In an earlier post I wrote about Grocer R.F. Maddigan’s venture into postcard distribution and provided a visual guide to the cards I knew of at that time. Since then I have acquired images of a number of additional cards and have revised the visual listing of Maddigan cards for Prince Edward Island to show all 60 of the cards that I have been able to locate.
From this it is clear that he was a major player in the postcard business in the province, likely serving as a wholesale distributor. He certainly did not publish his own cards and those appearing with his name came from a large number of publishers. The listing shows cards with the Maddigan name that were clearly the same as those from Pugh, McCoy, Valentine and even one card from Warwick & Rutter. To date I have identified nine different card backs suggesting that he changed suppliers frequently. Trade publications suggest that it was easy to acquire cards and simply by sending images to the publisher one could arrange to have them printed under your own name. Selecting an image already appearing on cards with another’s name on them was not considered a barrier as with limited exceptions copyrights were not filed.
This makes it doubly difficult to get a handle on how many different Maddigan cards are out there. To date I have identified 60 cards under the R.F. Maddigan name but I have little doubt there are many more in collections that have not been discovered. The current listing includes images from my own collection, from public holdings available on-line and those of other collectors. I am particularly indebted to Phil Culhane of Ottawa who has graciously permitted use of information from his site at http://www.peipostcards.ca As always I am interested in learning of images that I have not included to date.
The latest listing has cards sorted by location and then alphabetically by title. If the card contains a catalogue number it has been posted to the entry.
Click here to go to the latest catalogue.
STRAITPOST 