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In 1894, British publishers were given permission from the Post Office to manufacture and distribute picture postcards, which could be sent through the post. Early postcards were pictures of famous landmarks, scenic views, photographs or drawings of celebrities, cute pets, etc. Basically, anything that could be easily drawn or photographed could be put on the front of a postcard.

It was in the early 1930s that the cartoon-style saucy postcards became popular. At its peak the sale of saucy postcards was a massive 16 million a year. It's very likely that postcard collectors, known as deltiologist's, bought many of the saucy postcards for their collections1.

The saucy postcard industry offered employment to cartoon artists such as Tom Browne, John Hassall, Bruce Bairnsfather and Alfred Lees, as well as offering another outlet for Punch magazine cartoonists. There was one well-known, female artist, Mabel Atwell; however, her artwork involved cherubic children in cute, humorous situations.

The best-known publisher was Bamforth & Co. However, there were other less well-known publishers of saucy postcards, such as Davidson Brothers. The longest running is J Salmon, a company that still continues to publish and is the UK's oldest established postcard publisher.

Deltiology (postcard collecting) is said to be the second most popular collecting hobby, with philately (stamp collecting) as the first. At the time this was written, there were approximately 100,000 deltiologist's in the UK.

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