…Ellisdons Magic Tricks

Ellisdons was a London shop established in the late 1890’s which sold practical jokes, magic tricks and novelties, as shown in this advertisement headed “Make the Ladies Scream”. (There is just so much wrong with that phrase)

The Magic Soot that I purchased, and which was claimed to brush off instantly and cleanly, was of course made of black plastic. I did once have the “nail through the finger” trick, but that seems to have been consigned to the bin in the distant past.

The shop closed in the 1980’s, but you can still buy many of the novelties it once sold.

Whoopee cushion anyone?

…a soldier’s postcard October 1914

This card, from a newly-minted soldier, sent three months after the start of the Great War, displays the excitement, optimism and patriotism seen at this early stage of the war.

It reads:

“Was never better. I am off to try my stick on the Germans tomorrow instead of going to church. Will write to you from the Front. Yrs Sincerely G E Bayliss. Been staying at Aldershot”

Few could have imagined, at this time, the struggle that was to follow. Those now famous battles of Verdun, the Somme and Passchendaele were still several years in the future.

Did Mr Bayliss survive the war, I wonder? What was his story?