The Framers Forum

I love opening old frames for the surprises inside. Last week was a complete Daily Mail from 1931. Full off Celebrity gossip, contests and wingeing about the dole.

I found a 1927 Times once. Property for sale. Detached houses Wimbledon - £1250. (£100 dep and move in). There was a country estate in Oxfordshire. Huge pile of a house with 5000 acres. Shooting/fishing rights and the local village. 36 grand. In the same paper were ads for domestic servants. Housemaids. The highest wage was £40 a year inc full board and that would be one Sunday afternoon off a month.

An interesting topic stephen34.

It's probably as well that we don't find old newspapers in the backs of pictures every day as it is an excuse to down tools for half an hour as we pour over the articles drawing each other's attention to the often unintentionally weird and funny items we find.

We recently found a newspaper from the thirties that reported on the deaths on British roads that year, sorry I can't remember the figures, but this was back when hardly anyone owned a motor vehicle. It sent us scurrying to Google so that we could make a modern day comparison now that just about everyone (even the odd picture framer) has a car.

We were amazed and delighted to discover that in spite of the massive increase in the number of road users, road deaths are about a third of what they were back then.

That's an interesting fact John. When you think about it, in them there days you didn't have to pass a test. You just read the instruction book and stright out on the highway. You could get p*ssed as a newt and drive home. Cars were built like tanks and had lots of sticky-out bits.

When finding these old newspapers what I like the most is that the news hasn't really changed. We appear to report on all the same stuff regardless of the year/decade.

We found and read one from the 1880s, apart from the obvious language the news was pretty much the the same, a story about some louts standing on a fire hose and generally stopping the fire brigade putting out a fire sticks in my mind, the tobaconists burnt to the ground, no doubt they all said this would have never happened in my day!

I found a nice victorian print of children bird nesting, very incorrect these days. Must have been used as a backing when childrens hobbies started to change.

Bought it off the customer and still have it in a frame somewhere.

Dave