Wimborne: How acidic Valentine's Day cards were sent to mock
"Character assassination may be rife online nowadays but looking at these Vinegar Valentines, Victorians certainly also knew how to hit where it hurt," Rob Gray said.The cards were popular from the 1840s after the Penny Post revolutionised the postal service and the volume of letters sent.
In 1840, the first year of the Penny Post, the number of letters sent more than doubled and within 10 years that had doubled again.Most of the cards in the Wimborne museum's collection was taken from William Low's stationery and printing shop, where the museum is now based.The collection, which also includes traditional - and more complimentary - Valentine's Day cards, were discovered by an ironmonger in 1904, who took over the old shop unit after it was boarded up by a previous occupier in 1872.They were nearly pulped during World War Two as part of an effort to reuse paper but were successfully saved.
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