The Northern Picture Puzzle exchange, based in Cragside near Rothbury from 1916 was one of several British jigsaw exchanges that operated in the first part of the 20th century. There are some of their jigsaws,-which were very different from today’s versions- in our museum archives.
1916 was a terrible year, with the greatest one-day casualties ever for the British army. On the Somme WW1 battlefield on the 1st of July of that year, 57,000 men were killed or wounded, and there were massive losses every day following for most of the year. There was also the biggest sea battle of the war off Jutland in June 1916, with 14 warships sunk and over 6000 seamen perished.
Given possible death at any moment, it was no wonder that men on active service aimed to drown their sorrows when they could. Picking up on this, the singing duo of Edgar Trevor and Cecil Cooper released a morale- boosting 78 RPM record in 19916 with the snappy title “ Another little drink won’t do us any harm” ( the song takes a moment or two to start)
One can imagine groups of service personnel and their companions singing along lustily, hopefully forgetting, for a moment what fate may hold for them; and who could blame them?
The song title was famous enough for the Northern Puzzle Exchange to use it for one of their jigsaws, although it is not clear over 100 years later exactly why.
It may have been just because the song was popular, and become a catchphrase. It may even have been that there was an attempt to steer puzzlers away from the associations of the recording with demon drink, and towards a more innocent vision.
The reference was in any event ironical, since it referred to ducks, not people, but the puzzle seems to have been popular. We have evidence of it being rented out to at least 1932.
It is worth noting that these early puzzles do not seem to have any accompanying picture. In addition, the pieces do not interlock like today’s products. Together these aspects make them very much more difficult to complete, as our resident jigsaw expert at the museum will testify. The slightest knock to one piece and the whole picture distorts wildly.
What makes this significant is that the renting of jigsaws from the exchange was not cheap, and charges were levied per week. Looking at the details:
With 356 pieces, “Another Little Drink” would have cost 1 shilling and sixpence a week to rent from the Northern Puzzle Exchange in the 1920’s. Adjusted to today’s currency, this is almost six pounds a week. It is clear that renting jigsaws then would not have been a working-class pastime. Even for the better off, there was every incentive to complete these difficult puzzles in good time. No easy task!