One of Bamforth & Company's most popular lines of cards was the Song Cards of the First World War. Over 600 sets were mass produced using verses of popular songs and featuring live models.
James Bamforth started out as a portrait photographer in 1870, and started producing slides in 1883. In the last years of the 19th century and again from 1913-1918, Bamforth’s made moving pictures, and the company is hailed today as a pioneer in the field. Between 1900-1920, two of the company’s main products were comic postcards (using live models) and live model song postcards. Both of these types first came out in black and white, but by 1910 most if not all of the cards were in colour.
Bamforth’s produced some 600 sets of song postcards before abandoning the series shortly before 1920. These song cards have been described and classified by Westerhout ("Song Postcards of the Early 20th Century" by G T Westerhout 2011 - accessed April 2022).
In the same era, Bamforth’s also started making comic cards with drawings that became known as “saucy seaside postcards,” which sold in the millions between the 1920’s and the 1980’s. Sadly, these cards are what Bamforth’s is best known for today. However, the song postcards, which are now relatively unknown outside the field of postcard collecting, shed a fascinating light on late Victorian and Edwardian society.
I have grouped my collection of Bamforth’s song cards in the following albums broadly using Westerhout’s classifications - War-related, Romance, Heartbreak, Social Commentary and Religious.
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