Postcard, letterpress, 'Hold your hand out, Naughty Boy!', published by C & H Gurnsey, Britain, World War I, 1914-1918.

Postcard in portrait format. On the front: caricature printed in blue and red showing John Bull as a schoolmaster about to cane a diminutive Kaiser Wilhelm II, in the background a battle scene with British "Redcoats" advancing and a WWI aeroplane flying overhead. Lettered in blue within the image with publisher's information and below the image with title. On the back, printed in black with postcard template and publisher's information, stamped in black ink with V&A Museum mark, and numbered and inscribed in black ink and pencil.

This postcard formed part of a group transferred from Photographs to Prints for accessioning. In the process of cataloguing them and releasing them from the boards onto which they had been mounted it was discovered some of the postcards had already been numbered with 1969 numbers (now noted in the 'other number' field as 'numbered in error'). When the Photographs accessions register for 1969 was consulted two unrelated groups of material with the same run of numbers was discovered. One of these groups, which included this postcard was credited as being 'Given by Mrs Harrington'. Registry could find no record of a donation from a 'Mrs Harrington'.

By the early 20th Century greetings postcards had overtaken folder cards in popularity as they were cheaper to post. A ban on Christmas cards to conserve supplies of paper was mooted during the First World War but the idea was abandoned in the interests of maintaining the troops' morale. This propaganda postcard caricatures Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany as a recalcitrant schoolboy about to be administered a caning by John Bull.

E.407-2008