A stamp including an image of King George V, used in Scotland from 1912-1918.

You know what they say, a picture says a thousand words. This postcard can tell us a lot about Scottish culture and how their society was like during the time that this postcard was made. We can tell that the Gordon clan was respected and superior during this time period, as the thick border shows their tartan as well as their name being displayed in front of the postcard. In the photograph, we can tell that steamboats were a popular mode of transportation. In fact, the pier was constructed in 1835 so that it was only suitable for steamboats (Valenman 2019).

From the photograph, we can tell the esplanade and pier was a popular hangout spot. Even from the back of the postcard, we can tell that Dunoon Pier drew in people from all over the world, assuming that the person who wrote on this postcard was coming from Ontario, Canada. Way before the construction of the pier, Dunoon only started to gain popularity in 1822, when a holiday home named Castle House, was built by the Lord Provost of Glasgow, James Ewing (BBC 2019). The Castle House is located just across the Pier Esplanade. Lastly, we can tell who the ruler of the UK was just by looking at the stamp, King George V (Stubbs 2019).

James Ewing's Castle House, located in Dunoon, Scotland.

Today, when one sends a postcard, it is assumed that it is sent as a souvenir from the place where the postcard was purchased. However, this was not the case in the early 1900s. During this time period, people didn't have phones like we do today so they couldn't text their family and friends within a matter of seconds. Postcards were used as a means of easy communication (Gillen 2016). They were used by people to easily update one another on how things were going; just small talk. Without postcards, it'd be difficult for people to communicate when they're far apart from one another. Based on this, we could tell that postcards were extremely popular during this time. To give you a statistic, six billion postcards were sent in a time span of eight years (1902-1910)!

Postcards served as ephemera, as they were not meant to live long enough for people in the future to see it. However, many old postcards from Scotland are now in the hands of historians and students today. From these postcards, we are able to educate ourselves on Scottish life and culture in the 1900s. It's the little things in postcards that give viewers great insight into what life was like back then. We were able to collect information from something as insignificant as a stamp!