Description: ‘Making the Empire Christmas pudding’, artwork by F C Harrison produced for the Empire Marketing Board, 1926
This image is from the collections of The National Archives UK
Catalogue Reference: CO 956/62
Description: ‘Making the Empire Christmas pudding’, artwork by F C Harrison produced for the Empire Marketing Board, 1926
This image is from the collections of The National Archives UK
Catalogue Reference: CO 956/62
My Exit 78 blog post today from earlier , Fancy Dress and Fancy Anything, had some ads that weren’t what I usually see.
However, the lead-in line does say, “Shop Related Products,” so I guess these “Fancy Dress” ads are related:
It was just a little surprising. I guess the ad algorithm, in this case was pulling from the title.
Funny
(Our ads help pay for our online activities including hosting, domain expense and internet access.)
National Library of Ireland on The Commons at Flickr
Menu inside a Christmas Card from the Royal Army Medical Corps at No. 11 General Hospital – a part of the British Expeditionary Force in Italy, 1918.
Date: December 1918
Vintage Christmas – 1912
This image is from an illustration by Will Crawford on the cover of the December 11, 1912 issue of Puck, “America’s first successful humor magazine of colorful cartoons, caricatures and political satire of the issues of the day.” (Wikipedia)
Other Hands Up! items are available at Zazzle .
Library of Congress image.
It has become apparent that the ARA San Juan, a German-built diesel-electric submarine in the Argentina Navy, has been lost with all hands.
San Juan had been missing since November 15, following a naval exercise in Terra del Fuego archipelago and a shore visit to Ushuaia, the provincial capital. International search and rescue efforts in ensuing days were hampered by severe weather with waves as high as 33 feet (10 meters).
On November 23, the Argentine Navy reported that an event consistent with an explosion had been detected on the day San Juan lost communications by Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization (CTBTO) seismic anomaly listening posts on Ascension Island and Crozet Islands. CTBTO had been asked to analyze data early in the search, but no information was available until November 22 when CTBTO provided information to the Argentine government through the Austrian ambassador in Austria (CTBTO is based in Vienna).
Navy spokesman Enrique Balbi said evidence showed “an anomalous event that was singular, short, violent and non-nuclear that was consistent with an explosion.”
It’s been nine days since San Juan went missing. Even if found today, it’s unlikely that there would be any survivors.
Families of crewmembers have been told there is no chance that any of the 44 San Juan sailors are alive.
I served on the USS Casimir Pulaski (SSBN 633) blue crew for 6 deterrent patrols from 1974 to 1977. Pulaski was a fleet ballistic missile (FBM) boat. — Mike Goad [former MM1(SS)]
The image of San Juan was rendered in Akvis Sketch using a photo released by the Argentina Navy.
Smithsonian Institution
Christmas postcard from Pittstown, New Jersey rural carrier John S. MacIlroy to William Taylor dated December 21, 1915. The back of the postcard has a printed five stanza poem titled “If” that includes the verse, “when packages due don’t come on time / And those who are sending don’t raise their sign / it sure would save anxiety / if I knew you and you knew me.” Many rural letter carriers left holiday postcards for their patrons, though few went as far as Mr. MacIlroy in creating specialty cards such as this one. Fortunately for MacIlroy, he remembered to place a stamp on this postcard. Carriers who simply placed postcards in their patrons’ mailboxes without stamps were subject to disciplinary measures for misuse of the mailbox.
Persistent URL: arago.si.edu/index.asp?con=2&cmd=1&id=203574
Repository: National Postal Museum
The photographs of healthy kids playing with rosy cheeked, plump faced dolls are cute, but where did the dolls – and their clothing – come from?
Faces out of time #3
Children playing with Campbell Kid dolls. New York City, March 19121

In the pre-World War I years of 1911 and 1912, photographer Lewis Wickes Hine2 was so struck by the wretched conditions in which poor parents and their children made Campbell Kid dolls that he sought out some of the privileged children who played with and treasured them.3
Same children with dolls, different pose4
Putting a Campbell Kid doll to sleep. March 19125
Campbell Soup Company got its start in 1869 by Joseph A. Campbell, a fruit merchant from Bridgeton, New Jersey, and Abraham Anderson, an icebox manufacturer from South Jersey, with Anderson leaving in 1896. The red and bright white color scheme that graces its cans today was adopted in 1898.
Campbell Kids first appeared in ads in 1904. “Starting in 1905, they first appeared on the sides of streetcars and in magazine advertisements, first in black and white, and later in full color. They were so cute that the company licensed the E.I. Horsman Company to make dolls in their likeness” as promotional items. Enormously popular, other companies scrambled for the right to make them and they “were sold in many stores, such as Montgomery Ward and Sears. If a child in those days owned a doll, it was quite likely to be a Campbell Kids doll.”6
Little girl conversing with a Campbell Kid doll. March 19127
The images of children with Campbell Kid dolls are from the National Child Labor Committee Collection (NCLC) at the Library of Congress as are the images of homeworkers making the dolls and doll clothing.
Between 1908 and 1924, NCLC investigative photographer Lewis Wickes Hines documented working and living conditions of children in the United States. His work was instrumental in changing child labor laws in the United States.
Mrs. Alfonso Ricca, making rompers for Campbell Kids8
Already desperately ill with tuberculosis, Annie Maier was photographed sewing doll clothes in her family’s New York basement apartment in 19119, 10
Annie Maier, the 16 year old daughter of a New York Jewish family, was photographed at the sewing machine in the kitchen of her basement apartment making doll clothes for the Campbell Kids – working for a contractor, not the Campbell Company. Given the materials and a pattern, she was paid a few cents for each piece after the contractor collected the work.
Annie’s pale complexion contrasted sharply with the plump, ruddy health of the Campbell Kids, icons of health and nutrition. Her very ill father had already be committed to a tuberculosis hospital, so there was no male provider. A relief society had been helping them, but stopped, refusing to help unless the seriously ill girl – ill with tuberculosis herself – agreed to be hospitalized. She refused and, instead “was working on dolls’ clothes with tuberculosis progressing toward its final stages.”10
Annie Meyer, making Campbell-kids’ pinafores in her basement home11
Making dolls legs for Campbell Kids. Cattena family12

Making dresses for Campbell Kid Dolls in a dirty tenement room13
Romana making dresses for Campbell Kid Dolls in a dirty tenement room14
In one typical family in 1912, “the highest wage was $12.00 a week for operating on dolls clothes earned by the combined labor of the father, mother, and three children.”15
The month after the most recent of these photos, the Titanic, full of wealthy travelers and poor immigrants, sank after colliding with an iceberg.
Note: This is a very much expanded update to a post originally published July 24, 2012.
End notes:
Post-processing1 #3
Early 2000s Ford Freestyle, Utah Highway 12 in Cannonville, Utah, October 6, 2015, elevation 5918 ft (1804 m)
The intent with this photo was to get a fairly clear, crisp image of the vehicle with the background and foreground blurred as I panned the camera with the movement of the car.
I-64 northwest of Williamsburg in James City County, Virginia
I’m astounded sometimes when people mention multiple traffic violations.
In 48 years of driving, I’ve had three traffic tickets, one of which was reduced to a warning. I’ve also had a similar small number of warnings.
My first ticket was in 1976 in James City County, Virginia, for speeding. On leave from the Navy, we were visiting my family in Norfolk when we got a phone call that one of Karen’s brothers had died in a car accident, so we had cut the visit short and were heading to northwest Arkansas. Keeping pace with traffic, we got caught up in a coordinated speed trap. A couple of state troopers were set up in the median with a radar on a tripod. Then, just over a small hill were more officers directing offenders’ vehicles, including ours, to the shoulder where other officers were writing tickets.
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In most states’ vehicle codes, the following traffic violations will adversely affect your driving record – DMV.org:
- Driving with a suspended license.
- Violation of license restrictions.
- Committing a hit-and-run accident.
- Driving in the bicycle lane or on a sidewalk.
- Ignoring traffic signs and traffic cops.
- Running red lights and stop signs.
- Not pulling to the side for an emergency vehicle.
- Crossing a divided highway.
- Going over the speed limit, or under the minimum speed.
- Tailgating.
- Speeding in a construction zone.
- Illegal passing.
- Illegal U-turns.
- Not stopping for a school bus.
- Reckless driving.
- Causing another bodily injury through reckless driving.
- Drag racing (aiding or abetting).
- Transporting a person in the bed of an open truck.
- Drinking while driving, DUI, and DWI.
- Disobeying a toll officer.
Later that same day, still in Virginia, I rolled through a stop sign instead of coming to a complete stop. Of course, the state trooper parked nearby pulled us over. He let me off with a warning.
I80 east of North Platte, Nebraska
It was not quite 20 years later that I got my next ticket in August, 1995. We had been visiting family, first in Oregon and, then, in Nebraska and were on our way home to Arkansas on I-80 somewhere east of North Platte, Nebraska. The speed limit had been raised on I-80 from 55 mph to 65 mph about 8 years earlier. However, when the young Nebraska state trooper caught me on radar, I was going about 75 in our Chevy van.
Ironically, the speed limit on I-80 was changed later that same year to 75!
In my next traffic violation, in 2002, I was cited for reckless driving and, possibly, tailgating – I don’t remember. I was heading south out of the small town near us towards the larger city in our area, probably going to work or to the gym. I had turned my head to the left to look at something in the small shopping center I was passing, not realizing that the car ahead of me was slowing to turn in there. I turned my head back, saw the situation and before I had a chance to react….SMASH!… I rear-ended her.
The town marshal was the officer that showed up to investigate. When he gave me the ticket, he said that I could either mail in my fine or go to traffic court. He told me that, if I went to traffic court, he would recommend that I be given a warning instead of getting a fine, which is how I got a traffic ticket reduced to a warning.
The Jeep that I was driving was totaled. A few years later, the road where the accident occurred was widened and now has a turning lane, which makes that stretch of road much safer.
Excessive speeding really doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. When I’m driving the car or truck, I usually limit myself to no more than 5 miles per hour over the limit and, even then, a good percentage of the vehicles will pass me when driving on the interstate. When we drive to Little Rock, that might get us to whatever clinic or shops we are going to just a few minutes earlier, if the traffic cooperates. If I need to get there earlier, then I should leave earlier instead of driving faster.
With the motorhome, towing the car, we’re limited to 65 mph according to the manufacturer recommendation. In our case, I’ll actually, most days, only drive 60 mph, especially if there is a headwind or a crosswind. It’s more controllable and, actually, much less stressful than trying to keep up with the traffic.
We’ve never owned a radar detector or other device intended to beat the traffic rules.