This box was catalogued by Elizabeth Alderson and Priscilla Macpherson and photographed by Elizabeth who also created the website entries.
Box B1 is a miscellaneous collection of gentlemen’s accessories. For the most part they are very ordinary things, penknives, shirt studs, cufflinks, tie pins, which would have had utility value but not been considered of great significance. They probably survived by being forgotten at the back of a drawer or cupboard!
Elizabeth notes that several of the items in the box remind her of her childhood. I remember my father using expanding armbands to hold back his office shirtsleeves – it wasn’t fashionable for shirt cuffs to appear below the jacket sleeves in those days.
He usually used a plain tie clip to hold his tie in place – office wear was more formal than today. He had shirt studs and matching cufflinks for his dress shirt, and one of his shirts needed collar stiffeners – I think the stiffeners were becoming obsolete because of new ways to stiffen shirt collars.
He also carried a penknife in his pocket as a matter of course – mostly used for cleaning out his pipe. He used Old Spice aftershave – I remember Old Spice and Brut 33 being the main, if not the only, high street brands of aftershave when I was a child.
Items of particular interest
Item 008028: Handy MP knife
This folding knife is stamped stamped ‘Handy M P Knife’ ‘Made in England’. Reg. no. 772372. It uses a disposable double-edged razor blade as cutting edge, and has a little spike point and a wire stripper in the handle.
The Handy M P Knife Associated with downed pilots and POWs in the Second World War. They were used as a concealed utility knife by military personnel during WW2 and were part of the kit issued to RAF pilots, to aid with their escape, should they become captured. The initials MP may stand for ‘Military and Police’ and the item dates from around 1935.
Item 008041: Amazing Speed Shaper Exerciser
This is an ‘Amazing Speed-Shaper’ elasticated exerciser. It is comprised of two brown rubber straps with loops, joined by plastic ring. It comes with a fourteen-page instruction booklet.
The Speed Shaper was endorsed by Olympic weight-lifting champion Isaac “Ike” Berger (1936-2022). He won three Olympic medals in 1956,1060 and 1964; he was world featherweight champion in 1958 and 1961, and was the runner-up for that title in 1957, 1959, and 1963. He also won two gold medals in featherweight at the Pan American Games (1959 and 1963) and was an eight-time national champion.
In 1964, after retiring from weightlifting, he started a mail-order business in New York selling an exerciser that could be used for weight loss.