It is also the country's largest fishing port, specialising in herring.
Boulogne in the Great War
During the First World War, Boulogne was the arrival port for the first unit of the British Expeditionary Force to land in France, and for many others thereafter.
Boulogne was one of the three base ports most extensively used by the Commonwealth armies on the Western Front throughout the First World War.
It was closed and cleared on the 27th. August 1914 when the Allies were forced to fall back ahead of the German advance, but was opened again in October, and from that month to the end of the war, Boulogne and Wimereux formed one of the chief hospital areas.
Until June 1918, the dead from the hospitals at Boulogne itself were buried in the Cimetière de L'Est, one of the town's cemeteries, the Commonwealth graves forming a long, narrow strip along the right hand edge of the cemetery.
In the spring of 1918, it was found that space was running short in the Eastern Cemetery in spite of repeated extensions to the south, and the site of a new cemetery at Terlincthun was chosen.
To see a photograph of the cemetery, please search for the tag 45TBC33
Boulogne in World War II
In World War II, on the 15th. June 1944, 297 aircraft (155 Avro Lancasters, 130 Handley Page Halifaxes, and 12 De Havilland Mosquitos) of the Royal Air Force bombed Boulogne harbour to suppress German naval activity following D-Day.
Some of the Lancasters carried Tallboy bombs, and as a result, the harbour and the surrounding area were completely destroyed.
In August 1944 the town was declared a "fortress" by Adolf Hitler, but it succumbed to assault and liberation by the 3rd. Canadian Infantry Division in September. In one incident, a French civilian guided the Canadians to a "secret passage" leading into the walled old town and by-passing the German defenders.
Reconstruction of Boulogne After World War II
To replace the destroyed urban infrastructure, affordable housing and public facility projects in functional, brutalist building styles were carried out in the 1950's and 60's.
Blanche Scott
So what else happened on the day that Jim posted the card?
Well, on the 2nd. September 1910, Blanche Stuart Scott (1889–1970) became the first American woman to make a solo flight in an airplane, taking off from Hammondsport, New York, after two days of instruction by Glenn Curtiss.
Henri Rousseau
The day also marked the death in Paris at the age of 66 of Henri Rousseau, French post-Impressionist painter.
Henri Julien Félix Rousseau, who was born in Laval, Mayenne on the 21st. May 1844, was a French post-impressionist painter in the Naïve or Primitive manner.
He was also known as Le Douanier (the Customs Officer), a humorous description of his occupation as a toll and tax collector. He started painting seriously in his early forties; when he was 49 he retired from his job to work on his art full-time.
Ridiculed during his lifetime by many critics, he came to be recognized as a self-taught genius whose works are of high artistic quality. Rousseau's work exerted an extensive influence on several generations of avant-garde artists.
A Garment Worker Strike in New York
Also on the 2nd. September 1910, a strike of 70,000 New York garment workers ended after nine weeks and an estimated $100,000,000 worth of losses secondary to the strike.
The major concession won was that each manufacturer was required to have a union shop, and a guarantee of a 50-hour work week—9 hours a day for five days, followed by a 5-hour day.
