A not very ‘pc’ pc.

Amongst my recently discovered collection of old postcards I found this one from the early 1920s when I suspect that most people in this country had never seen a black person.

Today you would not be able to buy such a card and many people would find a card like this rather offensive, but I am sure that when my mother sent this one to her then boyfriend (my father) it was just meant as a piece of innocent fun. Open the flap in the boy’s breeches and out pops a strip of paper showing various views of Brighton.

If you can read the address you will see that part of it is ‘Railton Road’ which in later years was at the heart of Brixton’s West Indian immigrant community and sadly became known as ‘The Front Line’ after the terrible riots of 1981. 

I’m sure that my dad was pleased to hear from his girlfriend but I bet he wasn’t too pleased when he had to pay an extra penny to the postman because my mum had written a message on the card, which meant that it counted as a letter and therefore the one penny stamp, showing the head of King George V, did not cover the cost of postage.

My parents married in 1927, the same year that the movie ‘The Jazz Singer’ was released as the first ‘talkie’ with Al Jolson ‘blacking up’ and ‘murdering’ the hit song ‘Sonny Boy’….

…     Now that really was bloody offensive.