Today, young people can access their favourite celebrities easily via social media, following them on Instagram, TikTok or other platforms in order to see them and be involved with their lives. Yes, they also watch their bands play concerts, or actors perform on stage or on film, but there are other ways that they can ‘see’ them outside of these arenas.

But what did young people do in Victorian and Edwardian times? Social media was not available (some might say luckily), but those with the money to do so would still go to theatres and music halls to watch their chosen performers in person. When they could not do so, or if they wanted a more permanent reminder of an individual, then they might collect postcards of them.

Postcard collecting was a huge part of children’s and adults’ lives at the time. Postcards had been introduced in Britain back in 1870, and postage on them was only half that of letters, so they were relatively cheap to send (a halfpenny stamp was required). The Postal Museum says that by the end of the Edwardian era, over 800 million postcards were sent in Britain.

Photography was also becoming cheaper and easier, and there was a recognition that printing cheap photos of stars as postcards was a valuable means of publicity. They might be photos of actors and singers in character for a particular production, or in their own clothes. They were formal, but there were still degrees of formality within that. A female performer might be pictured in cross-dressing garb, legs on show, adding a bit of titillation for some male fans. But it was also an innocent pursuit, with many people aiming for a collection of cards about an individual, or simply about the theatre.

When I was researching my book Life of the Victorian Stage (Pen & Sword), I purchased some postcards of actors and actresses I had written about, to illustrate the book. It was not just these individuals who interested me, however – I was equally interested in the annotations on the back of these postcards, which had been sent to one individual by a family member or friend. I researched this, and it gave an insight into who might collect these postcards, and how their interest was humoured or even encouraged by those close to them.

Several postcards in my collection originally belonged to Harry Swift, and had been sent to him in 1903 and 1904. His address was given as 68 St Thomas Street, Scarborough. Luckily for me, the Swift family did not – as was common at the time – change address frequently, and had been residents of St Thomas Street since at least 1891. The addressee was formally Henry Robert Swift, born in 1890 in Scarborough. The fact that he was greeted in the postcards as Harry suggests they were sent by someone close to him, and the senders clearly had affection for Harry, as well as a good knowledge about what he liked. The postcards had a divided back, an innovation from 1902 that enabled the message and the address to be written on the same side – and if you sent a postcard in the morning, it might reach its recipient that afternoon. It’s no wonder that collecting postcards became a hugely popular hobby.

At the time these postcards were sent, Harry Swift was 13 or 14 – a teenage boy starting to develop an interest in the opposite sex. The postcards I have from his collection are all of pretty actresses: Ruth Vincent, Edna May, Marie Studholme and Queenie Leighton. Edna May, in particular, was a popular choice for postcards, and was exotic for home audiences, being an American-born beauty. At the time Harry received his postcard of her – 20 May 1904 – the 25-year-old was performing in London in The School Girl, The Darling of the Guards and La Poupée. Queenie Leighton, conversely, was both older than Edna, being 40, and a music hall star of the Edwardian era; Ruth Vincent, the same age as Queenie, was an opera singer and actress, who, like my own family members, was a member of the D’Oyly Carte Opera Company. After leaving the company in 1899, she took on roles elsewhere, and in 1904 was performing in the comic opera Véronique .

It’s not clear who sent Harry the postcards. There appear to be at least two different sets of handwriting, with one person sending cards from within Scarborough (the cards addressed ‘local’ and without a stamp). One card is sent from Thornton-le-Dale, a village around 15 miles west of Scarborough, and two cards are signed A.W. Two cards have no message at all, but one includes a short rhyme – ‘sent in affection/to swell your collection’ – adding ‘and it’s a 2d one’ to make clear that the sender has spent money on purchasing a higher worth card than a penny one. Another card asks, ‘Is it disguised enough for your lordship?’, suggesting an easy familiarity with Harry, but also implying that Harry wanted the cards to appear as though they came from different people – perhaps the handwriting of the sender was disguised. Certainly, the sender did not sign their name, so wanted to be anonymous to the boy. The postcard of Edna May was produced by a Yorkshire postcard company – Delittle, Fenwick & Co of York – and was part of a series. This was not an exotic postcard from far away, but produced in Harry’s home county, and sent by someone local to him, even though its subject was from across the Atlantic.

What opportunities did Harry have for going to the theatre or music hall and seeing these performers himself? He was the son of a watch and clock maker and repairer, William Swift, and was one of three children, although his younger brother Albert died in infancy. He grew up on St Thomas Street – initially, number 84, before the family moved to number 68 – with an extended family living close by. His family were not affluent nor upper class, but rather from a solid lower-middle-class background, and might well have been able to afford the odd trip to the theatre, but not a regular visit.

Scarborough certainly had lots of places to go and be entertained, though, if you did have enough spare cash. Having been a popular seaside resort since the late 17th century, it had plenty of amenities for both locals and tourists. When Harry was enjoying the stars of Edwardian theatre, he had the Londesborough Theatre to visit on the town’s Westborough, the already ancient Theatre Royal, and the Spa Theatre. Anyone in the area could enjoy music, dance, theatre and comedy, and local children like Harry would, if they had the money, be able to go to the theatre to watch performances from theatre companies on a provincial circuit, or individuals well known to them through newspaper reports, such as those in The Era and The Stage. Tastes then changed, and the theatricals and music hall shows of Edwardian Britain faced competition with the growth and development of the movies – the town’s North Bay Cinema opened in 1918, followed by the Futurist in 1921.

As for Harry Swift, he grew up and headed off to war, enlisting as a bombardier, and moving to Staffordshire. In 1915, aged 28, he married a Yorkshire woman, Lilian Butterworth, in Leeds. After the war, the couple settled in Sheffield, where their daughter Marjorie was born. Whether Harry maintained his love of the theatre – and of actresses – into adulthood is not known; perhaps he switched allegiance to the new stars of the cinema, or found other completely different interests as he grew older.

Harry died in Sheffield in 1978, aged 87; perhaps he kept his postcards all his life, and on his death, his family sold them or gave them away. But they were a snapshot not only of Edwardian interests, and the popular stars of the day, but also into the life and loves of a teenage boy from Scarborough. {