1 00:00:18,360 --> 00:00:22,290 Thank you very much for that. And in fact, it covers most of what I want to say. 2 00:00:22,290 --> 00:00:25,680 So it takes a lot of pressure off me. 3 00:00:26,190 --> 00:00:33,150 And I wanted to talk about the wonderful toys and games and the Butlins collections and how they can be useful as well as interesting. 4 00:00:33,990 --> 00:00:37,980 But they did ask me to say first a bit about collecting and about myself. 5 00:00:38,670 --> 00:00:48,150 Apparently a lot of times collections come from people who've passed on or bit past it and they perhaps thought didn't apply to me for some reason. 6 00:00:49,590 --> 00:00:53,130 And now I've got a little poker here. 7 00:00:57,060 --> 00:01:03,390 About me. Yes, I did grow up in, I suppose, the 1950s, a little bit of the late 1940s, 8 00:01:03,900 --> 00:01:09,150 and there wasn't much television and there wasn't much to be bought and the ration cards. 9 00:01:09,780 --> 00:01:16,350 I can't even I don't want to go on about me, but I, I can remember we lived on the East Coast in view of the sea, 10 00:01:16,770 --> 00:01:26,190 and I can remember these German bombs, bombs coming over and V ones and they had little noise and I could hear them from my bedroom. 11 00:01:26,190 --> 00:01:31,230 And when the noise stopped, you knew that they were going to drop down and there would be an explosion. 12 00:01:31,670 --> 00:01:36,719 It didn't particularly traumatise me, but, you know, that's where I grew up. 13 00:01:36,720 --> 00:01:40,620 I grew up with a love of the sea and a view of the sea. 14 00:01:41,520 --> 00:01:43,230 Family activities in the evenings. 15 00:01:43,890 --> 00:01:49,990 Aunts and uncles, brothers and sisters would gather round and they quite like playing board games they always had done. 16 00:01:49,990 --> 00:01:57,389 In the days before the war. My father got brothers and they like playing bridge, sort of family bridge competitively, a bit competitively, 17 00:01:57,390 --> 00:02:05,820 and the aunts and uncles would pay for play for a penny, a point bit of fun, and the children were roped in to play at bridge as make up numbers. 18 00:02:06,150 --> 00:02:13,110 So we got the impression that games were fun and entertaining and social activity between friends and relations. 19 00:02:14,130 --> 00:02:18,090 A love of games and boats and collecting, I think. 20 00:02:19,190 --> 00:02:23,930 Probably you're born to be a collector. You know, I collect almost anything, and it's a passion. 21 00:02:24,290 --> 00:02:30,439 And it started when I was a child sailing up the river and there was a a little beach where you could land. 22 00:02:30,440 --> 00:02:35,719 It was mostly mud, but this beach washed against a sandy cliff and items were washed out to the cliff. 23 00:02:35,720 --> 00:02:38,870 There were little fossils, shells and shark's teeth and things like that. 24 00:02:38,870 --> 00:02:48,020 And I collected the shark's teeth and put them into little boxes as a sort of pre teenager and took them up to the local Natural History Museum, 25 00:02:48,320 --> 00:02:55,220 talked to the curator who was quite interested because what the sea washed into little sections I could find quite quickly. 26 00:02:55,460 --> 00:02:59,810 It took him years and years to find them at to dig. So he liked what I was collecting. 27 00:02:59,810 --> 00:03:06,889 And I found even as a child, if you got some knowledge about the tiny subject and became knowledgeable, you got respect. 28 00:03:06,890 --> 00:03:12,950 And it was a lesson I learned about collecting the fun of finding something new and exciting on the beach. 29 00:03:13,280 --> 00:03:17,270 And oh, that's a wonderful thing. I haven't seen one of those. And then learning about it. 30 00:03:18,470 --> 00:03:21,830 So collecting generally and why old toys and games? 31 00:03:21,830 --> 00:03:29,450 Well, as I said, we used to enjoy playing old things, but in the fifties you went to the toy shop or you looked in the games cupboard at home. 32 00:03:29,990 --> 00:03:37,610 I think there was just a game of Ludo, a game of snakes and ladders, maybe a chess set, maybe a draft set and not much else. 33 00:03:38,060 --> 00:03:42,680 Yeah, welfare families, perhaps a game of Monopoly. But, you know, there wasn't much. 34 00:03:42,680 --> 00:03:47,180 But if you went to see Grandma, she'd get something out of a drawer that was made before the war. 35 00:03:47,180 --> 00:03:51,290 And it was always better made and much more interesting than the old stuff, than the new stuff. 36 00:03:51,740 --> 00:04:00,740 So I started when I finished school looking out for these things and they could be found without spending much money. 37 00:04:01,070 --> 00:04:09,080 And like with the fossils, I soon found that I knew more about the games I was collecting and buying from a dealer than the dealer did. 38 00:04:09,410 --> 00:04:14,510 You know something? Sometimes antique book dealers would put a few games on a shelf, didn't know much about them, 39 00:04:14,510 --> 00:04:20,810 and then I would chat to them and sometimes I'd keep them by for me. So that's how I came into our games. 40 00:04:21,590 --> 00:04:25,340 And what does the collection reflect now? 41 00:04:25,340 --> 00:04:34,579 It's in a way, it's the largest one in the country of the type that I was collecting, but I didn't intend it to be completely comprehensive. 42 00:04:34,580 --> 00:04:38,209 It still reflects, to some extent my personal interests. 43 00:04:38,210 --> 00:04:43,460 You know, I enjoy a joke and a laugh and I love the sea maritime things. 44 00:04:43,460 --> 00:04:50,330 So it helps to know that I've collected things that I like rather than trying to be sort of scientific about it. 45 00:04:53,260 --> 00:04:59,410 When I was deciding to add things to the collection, I'd think about it initially when I was young and starting. 46 00:05:00,340 --> 00:05:05,469 Is it beautifully made? You know, I collected poetry books and for the wrong reasons. 47 00:05:05,470 --> 00:05:12,700 I like them if they are beautifully bound, you know. And the games I would like them if they were beautifully made, a wonderful chess piece, 48 00:05:13,030 --> 00:05:18,820 nicely carved or something, turned out of hardwood, a wonderfully illustrated print or something. 49 00:05:20,010 --> 00:05:27,180 Towards the end didn't matter so much, and I was much more interested in whether it shone a light on social history or whether it made you think. 50 00:05:27,870 --> 00:05:31,320 And then, as I knew more about them, is it rare? Is it unusual? 51 00:05:31,330 --> 00:05:38,790 Does it fill a gap? Does it add to knowledge? But always, not least, you know, is it fun and does it make you laugh or smile? 52 00:05:40,240 --> 00:05:46,030 Here's a first picture of a game called UPS and Downs in India. 53 00:05:47,350 --> 00:05:59,980 On a serious point, this is one that made me think page 59 of Space 59 shows magic lantern slides being used to display. 54 00:06:00,190 --> 00:06:07,060 This board game was made by the Church Missionary Society, and it's slightly intended to send a message to people. 55 00:06:08,320 --> 00:06:13,000 And here's the message. You know, using it can help you spread your message. 56 00:06:14,170 --> 00:06:17,890 And this is 100 years ago. And then here's another message. 57 00:06:18,670 --> 00:06:21,880 Look. 57. Opposition turned out to village. 58 00:06:22,330 --> 00:06:25,370 Here's a well-meaning Westerner who thinks he knows better. 59 00:06:25,690 --> 00:06:30,910 And here's the locals saying, no, thank you. You know, it made me think about what's going on in the world today. 60 00:06:31,870 --> 00:06:36,429 And here's an utterly wonderful image already in the bottle in this one. 61 00:06:36,430 --> 00:06:39,459 And it's in the Johnson collection and it's games like this. 62 00:06:39,460 --> 00:06:44,380 And the Johnson that one reason why I put my collection alongside them, because I had it together. 63 00:06:44,650 --> 00:06:53,200 You know, it makes a wonderful hole for research. But his knapping the nihilist a hundred years ago, you know, with his dynamite and his gun. 64 00:06:54,550 --> 00:07:01,160 And it made me smile. The cartoon, if you like, slightly propaganda of what a horrible terrorist looked like at the time. 65 00:07:01,970 --> 00:07:12,010 And it reminded me also, if you know about the siege of Sydney Street Worth looking up, and it's almost exactly what happened in Paris recently, 66 00:07:12,460 --> 00:07:18,130 100 years ago, you know, there were thousands of police and soldiers involved and an artillery gun brought up. 67 00:07:18,580 --> 00:07:22,990 And they're trying to find this Peter, the painter. And they fired into the flat. 68 00:07:23,020 --> 00:07:29,950 The flat was burnt out. The found the charred bodies, the mysterious Peter, the painter, had disappeared and was never found. 69 00:07:30,310 --> 00:07:38,980 So history goes round and looking at old games and learning what happened in the past seriously can help you can improve your perspective, 70 00:07:38,980 --> 00:07:44,400 I think, on what's going on today. Now back to the categories in the collection. 71 00:07:44,910 --> 00:07:52,920 Everybody keeps talking about it or it's easy to talk about it as a collection of boardgames, and I'm keen to emphasise that it isn't just boardgames. 72 00:07:52,950 --> 00:07:55,170 So here are a few things that are in it. 73 00:07:55,530 --> 00:08:04,350 Of course there are board games and they mean usually strategy games like a chess or a race game like Ludo or Snakes and Ladders. 74 00:08:04,860 --> 00:08:11,850 But there's, of course, card games, as you've seen, and dominoes, which are a kind of card, but usually a title double ended. 75 00:08:12,810 --> 00:08:18,330 There's dexterity games which are involve activity like shove ha'penny or Jenga. 76 00:08:19,140 --> 00:08:23,850 There's word games. I've given an example. Scrabble. Question and answer games. 77 00:08:23,880 --> 00:08:28,530 I suppose Trivial Pursuit, party games, charades and Pictionary. 78 00:08:28,530 --> 00:08:33,780 Things you do in a group. Games of pure chance like a lotto. 79 00:08:34,950 --> 00:08:38,790 No strategy. Not really a race. Jigsaws and puzzles. 80 00:08:38,820 --> 00:08:48,930 These are things you can do by yourself without an opponent as teaching toys like an alphabet pastime, like a scrapbook equipment counters and dice. 81 00:08:49,980 --> 00:08:54,870 And then, not least, there's a lot of books and catalogues and trade lists which had two knowledge of the subject. 82 00:08:56,610 --> 00:08:59,639 And I would just say that if you want to know more, 83 00:08:59,640 --> 00:09:07,980 because this is a very brief talk and until one day all the things here that in the Bodleian are available to view, 84 00:09:08,640 --> 00:09:18,240 you can view the 1500 items that I've given and an extra thousand besides and an existing website which you'll see at the bottom of this slide. 85 00:09:19,020 --> 00:09:27,900 Games sport dot org UK and that comprises before 1750. 86 00:09:28,110 --> 00:09:37,800 It's mainly facsimile, it is facsimiles because the items are very rare and from 1750 to 1830 of the early stuff, 87 00:09:37,950 --> 00:09:42,840 the majority is a colleague of mine who's collected a wonderful collection of very early printed games. 88 00:09:43,470 --> 00:09:46,800 My stuff mostly starts around about 1800. 89 00:09:47,950 --> 00:09:53,730 And you'll see from 1830 to 1870, there's a 400 items. 90 00:09:54,090 --> 00:10:02,910 70 next 40 years, 650 next, 40 years, 500 last 40 years, 700 right up to 1990 or 2000. 91 00:10:03,360 --> 00:10:10,079 So it's quite a good spread over a 200 year old period of items to look at. 92 00:10:10,080 --> 00:10:14,400 And you can see them, you can click on the database and I'll talk more about it at the end. 93 00:10:16,010 --> 00:10:24,830 Now. I'm going to show you a few more pictures and just starting with some examples of the different types I mentioned. 94 00:10:26,420 --> 00:10:32,630 This is an example of the most common a race game. It's a board game, which is a race with a start and a finish. 95 00:10:33,470 --> 00:10:39,110 And if you don't watch dad's army air P is air raid precautions. 96 00:10:39,680 --> 00:10:47,120 And this game came out by Robert's brothers, I think I was told just recently that been found in a catalogue from 1939. 97 00:10:47,630 --> 00:10:56,390 So it's before the air raids really started. And that's why at 32, the chap's wearing a gas mask, because I think experience and the first war, 98 00:10:56,690 --> 00:11:01,219 we were frightened of gas bombs being dropped and all the children were issued with gas masks. 99 00:11:01,220 --> 00:11:08,900 And I can remember having one. But earlier, this is what you'd call an abstract strategy game. 100 00:11:09,800 --> 00:11:14,090 It's a game that's been around in Northern Europe for a thousand years, Fox and Geese. 101 00:11:14,690 --> 00:11:19,910 And it's very nice if you sometimes come across a board like this and you think it's a solitaire board. 102 00:11:20,300 --> 00:11:23,640 If it's got these diagonal cross lines on, it won't be solitaire. 103 00:11:23,640 --> 00:11:27,770 It's Fox and Geese. And so an abstract strategy board. 104 00:11:27,950 --> 00:11:31,700 Very nice to find one dated from 1813. That's quite unusual. 105 00:11:33,380 --> 00:11:36,860 Here's an example of a puzzle. This is a little homemade puzzle. 106 00:11:36,860 --> 00:11:43,400 But, you know, it took my fancy. It says, take the red ribbon off the green without removing the buttons. 107 00:11:43,970 --> 00:11:47,629 And the buttons don't go through that hole at the bottom. So you can see immediately. 108 00:11:47,630 --> 00:11:55,340 It's a bit tricky. Nicely made. Somebody has taken trouble at home to make something as an entertainment, you know, sort of thing. 109 00:11:55,340 --> 00:11:58,460 I like. Games, equipment. 110 00:11:58,640 --> 00:12:02,600 These are used sometimes instead of dice to totems. 111 00:12:02,780 --> 00:12:06,650 I think we normally call them different kinds, different periods. 112 00:12:07,400 --> 00:12:14,390 The ones with H and P on, incidentally, are for playing a game of chance called Put and Take, which some of you may remember. 113 00:12:16,020 --> 00:12:20,339 This is educational toy actually an alphabet on the reverse of these, 114 00:12:20,340 --> 00:12:26,340 but they've got a R word on the front with the same capital letter and you can talk about the picture. 115 00:12:26,760 --> 00:12:32,370 So it's a little educational toy, very nice and quite hard to find if you're on a modest budget collecting. 116 00:12:32,370 --> 00:12:39,490 But I was lucky to pick these ones up. Here's an example of a word game firm called Salus. 117 00:12:40,120 --> 00:12:44,469 And again, what I really liked when I collected this one and added it was the picture 118 00:12:44,470 --> 00:12:48,940 underneath slid of the children around a table as a family playing the game. 119 00:12:49,750 --> 00:12:52,420 The youngest child having to stand on something so she can reach. 120 00:12:53,050 --> 00:13:00,070 And underneath is a picture of either a mother or a governess showing something educating a young girl. 121 00:13:02,470 --> 00:13:06,550 This is an example of a trade list in for important information. 122 00:13:08,080 --> 00:13:14,020 J Buckland. John Buckland was what was called a toy maker as opposed to a printer and bookbinder. 123 00:13:14,290 --> 00:13:22,240 He was a toy maker in London working from about, I think 1800 to about 1825, 1830. 124 00:13:22,780 --> 00:13:27,280 And here at the bottom of a game of Bell and Hammer, he's printed his list of games. 125 00:13:28,060 --> 00:13:31,560 Um, Peninsula, I've seen Peninsula. 126 00:13:31,570 --> 00:13:35,050 It's the Iberian Peninsula on a board, the board game. 127 00:13:35,560 --> 00:13:39,890 And it follows Wellington's campaign. The. Siege. 128 00:13:40,100 --> 00:13:45,590 I think siege is a version of Fox and Geese, and there's one called Bonaparte's Flight. 129 00:13:46,220 --> 00:13:49,910 New games, mathematical recreation. That must be interesting. 130 00:13:50,480 --> 00:13:53,719 Lucha. Petty chess run. Tribute. 131 00:13:53,720 --> 00:13:57,500 Royal tribute. Caricature. Lottery. That's obviously just a game of fun. 132 00:13:58,250 --> 00:14:01,460 So these are games. I'm just saying I haven't found. 133 00:14:01,730 --> 00:14:06,410 I don't know of a copy anywhere with wonderful to find them, but here's a list of them. 134 00:14:06,590 --> 00:14:10,880 And if it wasn't for the list, we wouldn't know they existed. So the list is important on its own. 135 00:14:12,150 --> 00:14:15,450 Uh, dexterity games I've collected. 136 00:14:15,450 --> 00:14:21,990 And you might say, What's that? Well, to my definition, it's anything that requires physical activity. 137 00:14:22,470 --> 00:14:30,330 And this particular little race game with printed yachts is managed by tweaking the string rather than by throwing a dice. 138 00:14:30,540 --> 00:14:36,240 So it's a dexterity game in my categories. And finally, the types. 139 00:14:36,690 --> 00:14:41,460 This is called a party game where everybody in the party has a little card to fill in. 140 00:14:41,940 --> 00:14:45,809 But you could equally well call it a word game because everybody is trying to 141 00:14:45,810 --> 00:14:49,440 make up the maximum number of words out of the letters in Oxford or Cambridge. 142 00:14:49,950 --> 00:14:57,950 And again, I chose this one personally because I loved the artwork on the bobsled, you know, nine 1930s artwork. 143 00:14:57,960 --> 00:15:09,830 Very, very nice to me. Now I can slow down slightly, I think can just take you on a quick tour on a chronological, chronological basis. 144 00:15:11,060 --> 00:15:17,040 1672. 1950. Going to start with. 145 00:15:18,390 --> 00:15:21,020 Some cards which are not in my collection, and they're not here. 146 00:15:21,030 --> 00:15:26,910 They're actually in the Museum of Childhood in Edinburgh, but they do illustrate the subject quite well. 147 00:15:27,270 --> 00:15:28,770 And we did go up to Edinburgh. 148 00:15:28,790 --> 00:15:33,840 We were lucky to be shown around what they'd got in their boxes at the back because normally you wouldn't know they were there. 149 00:15:34,260 --> 00:15:42,300 And to be allowed to take some pictures and here's a pack of cards which came out in the late 17th century. 150 00:15:43,170 --> 00:15:52,080 So it's pretty early for English printed games, and they are what I would call morality cards because there's advice given underneath the picture. 151 00:15:52,470 --> 00:15:56,340 And you'll see the first one shown is gaming and revelling. 152 00:15:56,850 --> 00:16:09,360 And the bit of advice, number one is such gaming ought to be a board where in which sleepers and covetous covetousness with idleness is only learnt. 153 00:16:09,870 --> 00:16:14,280 So it's nice. And then the next one that happens to be shown. 154 00:16:15,300 --> 00:16:20,970 I don't know whether this is tongue in cheek or serious advice at the time, but it did really make me smile. 155 00:16:20,970 --> 00:16:27,360 But I'm sure it would make some people cross a sceptre is one thing and a ladle is another. 156 00:16:29,010 --> 00:16:32,310 Number two, the one I worried about. 157 00:16:32,520 --> 00:16:37,500 The the more a woman looks in her glass, the less she looks after her house. 158 00:16:41,730 --> 00:16:44,490 And and at the end, again, 159 00:16:44,490 --> 00:16:54,120 if you think about it it's quite a serious message wishes and would is a no good householders so the you know obviously that's nice 160 00:16:54,120 --> 00:17:02,430 the messages be content with what you've got and here is a less interesting game but it's the earliest English printed race game. 161 00:17:02,850 --> 00:17:09,360 It came out I think on the continent, perhaps in Venice around the middle of the 16th century, 162 00:17:09,660 --> 00:17:13,770 and it was copyrighted in England around the middle of the 17th century. 163 00:17:13,770 --> 00:17:22,020 A game of goose. And it's a straightforward anticlockwise spiral finishing of square number, I think 63. 164 00:17:24,790 --> 00:17:29,560 What's the earliest thing that I collected? Well, I've been able to date these little games counters. 165 00:17:30,400 --> 00:17:36,250 The coronet at the top is a no coronet. And the arms are partly the arms of the Middleton family. 166 00:17:36,640 --> 00:17:42,400 And the Earl was made into a duke around 1725. 167 00:17:42,400 --> 00:17:46,450 So we know these don't date from much after 1725. 168 00:17:47,140 --> 00:17:51,340 So that's the earliest thing I've been able to date that I've actually picked up. 169 00:17:53,260 --> 00:18:00,249 The earliest printed game is this dissected puzzle, sometimes called jigsaws, but the jigsaw wasn't invented until later. 170 00:18:00,250 --> 00:18:09,280 But these are designed to teach children initially geography and then other things, and you put them together and learn where the counties go. 171 00:18:09,730 --> 00:18:13,450 And this little one has got very nice cartouches it's by a print. 172 00:18:13,450 --> 00:18:17,200 According to publisher Robert Sayer, an estate of 1771. 173 00:18:17,560 --> 00:18:24,760 Quite soon after, jigsaws were invented, all dissected puzzles first came out in England, I think in about 1766. 174 00:18:25,720 --> 00:18:33,580 Travellers Companion to the post roads of England and Wales and the post roads were the equipment of the motorways because they were the major routes, 175 00:18:33,580 --> 00:18:40,780 perhaps maintained at government expense. And at the top there's a little picture of the post and the chap racing along with a little 176 00:18:40,780 --> 00:18:45,340 post box strapped on the saddle behind him and three people behind who are perhaps the guards. 177 00:18:45,790 --> 00:18:51,129 And at the bottom is a little post van chasing along drawn by four horses. 178 00:18:51,130 --> 00:18:55,750 So it's nice. Um, rights and wrongs. 179 00:18:55,750 --> 00:19:02,770 This is a similar anticlockwise spiral from probably the end of the 18th century. 180 00:19:03,520 --> 00:19:08,620 The new game of emulation. A parent's advice and love of virtue. 181 00:19:10,990 --> 00:19:15,310 Little games equipment. Here are some little fish. Nicely made. 182 00:19:15,610 --> 00:19:19,480 You know, you can get all sorts of fish. And these are some of the nicer ones that I found. 183 00:19:20,050 --> 00:19:24,720 And you only find the fish with English games. And I wondered why. 184 00:19:24,730 --> 00:19:28,240 And I asked a Frenchman, and he looked very condescending at me. 185 00:19:28,570 --> 00:19:32,260 And he said, Who? He said, You English. You never bother learning foreign languages. 186 00:19:32,500 --> 00:19:37,030 He said, The French word for a counter is fish. A new English thought it meant fish. 187 00:19:39,910 --> 00:19:46,750 So I was put in my place. And anyway, that was a nice little story. 188 00:19:46,760 --> 00:19:49,950 And these are educational AIDS. 189 00:19:49,960 --> 00:19:55,540 This is progress of the dairy produced by a firm called Wallace. 190 00:19:55,930 --> 00:20:04,960 Around again, the turn of the 18th century, designed to stimulate conversation and to teach children live about where butter and cheese comes from. 191 00:20:05,440 --> 00:20:10,329 And there are eight cards in six and eight should be eight. 192 00:20:10,330 --> 00:20:15,190 And I've got seven in this set, but it's a very rare set and I haven't seen another set anywhere. 193 00:20:15,730 --> 00:20:21,490 And what's interesting is at the back, there's little tags fixed on with with some kind of sealing wax. 194 00:20:21,730 --> 00:20:25,780 And you can stand the cards up and have a discussion with the governess or with somebody about them. 195 00:20:27,320 --> 00:20:34,160 Here's a similar dissected puzzle from maybe ten or 20 years later showing not butter and cheese, 196 00:20:34,160 --> 00:20:40,280 but how a plum pudding is assembled and bringing in the raisins or plums, harvesting the grain. 197 00:20:40,640 --> 00:20:48,440 And you've got a little grocers shop and a baker's shop. And I really like the picture at the bottom of the family having the plum pudding. 198 00:20:48,860 --> 00:20:58,360 And the infant is on grandma's lap and the younger child is on a highchair and the two slightly older children have to stand. 199 00:20:58,400 --> 00:21:01,970 That interested me because they're not big enough to sit on a proper grown up chair. 200 00:21:03,560 --> 00:21:09,770 Here's some boys playing marbles about that time, maybe 18, 20. 201 00:21:11,150 --> 00:21:18,380 Here's some girls playing battle door and shuttlecock a time of early badminton again about that time. 202 00:21:19,520 --> 00:21:24,860 The word battle door, incidentally, can also mean an alphabet on a back shaped piece of card or whatever. 203 00:21:24,860 --> 00:21:30,679 So it's an educational toy as well, which is why they say on the rhyme underneath in Painted Battle, 204 00:21:30,680 --> 00:21:40,720 those who tries to learn the letter as well, like shuttlecock, she quickly flies and soon will read and spell games. 205 00:21:40,730 --> 00:21:48,650 It's called this little booklet Games of Holy Day Recreations and makes you realise where the word holiday comes from. 206 00:21:50,260 --> 00:21:56,380 These are amusements, really light hearted fortune telling cards. 207 00:21:56,820 --> 00:22:02,170 Maybe 18, ten or so. I'm showing several things of this sort of period. 208 00:22:02,680 --> 00:22:10,060 But I like them. And they give you an indication of what young men and young ladies found as fun at that time. 209 00:22:10,420 --> 00:22:19,900 And you can read on these. I think you if a lady was asked to pick a card and you would read her fortune. 210 00:22:20,530 --> 00:22:24,850 You would have the ladies card in your hand and read the answers. And the same with the gentleman. 211 00:22:25,240 --> 00:22:37,000 So, for example, on the gentlemen's card, you pick a card and you'll be asked what your wife, where you might meet your wife the first time. 212 00:22:37,000 --> 00:22:46,330 And on one card it says in a pastry shop. And then and then another question is, what are you going to be doing the first time you meet her? 213 00:22:46,570 --> 00:22:50,050 And the answer there is perhaps smiling to show her teeth. 214 00:22:50,620 --> 00:22:54,310 You know, obviously you'd have a bit of a laugh. 215 00:22:55,090 --> 00:23:01,000 And the boys, you know, they'd be asked, well, yes, lady would say, What? 216 00:23:01,200 --> 00:23:04,490 What's your husband going to be doing when you meet him? 217 00:23:04,510 --> 00:23:12,280 And two answers there are either bragging about his courage or offending all the company, you know? 218 00:23:13,480 --> 00:23:18,370 Yes. And what are you going to do after you get married? 219 00:23:18,400 --> 00:23:23,590 Well, you know, if you're lucky, it says love home, be it ever so homely, 220 00:23:23,950 --> 00:23:27,460 you know, which is the same message as on that earlier card I was talking about. 221 00:23:27,970 --> 00:23:34,330 If you're unlucky, it says be very suspicious, you know, so it's quite nice. 222 00:23:35,500 --> 00:23:40,090 And here again, not valuable, but interesting. 223 00:23:40,450 --> 00:23:47,110 They made handmade little cards. These are slightly later, but obviously, you know, the same amusement. 224 00:23:48,070 --> 00:23:55,690 And one of the questions the gentleman asked her at the last one is, do you prefer the ladies to the bottle? 225 00:23:56,860 --> 00:24:00,490 And, you know, what do you say if you're lucky? 226 00:24:00,670 --> 00:24:04,240 It says that requires a little consideration. 227 00:24:06,580 --> 00:24:10,540 But maybe if are even luckier, it says one kiss, and I'll tell you. 228 00:24:11,980 --> 00:24:19,570 And here, you know, some maybe a little girl or some teenager who knows and has made a scrapbook very, 229 00:24:19,570 --> 00:24:25,960 very carefully, lined the print and mounted it in an artistic way. 230 00:24:26,260 --> 00:24:31,300 And she's put in little or I assume it's a little valentines that she's been given and 231 00:24:31,450 --> 00:24:36,220 somebody cut out these tiny little bits of paper and written rhymes and arrows on it. 232 00:24:36,580 --> 00:24:40,330 You know, huge amount of care and trouble to impress a young lady, perhaps, 233 00:24:40,690 --> 00:24:46,240 and a valentine and a scrapbook, which obviously, you know, it isn't just casual. 234 00:24:46,390 --> 00:24:53,000 It's something that she's been very careful to assemble. And these are a bit similar. 235 00:24:53,000 --> 00:24:57,950 And a bit later they've got silk hedges and they're again made as compensation card. 236 00:24:57,950 --> 00:25:02,540 So a governess perhaps would get out or perhaps the child would first make these 237 00:25:02,900 --> 00:25:06,740 carefully and then they'd be got out and a conversation could be started with them. 238 00:25:08,760 --> 00:25:13,650 Party game one you're familiar with in a little booklet called Parlour Amusements. 239 00:25:14,040 --> 00:25:17,130 I loved my love with an A because he's amiable. 240 00:25:17,340 --> 00:25:24,630 I'll send him to Andover and so on. So obviously you're having, as you go round to think of nouns starting with the same letter. 241 00:25:24,990 --> 00:25:30,270 And if you can't eventually think of another one because they've all been had, you pay a forfeit. 242 00:25:30,720 --> 00:25:35,490 And here are the children at the party of playing or what's called crying the forfeits. 243 00:25:36,860 --> 00:25:40,060 A little bit later, I think, around 1860. 244 00:25:40,540 --> 00:25:47,410 Illustrated by an illustrator, J.W. Barfoot, produced by a games maker called Ogilvy, 245 00:25:48,040 --> 00:25:53,560 the same game as a card game called Bows and Bells, which is in the collection. 246 00:25:54,670 --> 00:25:58,690 Uh, same. Yes. These are the printed cards that go with it. 247 00:25:59,620 --> 00:26:02,050 Hate my love with an M because she's melancholy. 248 00:26:02,380 --> 00:26:11,860 So I took her to Manchester, but I did give her macaroons and mushrooms and made the same firm little bit earlier. 249 00:26:12,430 --> 00:26:19,629 David Ogilvy had produced good and bad passions again, designed little bit of a message how children are expected to behave. 250 00:26:19,630 --> 00:26:22,870 And I love these cards. You know this one here. 251 00:26:23,650 --> 00:26:29,100 Sorry. Let me. Uh, the obstinacy. 252 00:26:29,370 --> 00:26:38,250 That's irritability. That's right. That's obstinacy. Selfishness, quarrelsome meanness and negligence, of course, is letting the pig out. 253 00:26:39,060 --> 00:26:46,560 So, you know, this is a illustrator called Madeley, who's done lovely, humorous illustrations around that time. 254 00:26:47,130 --> 00:26:51,330 This is produced in 1814. The one I showed you before is about 1850. 255 00:26:53,670 --> 00:27:00,690 Going on to the 1890s. Little bit of discussion at the moment about where snakes and ladders originated from. 256 00:27:00,690 --> 00:27:07,079 And it's generally accepted that in the temples in India there are wall hangings showing that you can climb a ladder 257 00:27:07,080 --> 00:27:13,200 towards heaven and you can slide down a slate snake if you misbehave and have further to climb back up again. 258 00:27:13,560 --> 00:27:18,900 So snakes and ladders with little pictures of children doing good and bad things came from India. 259 00:27:19,320 --> 00:27:23,160 But this particular board doesn't have any good and bad things on it, just the snakes and ladders. 260 00:27:23,430 --> 00:27:26,969 And it is, in fact, the earliest dated English snakes. 261 00:27:26,970 --> 00:27:31,260 And that is I think it's registered in about 1892 by a firm called Heirs. 262 00:27:32,580 --> 00:27:39,870 And it's interesting to me that they had a game that was out ten or 20 or 30 years before that called the game of the Snail. 263 00:27:40,320 --> 00:27:42,209 And here's a version of their game with the snail. 264 00:27:42,210 --> 00:27:48,510 It's the same anticlockwise spiral, but it's also got the promotions and demotions that you've got on their Snakes and ladders board. 265 00:27:48,840 --> 00:27:51,270 So you could argue, if you are interested at all, 266 00:27:51,270 --> 00:27:56,970 that snakes and ladders didn't entirely come from the Indian game, it also derived from the English game of snail. 267 00:27:57,540 --> 00:27:58,379 That's my theory. 268 00:27:58,380 --> 00:28:08,100 Anyway, talking about where games came from, Boris Johnson is very, very keen on saying that with for office the origin of table tennis, 269 00:28:08,100 --> 00:28:14,850 not ping pong and his with all of that I found this one has got some celluloid balls in it, 270 00:28:14,850 --> 00:28:21,270 but I'm not completely sure it should because the name with implies a sort of a lightweight ball. 271 00:28:21,270 --> 00:28:25,050 And the rules here say this is a game played with a lightweight ball. 272 00:28:25,680 --> 00:28:29,900 It's. More or less contemporary with table tennis origins. 273 00:28:30,200 --> 00:28:35,420 But what's interesting to me here is it says, oh, ten years earlier than this, another game came out, 274 00:28:35,660 --> 00:28:41,540 but it was played with a rubber ball and it didn't catch on because the rubber ball kept knocking over the ornaments in the dining room. 275 00:28:41,990 --> 00:28:47,300 But so, you know, now you could say, well, table tennis perhaps had its origins in an earlier game. 276 00:28:49,160 --> 00:28:52,310 This one made me smile. Another version of indoor tennis. 277 00:28:52,610 --> 00:28:57,200 The idea of playing tennis in an armchair, you know. Well, I like the graphics. 278 00:28:57,200 --> 00:29:00,650 And just the general idea of that one has. 279 00:29:01,100 --> 00:29:05,839 Yes, what I would call a penny game, just as they have penny toys, they had penny games. 280 00:29:05,840 --> 00:29:10,820 You could buy them for a penny. Little children would buy them themselves down the toy shop instead of waiting for Christmas. 281 00:29:11,300 --> 00:29:15,170 And the pieces came in a little matchbox and literally a matchbox. 282 00:29:15,500 --> 00:29:21,740 So this one would have in some little travellers and a dice and maybe some instructions, 283 00:29:21,980 --> 00:29:24,530 and there would be a cheaply made cardboard board that go with it. 284 00:29:25,340 --> 00:29:29,329 This one is called the top knee tube, because obviously the underground must have cost tuppence, 285 00:29:29,330 --> 00:29:34,250 I suppose, and the tram driver and the bus driver still got their whips. 286 00:29:34,790 --> 00:29:41,209 The tube drivers got a flat cap. And I'm not an I'm not a knowledgeable on transport matters, 287 00:29:41,210 --> 00:29:46,520 but the underground train or the tube must have, I suppose, at that time had a steam train on it. 288 00:29:46,520 --> 00:29:54,560 And I can't imagine quite how that worked. But somebody will one day tell me the little printed board that went with that game, 289 00:29:54,830 --> 00:29:59,300 it was superseded about ten years later by this one, which is called tram versus bus. 290 00:29:59,780 --> 00:30:11,120 And here down the bottom, you can see it's now a terminus of the Electric Tramway Company and the bus is now the Roseberry Motor Bus Co. 291 00:30:11,450 --> 00:30:16,620 So times have moved on. Moving on to the First World War. 292 00:30:17,520 --> 00:30:22,530 Sky Pirates is a puzzle where you try and get to the Zeppelin without falling down a hole. 293 00:30:23,220 --> 00:30:31,140 And it's just a reminder that at the beginning of the First World War, we had these certainly on the East Coast where I lived. 294 00:30:31,860 --> 00:30:40,320 Great big things appearing in the air above the villages and dropping tin cans full of smouldering debris onto this thatched roof, causing mayhem. 295 00:30:40,830 --> 00:30:46,380 This may be the first time that English peace and quiet had been interrupted since the Norman conquest. 296 00:30:46,820 --> 00:30:54,840 You know, literally there was terror in the villages. And it wasn't until we managed scientists over here managed to invent an exploding 297 00:30:54,840 --> 00:31:00,680 bullet that we found that the multiple gas bags inside the Zeppelin could be set, 298 00:31:01,020 --> 00:31:06,420 set off in a chain reaction. And one of them was brought down, and then they very quickly stopped coming. 299 00:31:07,860 --> 00:31:14,580 It made me think about, you know, modern times and guided missiles and how battleships are perhaps becoming obsolete. 300 00:31:15,540 --> 00:31:20,730 But anyway, beginning of the First World War and reflection on the times. 301 00:31:21,930 --> 00:31:26,160 And if you think now modern pain is people sitting on their sofas, 302 00:31:26,910 --> 00:31:32,580 looking at their iPads or the children listening to their headphones, well, here it is 100 years ago. 303 00:31:32,850 --> 00:31:41,250 You know, I love this picture of a board game cover, the wireless game, and a little bit of amusement for the 19. 304 00:31:42,350 --> 00:31:50,610 1920s. This one is called flirtation. An interesting board game for a number of reasons, but the board itself is here. 305 00:31:50,630 --> 00:31:56,990 I've not seen it anywhere else. It's around the edge of the box and Charlie and the soldier slide along as they're moving. 306 00:31:57,440 --> 00:32:00,470 And the object, of course, is to get as close as possible to the young lady. 307 00:32:01,400 --> 00:32:08,900 Flirtation. A bit more serious at the beginning of the Second World War, GHQ general headquarters. 308 00:32:09,320 --> 00:32:15,860 And here you've got the British flags and the French flags and the Nazi flags and the war game imagining what the war's going to be like. 309 00:32:16,580 --> 00:32:22,460 And the imagination was, of course, that we'd pretty soon go over into Germany and get to Berlin, and that would be the end of it. 310 00:32:22,730 --> 00:32:24,830 But it didn't work out quite like that. 311 00:32:26,330 --> 00:32:34,100 Now, more or less, at the end of pictures and up to 1950 now this is probably one of the earliest space race games. 312 00:32:34,550 --> 00:32:42,770 And what's nice about this is it actually got a moving screen, which Morris introduces the idea of computer games and television screens. 313 00:32:43,040 --> 00:32:48,970 And you move the screen round by twiddling little wooden knobs you can see at the top and bottom and it moves along. 314 00:32:48,980 --> 00:32:54,260 So this is Astron latest game by Waddington around 1950. 315 00:32:54,740 --> 00:33:00,740 These are the same people that brought out over in England Monopoly and the GHQ game that I showed you. 316 00:33:03,310 --> 00:33:07,120 So after 1950, I haven't got many pictures to show you. 317 00:33:07,450 --> 00:33:15,550 Mainly because some of the games are under copyright. There are in total 700 items on the website in this period. 318 00:33:16,200 --> 00:33:23,610 Um, and my collection, as you've been told, includes some a nice collection of 1970 strategy games. 319 00:33:23,620 --> 00:33:27,819 And I wasn't initially interested in this period from 1950 onwards, 320 00:33:27,820 --> 00:33:34,600 but when I got this collection of strategy games that Eileen Scott had collected and must have been well over 100 of them, 321 00:33:35,020 --> 00:33:37,120 I realised they were important. And I also, 322 00:33:37,120 --> 00:33:44,860 when I saw it in England at that time we were the leading country inventing new strategy games and there's some quite good stuff amongst them. 323 00:33:45,190 --> 00:33:53,290 So I collect them as a group or kept them back as a group. And the other big group, as you've been told, was a local museum, said to me in 1992, 324 00:33:53,290 --> 00:33:57,519 would I run a major exhibition of board games and run for about three months? 325 00:33:57,520 --> 00:34:01,480 And all the schoolchildren came to take part and it was very, very successful. 326 00:34:01,870 --> 00:34:08,530 But all the makers in England for that particular year sent me examples to be proud to be producing this, 327 00:34:08,860 --> 00:34:16,240 and I got 100 board games from just that one year and I realised that was a very important snapshot of that particular time. 328 00:34:16,660 --> 00:34:23,290 So that again had to be kept. And having had those two collections, I could fill the gaps a little bit, 329 00:34:23,290 --> 00:34:28,629 but choosing games that I found interesting and that perhaps my family had enjoyed. 330 00:34:28,630 --> 00:34:38,890 And you know, like when my family grew up, we really enjoyed playing here and taught us, which is a lovely board game invented by David Pilot. 331 00:34:39,190 --> 00:34:42,370 You might still be able to buy it, but you can certainly still get it on the Internet. 332 00:34:43,000 --> 00:34:51,550 And there were lots of other games. You know, Formula One was a nice race game and whatever your favourite ones are, you can still find them. 333 00:34:52,150 --> 00:34:59,020 They're not hard to get hold of. But I have included some as just examples in the collection to bring the collection up to date. 334 00:35:01,180 --> 00:35:05,440 Now, you may think this is all very light hearted and just a bit of fun. 335 00:35:05,740 --> 00:35:09,850 So I did go back to these cards I showed you at the beginning with morals. 336 00:35:10,330 --> 00:35:18,100 Um, and I can finish was just, well, not quite finished, but I can show you one or two of these morals about this is gaming. 337 00:35:18,130 --> 00:35:29,440 This is sports and pastimes, I think. Number one, mirth with thy labour sometimes put in use or here it says there. 338 00:35:29,440 --> 00:35:33,490 But I think it means use that better than most thy labour India. 339 00:35:33,910 --> 00:35:38,250 And underneath this course, all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. 340 00:35:38,860 --> 00:35:46,150 But it's still interesting, you know, in 76, 70 or whenever, 350 years ago, 341 00:35:46,420 --> 00:35:52,120 when you think everybody was Puritan or whatever, they did actually value recreation and play. 342 00:35:52,150 --> 00:35:54,790 It's just not commonly understood that. 343 00:35:56,030 --> 00:36:05,349 And finally, unlike number four, when the short winter days yield no delights and harmless gain or game or to it cards, 344 00:36:05,350 --> 00:36:12,520 the nights may pass the tedious hours away in mirth and to our drooping spirits give new birth. 345 00:36:13,300 --> 00:36:18,280 So, you know, there you are. That's summing up what I'm trying to give you a message about. 346 00:36:19,120 --> 00:36:25,989 And as I said, if you want to see more until all the images that are available at the Bodleian, you can go to this website. 347 00:36:25,990 --> 00:36:34,630 I've mentioned you select examples and you can just enter a name if you want to find a particular name or a maker. 348 00:36:34,960 --> 00:36:45,340 Or you can just browse by clicking by date or by alpha, and then you can see I think they let you see 30 items a page and you can browse through. 349 00:36:45,550 --> 00:36:49,510 Starting, you know, in 1650 and getting right up to 2000. 350 00:36:50,590 --> 00:36:55,030 But I would just say as a word of caution that the information about makers is incomplete. 351 00:36:55,330 --> 00:36:59,110 It's my next project for the next two years is making it a bit more complete. 352 00:37:00,950 --> 00:37:06,680 Um. Why and where? Well, of course, I think these games are a reflection of British culture. 353 00:37:06,950 --> 00:37:10,580 And I think particularly here, we're lucky that we've never had an invasion. 354 00:37:10,880 --> 00:37:16,520 We've got lots of material that hasn't been destroyed. We've had an empire that brought in stuff from abroad. 355 00:37:17,240 --> 00:37:23,870 We've been interested in rules of part of the British character is writing rules and making sure people stick to them. 356 00:37:24,110 --> 00:37:27,319 We've got words in our culture like fair play, play the game. 357 00:37:27,320 --> 00:37:30,350 What fun. It's an important part of our culture. 358 00:37:30,590 --> 00:37:34,290 That's not commonly publicised very much. 359 00:37:34,310 --> 00:37:39,210 Not much studied. It's sort of. It's a bit light-hearted, but it's very important. 360 00:37:39,230 --> 00:37:47,870 I think it's now I think fortunately going to be a national resource at the Bodleian in conjunction with what the Bodleian had already got, 361 00:37:48,110 --> 00:37:54,110 the wonderful games already there, and the Johnson collection, the wonderful children's literature and the Hope collection, 362 00:37:54,500 --> 00:37:58,340 and some quite important copyright deposits of rules of games. 363 00:37:58,340 --> 00:38:06,760 A Bodleian being a copyright library. So I don't know if I have more or less filled my time. 364 00:38:07,000 --> 00:38:09,250 I can take one or two questions if anybody wants.