by Sarah Freeman
Yorkshire Post, 26 October 2006
Why do seaside postcards have such an enduring appeal?
It didn't take long for publishers to discover what really made the British public tick.
In 1894, the Post Office granted permission for the manufacture of picture postcards. The earliest efforts were suitably tame, featuring panoramic views of Blackpool's Illuminations, Scarborough's coastline and the harbour at Whitby, but holidaymakers just weren't satisfied with landscapes.
When it came to sending greetings to their friends and family, they wanted something a little more risqué and when postcards appeared featuring overweight landladies, busty sunbathers and men of the cloth caught in compromising situations they just couldn't get enough.
At their peak, the cartoon-style saucy postcards, which took off in the 1930s, were selling 16 million a year. Even in an age when sex was still very much a taboo they were seen by most as harmless fun — but for the country's self-appointed moral guardians they represented a dangerous threat to society's very foundations.
In the early 1950s, when a newly- elected Conservative government came to power, among their priorities, alongside easing the economy through the post-war years, improving the country's education system and bolstering manufacturing industry, was a military-style crackdown on obscene publications.
They took the job seriously and when the good bits had been duly censored in around 167,000 books, the watchdogs needed another target and set their sights on the humble saucy postcard.
A Watch Committee was appointed in almost every seaside resort in Britain. Its members were given the arduous task of deciding which postcards fell foul of their high moral standards and which could be left on sale without fear of inducing cold sweats and panic attacks.
Every campaign needs a fall guy and top of the hit list was the prolific Donald McGill, a man dubbed King of the Saucy Postcards, who produced 12,000 different designs between 1904 and 1962 and whose reputation was sealed when he became the subject of an essay by George Orwell.
By today's standards, with sex used to sell everything from perfume to Pot Noodles, it's impossible to raise even an eyebrow at McGill's designs, which featured the usual lecherous middle-aged men, phallic sticks of rock and women whose waistlines failed to be flattered by a bikini. But the cartoon characters were enough to line the pockets of solicitors who were ordered by ministers to launch a prosecution.
The artist's double entendres and sexual innuendoes fell foul of the courts and when he was found guilty of violating the 1857 Obscene Publications Act and fined £50, the saucy postcard industry knew its days were numbered. In the wake of cancelled orders and falling sales, many ended the decade in bankruptcy.
If it was sexual inhibitions which sent many manufacturers on a downward spiral, it was sexual liberation which proved the final nail in the coffin. With the age of equality and the birth of political correctness, there was no room for gags about busts and bottoms and by the 1980s they had virtually died a death.
However, all fashions come and go and the seaside postcard may yet make a comeback.
A collection of cards by McGill was sold at auction in Leyburn yesterday and online auction sites like eBay are selling unprecedented amounts to collectors both in this country and abroad.
Nostalgia is now big business and the cards by the likes of McGill and the Yorkshire-based Bamforth and Co which closed 18 years ago, perfectly sums up a part of Britain's cultural heritage which would later give birth to the likes of Benny Hill and Carry On.
"It's a peculiar branch of British humour, a bit risqué, sexist perhaps and not politically correct," said a spokesman for Leeds company Fresh Faces, who bought the remaining assets of Bamforth and Co five years ago. "But everyone has their favourite and there's a new generation out there waiting to find these classic cards."
For many they represent a far simpler age, when children were happy to spend holidays doing little more than eating egg sandwiches on a windswept beach, when Filey was seen as an exotic destination and when candyfloss didn't come with a health warning.
"How many artists would sell 350 million prints of their work? I doubt if anyone's done it," said Michael Winner when recently exhibiting his own collection of McGill postcards. "You'd look at the pictures and have a titter. If you are a child, anyone with big bosoms with an innuendo is naughty. Particularly as there wasn't much of it then."
Today, the traditional British seaside resort may have been hit by the rise of low-cost airlines and cheap foreign holidays, but the saucy seaside postcard is a perfect reminder of the glory days when "kiss me quick" hats were de rigueur and you could spot a good B&B by the quality of its candlewick bedspreads.
