A Card with an unusual connection with St Albans

St Albans

This post card recently came up for sale on ebay - and I couldn't resist it. I needed to find why an extremely unusual advertising card had been published by the Alpha Trading Company of St Albans. 

Photographers

It turns out that the inventor of Reilloc Tyres lived in St Albans,  his son worked for the movie film pioneer Arthur Melbourne-Cooper, and the picture may be a still from a very early advertising film.

Full Details

A Free Sample of Eau de Cologne (in 1904)

Post Cards

St Albans

Sales promotion through your letter box is nothing new. 100 years ago it could come in the shape of an interesting post card for your collection. This card was sent from Coln, Germany, by a firm making Eau de Cologne, telling Mrs Hodding of St Albans than she can collect a sample from St Albans' major department store, J. Fisk & Son.

I have started to set up a page bringing together interesting examples of early advertising post cards. Have you any examples I could use?

Did your ancestor sell Thorley's Cake

Thorley's Cake for Sheep & Lambs
An advert printed on an envelope

Perhaps because of my farming ancestry, or the fact that my first job was with Coopers at Berkhamsted, I was interested to see this advert on an old envelope. It was printed on an envelope, together with the name of the agent. S. D. Simkins & Sons, of Hitchin.

   So I now know who Samuel David Simkins was, and the names of his sons, and a little about Thorley's Cake (although more investigation is needed). 

  However posting this has alerted me to a neglected area of this web site - the dealing with ephemera. One of the purposes of the site was to tell people about some of the more unusual sources of information - and the key feature of ephemera is that normally they are thrown away and it is only the rare item that survives. 

      So what I am doing is improving the Ephemera page, which includes a long list of items already posted. Some have already been reformatted - and the rest will probably be done over the next few weeks, when I want a small non-strenuous task to do.

UPDATE

  Following Anthony's comment about the Joseph Thorley living at Radlet in 1911 I have added significant information about the history of the company.