Early Delivery: Old photo of a child, woman and dog

This old photo is printed on a piece of thin cardboard, which I found earlier this autumn in a box of loose papers.

The cardboard wasn't attached to anything. And there is no other context for the image, beyond the "EARLY DELIVERY" caption and the smaller "MADE IN U.S.A." credit.

So we just have to take this for what it is: A child in overalls handing what appears to be loaf of bread from a basket to a nice-looking lady, while a dog (some kind of spaniel?) scans the area.

Or maybe it's not bread. Perhaps this is an early-morning drug transaction, with the dog serving as lookout.

Thoughts?

1955 advertisement for UK bookmaker William Hill

This full-page, color advertisement for The Hill Organization appears at the front of the hefty 1955 edition of The International Year Book and Statesmen's Who Who, which was published by Burke's Peerage.¹

The small type states:

"Here in Piccadilly Circus stands Hill House², headquarters of the world's greatest bookmaking organization. Paying out millions of pounds every year in winnings on the famous 'No Limit' terms, The Hill Organization provides a confidential weekly credit service without equal for those who back horses, dogs or Fixed Odds Football. Ringe WHItehall 0981 for details."

William Hill was founded in 1934 at a time when gambling was illegal in Britain. It now has more than 15,000 employees and, according to Wikipedia, turned a profit of more than £230 million in 2012. If you're thinking about placing some sports bets or doing some online gambling, you can find William Hill here.³

Footnote
1. Burke's Peerage, which was founded in 1826, now describes itself as "the definitive guide to the genealogy and heraldry of the Peerage and Landed Gentry of the United Kingdom, the historical families of Ireland and the Commonwealth of Nations, the Imperial, Royal and mediatised families of Europe, the Presidential and distinguished families of the United States of America, and other prominent families worldwide."
2. No, not that Hill House.
3. Among the events you can place bets on today are: the Croatia vs. Switzerland U21 soccer match, the Washington Wizards vs. San Antonio Spurs NBA game, and the William Hill Grand Slam of Darts, featuring Simon Whitlock against Ted Hankey. Sure.

6 book covers you probably won't see anywhere else this week

Because one of the continuing missions of Papergreat is to explore strange old ephemera, to seek out old books and old paper, to boldly post what no man has posted before. Enjoy!

A Visit to the Hospital
Published in 1958 by Wonder Books. Written by Francine Chase under the supervision of Lester L. Coleman, M.D. Illustrations by Ken Rossi.

Impossible Yet it Happened!
Published in 1947 by Ace Books. Written by R. DeWitt Miller.¹

Mom, you gotta be kiddin'
Published in 1968 by Fleming H. Revell Company. Written by Mary D. Bowman and illustrated by Don Sampson.

From the back cover: "Mary D. Bowman, author of the delightful 'Hey, Mom!', now writes of her life with three teen-age children, 'where Bowmanor is the scene of vying for telephone rights, going steady unsteadily, and a music (?) group called the Mystic Souls."

What's A Mommy For?
Published in 1973 by The Standard Publishing Company. Written by Florence W. Kilgore and illustrated by Janeth McManus.

How to Draw Funny Pictures
(A Complete Course in Cartooning)
The tattered dust jacket is from the 1936 edition published by Frederick J. Drake & Co. The book was written by E.C. Matthews and is illustrated by Eugene "Zim" Zimmerman.

Boy dates Girl
This edition was published in 1955 by TAB Book Club (Teen Age Books). It was written by Gay Head and illustrated by Katherine Tracy.²

Footnotes
1. Some of the "impossible" events cited on the back cover include:

• The girl who borrowed the soul of a dead woman for fifteen week
• The Indian idol that could not be photographed
• The two women who, in 1901, suddenly found themselves back at the court of Marie Antoinette
• "The human cork," a man who could stay afloat for fifteen hours with twenty pounds of lead tied to his ankles
• The haunted mirror that could not be moved but which willed itself to fly into the air

2. This is the second Gay Head book featured on Papergreat. The first was Hi There, High School!

Vintage postcard: Bathing beach at Cleveland's Gordon Park

This unused, split-back postcard was published by Century Post Card Co. of Cleveland, Ohio. It shows a very crowded beach at Gordon Park, which opened in 1893 along the shoreline of Lake Erie in Cleveland. According to Michael Rotman, writing on Cleveland Historical:

"A grand bathhouse catered to the multitudes who crowded onto the park's beach, and the city also provided facilities for boaters, fishermen, and picnickers. Meanwhile, further inland, south of the beach, wooded areas and formal gardens provided quiet retreats for those seeking a more relaxed atmosphere."

This is a good example of a hand-colored postcard. These closeups show the quality of some of the work done by the artist.

Obviously, hand-coloring had it limitations and it was easy for the work to get sloppy and/or look a bit ridiculous at times.

But it would be a bit hypocritical for me to criticize the use of spot color too much. Twenty years ago, when I was a young and sometimes silly sports editor at The Gettysburg Times, I was responsible for orchestrating this absurd use of spot color on a black-and-white photo in the October 15, 1993, edition of the Times:

Old spools of sewing thread

In the category of Things I Don't Need To Be Hoarding¹, I have a metal container full of old thread spools and sewing needles that I picked up a couple of years ago at a yard sale. Because.

It's time for this sewing paraphernalia to move on to another owner. But before it moves out, I wanted to record for posterity some of these really old spools (which is kind of why I bought the container in the first place). The spools are from American Thread Co., Coats & Clark's, Talon, Clark's O.N.T., Richardson's, and Star, among others.

At least these were within a proper container. Back in January 2012, I posted about some embroidery thread, pins and more that I found buried inside an old geography book.

Footnote
1. My wife thinks that many things I've brought into the house fall into this category. She is correct.

The Hams of Vesuvius, Virginia

Pictured above is an image from the first page of 1912's New High School Algebra by Webster Wells and Walter W. Hart.¹

Per the stamp, the book was for the W.O. McCluskey Oyster & Fruit Co. of Wheeling, West Virginia, and was from Raleigh Givens Ham of Vesuvius, Virginia, an unincorporated community in Rockbridge County.²

Vesuvius, believe it or not, has a website. Here's an excerpt from its history of Vesuvius:

"The beginnings of the village of Vesuvius date back to the Iron Furnace that was built in northeastern Rockbridge County around 1828. Named for the Mt. Vesuvius volcano in Italy, Vesuvius Furnace was located about one-half mile from the present intersection of Route 56 and 608. ... Pig Iron stamped 'Vesuvius' has since been recovered from the port of Richmond. ... Although the Furnace ceased operations on December 15, 1854, ruins of the Furnace still stand, giving an idea as to what it was like in Vesuvius Furnace's heyday. ... Among the early names of the residents of Vesuvius were Bryan, Bradley, Campbell, Cash, Crist, Drawbond, Fitzgerald, Hite, Humphries, and Wright. ... The area is also home to rare minerals. One is called churchite and is a fairly scarce rare-earth phosphate containing yttrium and erbium, industrially valuable metals. Churchite is found only in Rockbridge County, USA; Cornwall, England; and Auerbach, Germany. Another rare phosphate is Rockbridgeite."

Meanwhile, in addition to the mention of Raleigh Givens Ham, the initials A.M.H. (above the word "McCluskey") refer to A.M. Ham, whose name is written elsewhere in the mathematics textbook. Finally, Maxine Ham is written on the inside front cover. (Of course, it is possible that A.M. Ham and Maxine Ham refer to the same person.)

According to Ancestry.com, there was a Raleigh Givens Ham who was born on 1912 to Robert Fulton Ham and Rosa Ella Fitzgerald. He married Mary Margaret Garber, had six children, worked for a time as a bricklayer, and died on March 29, 1985, in Augusta, Virginia. But I don't believe he was the only Raleigh Givens Ham in the family.

While we It would be interesting to find out more about W.O. McCluskey Oyster & Fruit Co. and the Hams of Virginia.

I wonder if one of the Hams worked out the equations I found written on this sheet of paper tucked away inside New High School Algebra.

Footnotes
1. According to the copyright page: "This book may be had with answers or without answers at the same price. Answer books, bound in paper, may be obtained free of charge of teachers."
2. Other unincorporated communities in that county include Brownsburg, Gilmore Mills, Marlbrook, Mechanicsville, Natural Bridge, Natural Bridge Station, Raphine, and Rockbridge Baths.

Three illustrations from 1925's "Mother Goose Secrets"

Way back in May 2011, I wrote about the marvelous Story Gnome in Mother Goose Secrets, a 1925 book by Barbara Webb Bourjaily. Revisiting that volume, which is in very rough shape, I find that I gave short shrift to some of the book's other illustrations.

In and of themselves, they are quite impressive — part fairy-tale whimsy with a little bit of 1920s design and style mixed in. They're definitely a product of their era. Here are three of them for your enjoyment this evening.

From "Hush-a-bye, Baby"

From "Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary"

From "Hickory Dickory Dock"

1908 bookplate from novel used at The Jacob Tome Institute

In 1908, The Jacob Tome Institute purchased a copy of Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe for 33 cents and issued it to one of its pupils.

Was it ever returned? Possibly not.

The bookplate affixed to the inside front cover (shown above) indicates that the novel was supplied to a student named Worthy E. Coslett on April 21, 1908. He is the only person listed as a recipient, and this is what was written in the column on the book's status:

So, Worthy never gave it back? Did he like Daniel Defoe's novel that much?

Or, perhaps, the book was officially given to him as some sort of reward or incentive. We'll certainly never know for sure.

I can't find much about the life of Worthy, beyond a 1910 U.S. Census report that indicates that he was born around 1894 in Pennsylvania and had moved to Cecil County, Maryland, by 1910. He would have been about 14 when he was issued this book.

For information about Jacob Tome and The Jacob Tome Institute, the best account I discovered is a piece by historian June Lloyd. Tome, it turns out, was born in York County, Pennsylvania, near Hanover. Here's a relevant excerpt from Lloyd's account:

"Jacob Tome (1810-1898) grew up poor in York County, but died at Port Deposit, Md., as one of the richest men in America. ... His crowning achievement was the Tome Institute, a free school founded for Cecil County children. The day school opened in 1894, with the 600 student capacity quickly reached. Estimated construction costs were around $500,000, and Tome's initial endowment was $2.5 million. Jacob passed away on March 16, 1898, pleased that the first commencement from the school was about to take place. An even grander school with multiple buildings was erected above Port Deposit after his death. Probably due to the Great Depression, the Institute's holdings depreciated to a point that the upper campus was sold in 1938 and closed in 1941, but in 1942 the U.S. Navy took over, and the site became the core of the Bainbridge USNTC, eventually training 244,000 sailors. ... USNTC Bainbridge closed in 1976, and in 2000 the closed base, including multiple imposing former Tome Institute stone buildings, was turned over by the federal government to the state for redevelopment."

But that's only a sliver of Tome's fascinating life. To learn more, I recommend Lloyd's article as a great starting point.