At the West Yorkshire Archive Service, we come across fragments of history in every way imaginable. From original floorplans to hand-drawn costume designs – there are so many ways that stories survive through the ages. So, let’s take a deep dive into something a little stranger, and more personal; one afternoon, sorting through old paperwork and headshots, we came upon a photo album of postcards.
Written by Aaron Cawood
Dear reader
In the late 1800s, starting in Austria, postcards were introduced and took many forms across the world. A ‘corresponendz karte’ in Austria, ‘private mailing cards’ in the USA where the government retained the exclusive use of the word ‘postcard’ – initially, postcards just had space on the back for the recipient’s address. It would be in 1902 that the United Kingdom became the first country to offer split-back cards, with space for a message alongside the address. High-quality photo cards became quickly popular, leading to ‘deltiology’ (the act of collecting postcards) being considered possibly the most subscribed hobby in history. Much like dedicating books to your loved ones, the act of inscribing a collectible to a loved one and giving them something to keep in the process took the world by storm; it is estimated that the number of postcards being sold was doubling every six months.
It’s a grey Tuesday in May 2024, peaking towards a promise of summer sunshine, and we are knee-deep in material for our research about Ken Dodd ahead of the renaming of the auditorium at City Varieties Music Hall. And in the box I am currently sifting through of performer photographs, I pull out a large photo album I have briefly looked at before but never stopped to take the photos out. Each photo inside is of a theatre performer, and each is a postcard. I read the first one I pull out;
“Dearest,
I am sorry to say I did not manage to catch the post therefore I am afraid you will think you are neglected, but it is not so. I hope you will forgive me. I had a pupil to night up to 8.30, I could not manage to squash enough time in for the letter. I promise you it shall never occur again. Write soon dear
Your own Markie R . J. xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx etc.”
Markie, date unknown. Credit: West Yorkshire Archive Service
The postcards
In total, I sit and pluck out 15 postcards to a woman called Nellie. Clearly a deltiologist herself, I read through a collection of one-sided conversations – her letters in reply are not a part of this history. This is a history of the gifts she received, and the people who sent them.
Markie is the first sender I stumble across and, in my searching, I find another three cards from him. “Her Markie,” he says, in them. “xxxxx etc.”, he says too. And “med min elskede”, a secret message between the two of them; “Do you remember the meaning of the above?” Markie’s cards are the first and the oddest, in that they are not dated. There are no postmarks.
Markie, date unknown. Credit: West Yorkshire Archive Service
Frank Lucas, 1904. Credit: West Yorkshire Archive Service
In fact, there are no stamps. Just the messages written on otherwise untouched cards. On all but one of them, he does not even write Nellie’s address. Markie feels alive with devotion and yet, somehow, like a dead end. I go through more postcards. I find another undated card from A.A. that says “I present you with this card in the hope that it will serve to remind you of Walter + I.”
The other 10 postcards I read are all dated, so can be helpfully segmented into a timeline with seven (or six, but we’ll get to that) major players. Frank Lucas sends Nellie Robbins a postcard on 19 September 1904 that reads “Regret could not see you before leaving. I have spoken to (?) as promised but he holds out no prospect. Kind regards, Frank Lucas.” I cannot decode who Frank has spoken to. Dead end.
Then, Peter Scragg asks Nellie to send him a postcard in return in 1905. He also says “One more to your collection.” Reader, he does not know the half of it. Frank seemingly returns in 1905 too, almost exactly a year since the first postcard from Frank Lucas, but it’s strange. The handwriting is notably different and it is signed just ‘Frank’ and, most curiously, it only says “You see I have not quite forgotten you.” A different Frank, despite how much better the story would be if it were the same Frank. We have Jack sending a postcard a week later to extend Nellie’s collection further. A nameless sender in 1906 updating Nellie on their holiday. From December 1907 to February 1908, Nellie is staying at Angel Hotel in Staffordshire and receives two postcards from an unnamed sender I am affectionally calling ‘Flowerboy’, due to the compelling sign-off on the second card that just reads “You didn’t send the flower.” The last three postcards are all from 1908 too. One from B.W.W, then two from B.W.D. We end on a plotty high note; with BDW writing to meet Nellie, in Blackpool, for a night at the theatre, on the very day she receives the last card in the collection – October 22 1908.
It’s a lot of information, a lot of characters, and a lot of narrative strands. We have B.W.D., someone she seems to meet in person despite him getting her address wrong in two different ways. We have Frank Lucas, who does not return to the story after seemingly having an important conversation on Nellie’s behalf in 1904. We have ‘Flowerboy’, we have Peter, and so on. And, at the top of all of it, we have Nellie Robbins. A woman in Blackpool collecting images of theatre performers from a collection of loved ones.
What does it mean?
We can see quite the history of theatre tracked through these postcards. Actress Lily Brayton, most famous for her work in Shakespeare’s plays. Marie Studholme, known for her work in comedy plays and for singing too. Sarah Bernardt, Seymour Hicks, Mabel Love; performer after performer after performer, each from different genres of the arts. Nellie’s eclectic love for theatre painted in full colour; sometimes literally, like in her postcard from Peter Scragg, which seems to have been hand-embellished with glitter and gems.
Away from the archive, I find out much more. Setting out to find Nellie Robbins in history is no small feat, even with the heaps of digitised census, birth and marriage records we have at our disposal now. I find Peter Scragg quickly, thanks to his unique surname, address, and the date. Born in 1839, I read about his family, but I come up short of any of it being helpful. He would’ve been about 66 at the time of writing his postcard to Nellie. That strand starts and ends there. So, I start looking at what the postcards do and do not say.
Due to the public nature of postcards, and the inability to write anything private or sensitive, senders set out finding ways to portray deeper meanings visually. This led to the ‘language of stamps’, a secret coding system based on the angle of the postal stamp and the type of stamp used. Cross-referencing this language to the postcards Nellie received, there are a few likely contenders. A notably askew stamp from Jack that might mean ‘A kiss.’ Another with the same meaning from Frank. ‘Come soon’ from Peter Scragg. Small echoes of love and hope in the top right corner. Or, just haphazard stamps. We go back to stamps.
Zena Dare, Maud Allen, Billie Burke, Mabel Love, Lily Brayton and an unlabelled performer. Credit: West Yorkshire Archive Service
The Language of Stamps postcard, 1915. Credit: The Postal Musuem
Stamps from Jack, Peter and Frank. Credit: West Yorkshire Archive Service
Or rather, to Markie’s lack of them. For a while, I wasted time assuming that Markie must have been giving his cards to Nellie in person, or delivering them by hand. Eventually, I return to that first postcard; “I could not manage to squash enough time in for the letter.” It becomes clear then, especially by the brevity of some of these postcards, that he was likely sending them enveloped alongside traditional letters. The postcards were literally gifts to his Nellie – collectibles for her wrapped up with longer writings. Writings that we do not have, nor can likely ever find. And I return to ‘Med min eslkede,’ their secret sign-off. In Danish; ‘with my love / to my beloved.’ A dramatic flourish to extend yet another confession of love.
And I land back on Nellie Robbins. I have a full name, several permanent addresses, and only two possibilities for her identity. In 1885, an Elizabeth Robbins gets married to a John Joseph Webb, in a church a stone’s throw from where she would be living in the 1900s. Nellie is a vague nickname and a versatile one, often used for names hardly even connected to the letters it uses, including names like Elizabeth. Besides the children she went on to have, there is not much information about Elizabeth Robbins, and I am unsatisfied with the timeline of her marriage – and the implication that Markie was not, in fact, a serious partner – so I keep looking. And then I find Nellie Robbins. Nellie Winifred Robbins from South Shore, Blackpool, exactly as noted in the postcards. And, the icing on the cake is that in 1927, she marries. And she marries a man called Frank. Not Frank Lucas, Frank Cayton, and I find myself briefly satisfied that the man who wrote “You see I have not quite forgotten you” in 1905 truly did not forget about her. And just like that, from a lineage of love letters and theatre performers, I have a name and a family tree and a life story, and wouldn’t that be a good ending?
But it isn’t. No good story ends so simply. See, Nellie Winifred Robbins is the perfect fit for our receiver of postcards, and it’s so specific it seems impossible to be wrong. But it must be wrong – because, if it were right, Nellie Winifred Robbins would’ve been as young as five years old at the time of the first postcards in this story. It can’t be her. I can’t find her. I have learned so much about her life through these letters, I have seen so clearly how loved she was and how much she was cared for. But, still, I cannot find her.
Yours, Nellie
So, where do we land? We have a woman whose name, age and face we cannot pin down. We have men who might be lovers, men who might not be lovers, and men who might not be men at all. Stamps askew that could mean something – and that could mean nothing at all. A historical story of love, theatre and friendship told in sporadic scrawlings on the back of photographs of performers. And we have employees of a theatre in 2024 sat, digging through boxes and boxes at West Yorkshire Archive Service, and coming upon a photo album. Over a hundred years later, the curtain opens up again. The curtain never ceases to rise. Nellie Robbins, each performer photographed, and each suitor who picked up a pen all come together as a reminder of the persevering power of our history and heritage.
"You see I have not quite forgotten you. With love from, Frank." Credit: West Yorkshire Archive Service
It serves as a reminder of the way that our physical history, the post-it notes and programmes we will leave behind, will be as persevering as the art and the artists and the sun continuing to rise. Stories are what connect us as humans – even when, and perhaps most of all, we become the stories ourselves.
