Don't Forget in 1929 - a photo on Flickriver

Don't Forget in 1929

            The Postcard

A postcard bearing no publisher's name. It harks back to the days when a milkman delivering pint glass bottles of milk from his milk float was a regular morning feature of British towns and villages.

The card was posted in Snodland, Kent on Wednesday the 3rd. July 1929 using a 1d. stamp. It was sent to:

Mrs. Watson,
140, Magpie Hall Lane,
Bromley Common,
Kent.

The message on the divided back of the card was as follows:

"Dear Mrs. Watson,
Just a PC to you. Hope
you are enjoying yourself
by the seaside, don't make
yourself sick.
Love to all from
Y. Reed."

The 1929 Postal Union Congress

The red 1d. stamp on the back of the postcard features the profile head of King George V surrounded by the words 'Postal Union Congress 1929' in a horseshoe shape.

The ninth Postal Union Congress was opened in London on the 10th. May 1929 by HRH The Prince of Wales. 

As the formal meeting of the Universal Postal Union held every four years, the congress was attended by representatives of most of the world’s major postal authorities.

The two previous congresses in Madrid and Stockholm had been marked by special stamps, so by the latter half of 1927 discussions had begun within the General Post Office on the necessity of issuing stamps for the London Congress. 

Previously the GPO had only issued one commemorative set, to mark the British Empire Exhibition in 1924.

It was known that King George V had very definite views on the matter: he told Sir Kenneth Clark, then Director of the National Gallery, shortly before his death:

‘I want you to make me a promise. Never allow 
them to make all those funny issues of stamps 
like some ridiculous place like San Marino. 
We invented the postage stamp - all it had on 
was the sovereign's head and postage and its 
value. That's all we want.’

Ramsay MacDonald

So what else happened on the day that the card was posted?

Well, on the 3rd. July 1929, the Ramsay MacDonald government announced they would cut imports and manufacture as much as possible domestically in order to fight unemployment.

A Death in Yellowstone

Also on that day, 42-year-old Georges Landoy, a newspaper editor from Antwerp, Belgium, fell into a hot spring in the Old Faithful area of Yellowstone National Park. 

He died of his burns two days later. 

The hot spring into which Landoy fell was subsequently named the "Belgian Pool".

Dustin Farnum

The 3rd. July 1929 also marked the death of the American actor Dustin Farnum.

Dustin Lancy Farnum, who was born on the 27th. May 1874, was an American singer, dancer, and actor on the stage and in silent films. Although he played a wide variety of roles, he tended toward westerns and became one of the bigger stars of the genre.

He was born the eldest of three boys in Hampton Beach, New Hampshire, the older brother of actor William Farnum, whom he closely resembled, and the lesser known silent film director Marshall Farnum (died 1917). 

Dustin married Mary Cromwell in 1909, and they divorced in 1924. He then married Winifred Kingston; they were the parents of radio actress Estelle "Dustine" Runyon (1925–1983).

After great success in a number of stage roles, Farnum landed his first film role in 1914 in the movie Soldiers of Fortune, and later in Cecil B. DeMille's The Squaw Man.

Dustin died of kidney failure at Post Graduate Hospital (now NYU Langone Health) in Manhattan, aged 55.
   

Taken on: April 21, 2024

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Sets appears in: • Comic Cards - A Peculiarly British Affair

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