Roller skating has had a chequered past over its nearly three hundred year history. Given its ebb and flow of popularity since the start of the 20th century, writers labelled each generation's attraction a "craze!" The caption in a 1904 Decatur newspaper read, "Old Craze Comes Back," adding, "Roller skating promises to be as popular as it was twenty years ago." Reported on 11th October 1904, the statement announced the opening events of a new roller-skating rink in Decatur, Illinois. In 1906, with the opening of another Chicago rink, the Inter Ocean newspaper complained that "after twenty years of exemption from the affliction, the desire to roll is again taking possession of American adults...the mania has struck Chicago!”
The resultant antics of novices on the rinks proved an inspiration to postcard publishers like Bamforth and cartoonists like Dudley Buxton with this early B&W postcard, Thackeray and others below. The skating rink also provided a backdrop for fashion sketches like those in the Charles Naillod cards (PC_ArtN_Naillod11 and PC_ArtN_Naillod12). Tom Browne meanwhile points to the dangers presented by skating away from the rink (PC_Browne_313).
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