The Distribution of US Published Comics in the UK (1959~1982) 15 15

[themagicrobot]

A number of the Thorpe and Porter job adverts are asking for "girls aged 15 - 17" !! However I think delving into old microfilm of newspapers has quickly come to a dead end. The only interesting article title I could find to download from the Leicester Chronicle 9th March 1973 has just the second page of a two page spread and is a potted history of comics which we already know but was no doubt fairly illuminating to readers in 1973.

The poor quality of the article is down to them not to me. The blurry picture appears to include an Alan Class comic and an old 80 page giant which isn't really helping to advertise Thorpe and Porter's current stuff.

 

[themagicrobot]

Perhaps there's more to this than meets the eye. Perhaps Ethel and Gladys didn't do any stamping at all. Perhaps they worked in the canteen making wonderful meals to be eaten in your 30 minute lunch break. Perhaps it was "girls aged 15 - 17" who did all the stamping. They were younger and would have more energy/staying-power and their wages would be well below the adult union rates.

[Albert Tatlock]

On 8/15/2022 at 1:08 PM, Malacoda said:

"light interesting work on magazines and books" which probably translates to price stamping?!?

What could be more interesting than stamping prices on pallet after pallet of mags and comics?

They no doubt carried on right through the 30 minute lunch break in their devotion to duty.

The queue when a vacancy arose must have been a mile long. Probably.

[themagicrobot]

If I'd lived closer in the  early 1970s when I was a teenager I would happily have done some stamping on saturdays as long as I could take home some product like you could if you worked in a chocolate factory. (I would have hoped the 15 17 year old girls were there working overtime on saturdays too!!)

[Malacoda]

On 8/15/2022 at 6:31 PM, Albert Tatlock said:

The queue when a vacancy arose must have been a mile long. Probably.

Funnily enough (and non-ironically), from what I can gather, the stamping went on in the warehouse and what they all wanted was to get a job in the office, so there actually was a queue for that. 

[Albert Tatlock]

There is a local history group in Wigston, and just on the off-chance I contacted them, and got this reply this morning:

Hi,

 

Our Secretary passed on your enquiry re Thorpe and Porter. We do not have any info in our archives about the Company, and according to Wikipedia (see the link below) the company was based in Thurmaston Leicester and Oadby, but not in Wigston.

 

Thorpe & Porter - Wikipedia

 

I suggest that you contact Oadby Remembering The Past facebook page who  may be able to help.

 

I am much too ancient to get my head around this new-fangled Facebook stuff, maybe someone else could chase it up.

Hope Ethel is enjoying her retirement, and hope even more that she was a compulsive diarist.

[themagicrobot]

I don’t do Faceache either. I can barely work out these forums

A Letter in the Leicester Mercury might work

if I was a private eye knocking on some doors of terraced houses would track down Ethel and Gladys or offspring eventually

i bet all the covers for the comics inside the Double Double books are still in a shed in a back garden in Thurmaston

[themagicrobot]

I do know one interesting fact

T and P were next door to the Walkers crisp factory 

[Albert Tatlock]

On 8/16/2022 at 1:43 PM, themagicrobot said:

I do know one interesting fact

T and P were next door to the Walkers crisp factory 

I asked my mate here about it, but he didn't want to listen.

[themagicrobot]

I can see an Archie UKPV thread. Is there a Miller thread I've lost sight of? Anyway just thought Len Miller deserved some praise for his fair prices. If a regular comic was 9d you'd think a Giant would be 1/6 but Len only charged 1/- . Is the square 1/- price Len's too or was someone else bringing over the same comics at the same time?

[Malacoda]

On 8/16/2022 at 1:43 PM, themagicrobot said:

I do know one interesting fact

T and P were next door to the Walkers crisp factory 

I think the old T&P premises at Thurmaston actually became the Walkers premises.  It's hard to work out exactly, but T&P moved out in 1971 and Walkers sold the brand to Standard Brands in 1971 who I believe relocated the crisps & snacks there while Walker's went back to their original core business....pies!   The Walker's factory has morphed into a monster since then, so it's hard to work out. 

[Malacoda]

On 8/16/2022 at 1:08 PM, Albert Tatlock said:

 

I suggest that you contact Oadby Remembering The Past facebook page who  may be able to help.

I am much too ancient to get my head around this new-fangled Facebook stuff, maybe someone else could chase it up.

Hope Ethel is enjoying her retirement, and hope even more that she was a compulsive diarist.

I have tried that group and while it has some interesting photos of the area, they are quite religiously pre-1960. There are some photos of London Road where Fred's original newsagents was, but I haven't seen one of the actual newsagents.  I am in touch with some other people on FB (who have memories of the area and more specifically of T&P)  and I did think for a moment there I'd found one of the Ethels, but nothing helpful so far.   Mostly it's people whose parents or grandparents worked there briefly and remember getting free comics that were subsequently binned.  Best not to think about that. 

 I will keep chatting to these people and report anything useful that turns up.

[Malacoda]

On 7/24/2022 at 11:23 AM, Get Marwood & I said:

@Malacoda Rich - one thing I'd love to see from you is a one-stop graphic / summary of the hiatus periods with your summary as to why you believe each existed duly recorded. I've lost track of it all now, in the discussion. It's your work that has discounted the previous shipping strike theories, so you should do the summary. I'd like to see that. 

OK, this is my tight five. 

1st Marvel PV hiatus:
Duration: October 1964 to August 1965
Started because: prior to the 1964 election, the new govt was proposing a new import tax, but as no one knew when the tax would begin or the percentage, and PV’s had to be ordered 3 months in advance, the only way to get ahead of the tax was to flip to stamping in advance (hence the first stamps are still 9d). 
Ended because:  the tax was supposed to be a temporary measure but actually lasted 2 years, so after 7 months of waiting, T&P flipped back to 10d PV’s, which then took 3 months to catch up to cover date. 

2nd Marvel PV hiatus: 
Duration: October to December 1966.
Started because: in the first 6 months of 1966, T&P was headed for bankruptcy and bills were not getting paid.  Marvel reduced supply accordingly, restricting the number of titles (and possibly the volumes of the ones that still got PV’s, though I suspect not). 
Ended because: IND bought T&P and normal business relations were resumed. 

3rd Marvel PV hiatus: 
Duration: November 1967 to March 1969.  
Started because: UK devalued currency. Again, it was not known by how much or when this would be, so T&P went to stamps in advance. During this period, I think T&P enjoyed the flexibility of extra volume (which is why the stamps carry on in tandem with the PV’s afterwards) and during this period they were flipping printers from ECP to WCP, so each cover date month was made up of up to 8 print runs from 2 different suppliers.  This also coincides with the Marvel explosion of new titles and breaking out of ST/TOS/TTA into 6 separate titles.  Bafflingly, they did not automatically put the new titles with the new printer, so they not only had to be launched but then separately migrated to WCP.  It was clearly decided not to add flipping back to PV’s to the chaos. Once all titles were under WCP (after cd Jan 1969), they re-started PV’s which kicked in from cd April 1969.  You can see that this issue related to the printers, because, unlike the 2 previous hiatuses, when PV’s resume, it happens all in the same cover date month: everything that was going to get a PV gets one at the same time, but not based on release date, based on cover date, clearly co-ordinated by the printer. 
 

[Albert Tatlock]

On 8/17/2022 at 1:07 AM, Malacoda said:

UK devalued currency. Again, it was not known by how much or when this would be

This was sprung as a surprise, even though it was well known that sterling was under a lot of pressure..

I knew an American family, whose son was a regular on the collecting scene locally, who were preparing to return to the States after about 2 years in UK. The father had not got around to converting his bank balance to dollars, he was caught completely on the hop and was at his wit's end.

Devaluation was from $2.80 to $2.40, almost 15%, at a stroke.

[Malacoda]

On 8/17/2022 at 12:33 PM, Albert Tatlock said:

This was sprung as a surprise, even though it was well known that sterling was under a lot of pressure..

I think it had to be.  If they had announced it with any notice period up then anyone contemplating any purchase of an import would have run out and bought it. Every business that used imports in any way would bought anything it could in advance and crashed sterling even further.  Callaghan & Wilson had both been vehemently against devaluing sterling, but Callaghan had staked his reputation on it to the point that he had to resign as Chancellor. This was really a huge deal as the UK and every other major country had been part of the Bretton Woods financial accord since the war.  Bretton Woods required countries to guarantee convertibility of their currencies into U.S. dollars to within 1% of fixed parity rates and then the dollar was convertible to gold bullion for foreign governments and central banks at $35 per ounce, so it tied every country (except Russia) effectively to a global gold standard. Changing where you sat against the dollar changed where you sat against every currency in the world and against the global gold standard.    

As you say, everyone knew it was coming, but when and by how much was a secret. Even then, speculators were killing the currency reserves. 

[Malacoda]

Hmmm.  Whilst going through a box of what I can only describe  as 'old toot' I discovered this Charlton Atomic Mouse from Jan 1961  

[themagicrobot]

In the early days of Wikipedia much of it was vague or downright incorrect. You still need to be careful. On the Wikipedia page for World Distributors it says in the first paragraph

Quote

For a period, the company was the lone distributor of American comics in the UK. 

Further down they don't use the word "lone" and say

Quote

 

1970s: American comics distributor

The company was for a time in the 1970s, the official distributor of American comics in the UK, an arrangement which ended in the early 1980s

 

I think "citation is needed" . Are they just referring to Gold Key comics? If they were the "lone" distributor that implies it includes all the other companies around at the time.

Edited August 17, 2022 by themagicrobot

[LowGradeBronze]

On 8/7/2022 at 3:35 PM, Malacoda said:

I'm pretty sure this is actually happening with TOS 71. I've seen 3 weirdo stamps on IM's punch flare now.  Here's 2 of them. 

So what price was victory, in the end? Was it a shilling or was it ninepence? I'm confused. (This is such a good thread!)

Edited August 17, 2022 by LowGradeBronze

[Malacoda]

On 8/17/2022 at 8:18 PM, LowGradeBronze said:

So what price was victory, in the end? Was it a shilling or was it ninepence? I'm confused. 

9d, 10d, 1/- ......you can't put a price on Victory.  Apparently. 

 

(10d is the headline price, 9d would be a discounted price, I imagine and 1/- was the price in Ireland). 

 

 

[Malacoda]

On 8/17/2022 at 8:18 PM, LowGradeBronze said:

 (This is such a good thread!)

Have you just ploughed through the whole thing? Hats off, if so.  I imagine that would take some stamina by this point.