GIRLS WERE DUMPY

Press, Volume CI, Issue 29973, 7 November 1962, Page 16

GIRLS WERE DUMPY

Beauties Of A Bygone Era

Pink tights are an anachronism now. but they were a favourite garment for the cigarette-card beauties of the turn of the century, judging by a collection found by a Picton reader of ‘‘The Press.” Lea Retallick, of Picton, has sent a sample of the cards her mother collected, and she is sure most of them are at least 70 years old. They look it. The ones depicting pretty girls—and most of them do —show how the standard of beauty has changed with the years. The “sylph-like” figure must have been reserved for consumptives in those days, because every lovely lady in the collection is not only well-rounded, but positively dumpy. This is particularly true of the narade of stalwarts used to illustrate a series of cards listing international code signals and of another tobacco company’s collection of girls in what appear to be theatrica' costumes. Others in the collection are “real photographs” of beauty queens. One of Marie Lloyd describes her as “one of the most popular piquante Music Hall favourites.” but the rest have names only. They range from a stately M‘lle Geraldi. through a sultry Vashti Earl to a coy maiden sitting on a table over the name La Cavalieri.

There are also two very obvious joke cards—one of them of a man unsuccessfully dodging three pieces of flying crockery. The caption reads: “Triple Plated.” The aristocrat of the bunch is a picture printed on satin over the usual cardboard. It is a “Broad Bordered Yellow Underwing” butterfly (to size), “not uncommon in British Isles in July and August.”