 One of the B'hoys from Guernsey. Wildt & Kray, London, E.C. Series No. 2454. |
 It's curious... B.B. London Series no. 2451. |
A B'hoy, according to the Oxford
English Dictionary, is a "gay or spirited fellow"; the word is first
recorded in 1846 and is believed to have been an American imitation of
the Irish pronounciation of boy. By the time that Charles posted this
card to Miss Duffey in Jersey, in 1913, b'hoys were already passing out
of fashion, and the last OED reference is from 1929.
A few years earlier, Maud lived in Dalgairns Road in St Peter Port, where Ethel sent her the card on the right in May 1909. Ethel was obviously just as puzzled by the caption as I am, since she wrote "Hope you will like this card I wonder why we wander at St Julian's Avenue ask me another with best love". It seems though that the London publishers Birn Brothers produced a range of cards with catchphrases such as this, which were then given a bit of local colour with an appropriate placename: there was no particular significance to the choice of St Julian's Avenue for their Guernsey card. |