Postcard of the TITANIC

postcard

A religiously themed postcard commemorating the TITANIC disaster. On the back is the message, "From mother to my son and daughter. Shall we all meet at home in a America across the sea and be happy again. God bless you both." There are no names and no date. The message is written across the entire postcard so if it was mailed, it was in an envelope. This is one of a set of six postcard designs published by Bamforth & Co. to commemorate the TITANIC disaster. The company was known for cards with humorous caricatures and women scantily-clad for the era, but they also released more somber postcards in wartime and in commemoration of mining disasters. The Bamforth TITANIC cards are all religious in nature, most of them including lyrics from the hymn Nearer, My God, to Thee, which some survivors said the band had played just before the ship sank. Several of them include photographs or images of women in white along with the sinking ship, perhaps a nod to the popular understanding of the event as one where men bravely died to save women. These cards were produced within a few weeks after the April 15, 1912 disaster; another card in our collection has a postmark of May 30, 1912.