A Mountebank
A curious case of an Italian word finding itself stamped upon a postcard of a characteristic type in India (the fakir, in this case a mendacious one). Mountebank is an old word for a charlatan, or salesman of quack medicines.
Bombay Mumbai
Result of an Intrusion
A interesting very early lithographic card from Bombay by the little-known city artist/publisher W. Cooper, who seems to have specialized in the risque postcard (the same woman seems to be the model for A Trysting Place). Two things are particularly
Hindoo Ayahs
An early court-sized card made from an albumen photograph with the studio inscribed in the glass negative at the bottom.
Hobson-Jobson defines "AYAH, s. A native lady's-maid or nurse-maid.
Bombay Native Bazaar
Bourne & Shepherd are said to have begun their photographic activities in 1840, a year after the invention of photography (see Macmillan, Seaports of India and Ceylon, 1928, p.
Bombay
A magnificent early lithographic postcard of Bombay, show Marine Drive before the Art Deco buildings became a dominant feature in the 1930s.
Pattawala (Office Peon)
This image by the Indian painter M.V. Dhurandhar celebrates the rise of a new type of worker in early Mumbai - the peon who worked for a business owner or manager and would ultimately gather some authority by controlling access to his boss.
An Ayah
[Original caption] An Ayah - The term ayah may be applied both to nurses for children and for ladies maids.
General Post Office
The GPO in Bombay was already the largest post office in India when this card was produced in 1899, with tens of millions of postcards passing through in a city of less than a million.
[Fairey] IIID Crash Bombay
![[Fairey] IIID Crash Bombay](https://www.paperjewels.org/sites/default/files/styles/square_thumbnail/public/slides/raf-crash_0.jpg?itok=Eh_61vhU "[Fairey] IIID Crash Bombay")
[Verso Original handwritten caption] After an argument with the sails of a sampan. [end]
An unusual real photo postcard of the Fairey IIID, an early 1920s British seaplane that "was popular with aircrew but they were difficult to maintain and when
The Ayah
This postcard shows a nanny with a pram on the “Queen’s necklace” of Malabar beach in Bombay. The artist Dhurandhar and other fellow J.J.
