Monday 7 December 2020

On High Lane in 1913 with another postcard from Mr Sowerbutts of Manchester Road

This is another of those Tuck and Sons postcards and another specially distributed by Robert Sowerbutts of 105 Manchester Road.

Mr Soverbutts ran a “newsagents, stationary and circulating library.”

He had taken over the business sometime after 1909 and was still there to sell Edith this card which she sent  to a Mrs Eunice Weaver on November 6th 1913.

The message is the usual sort that was sent by postcard.  Edith hoped Mrs Weaver was well, wrote that her mother was too ill to make the journey to Longsight and that she would give Eunice “all the news when I see you tomorrow.”

The card was sent in the evening of the 5th with every expectation that it would be on the mat for Mrs Weaver to read with her breakfast before making the last minute preparations for Ruth’s arrival.

And it is why such postcards remained popular well into the 1940s.

Here was a way of communicating with family and friends which was cheap and quick and while it may not have had the immediacy of the telephone or the text was nevertheless the most reliable method of keeping in touch in.

All of which is why there are so many postcards left and why the big postcard companies were international in the stock they carried and the location of their offices.

Not bad for a humble postcard of High Lane sent in the winter of 1913.  Sadly we do not have Ruth’s address but the home of Mrs Weaver is still there in Longsight which may well be another story for the future.

Pictures; High Lane from the series Chorlton-cum-Hardy, issued by Tuck & Sons, November 1913 courtesy of TuckDB http://tuckdb.org/history

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