How on earth did two of Hampstead Cemetery’s most successful residents become embroiled in some deliciously subversive 20th century advertising? Sometimes that’s just the way the cookie crumbles…
In 1857 Samuel Palmer joined Huntley & Palmers as a partner and within a decade the family-run biscuit company dominated the market. By 1878 they boasted being Royal Warrant holders for the British, French, Belgian, Dutch, Italian and, at that time, Siamese royal families, while Henry “Dr Livingston, I presume?” Stanley ensured he was well-stocked with Huntley & Palmers as he trekked to Lake Tanganyika. Captain Scott followed suit (with his own bespoke recipe no less) for his ill-fated Antarctic expedition. The company supplied soldiers with their biscuits during both World Wars and even baked the future Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip’s wedding cake, while the Reading-based factory was visited by Oscar Wilde, King George V and Edward VII. It also was used as a set location for the speakeasy scenes in 1975’s Bugsy Malone starring Jodie Foster and Scott Baio. But something else set the company apart: its flair for advertising, both in print and on their highly collectible biscuit tins (trust me on this, they’re exquisite). But by the 20th century, this Biscuit Behemoth had no idea about just how collectible its tins were about to get…
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| Samuel Palmer (image courtesy of Reading Borough Council via http://www.huntleyandpalmers.org.uk) |
By the late 1880s Kate Greenaway was legendary in her own right, commanding adoration from a generation of Victorian children (and their mothers!) with her nostalgic illustrations of children frolicking in Regency-style outfits. Her “Under the Window: Pictures & Rhymes for Children” saw her hit meteoric heights with the book selling out as quickly as it was printed, while Liberty of London commissioned an entire range of children’s clothing based on her artwork. Kate counted John Ruskin as a professional admirer and personal friend, was elected to the Royal Institute of Painters in Water Colours, exhibited at the Fine Art Society and even had an award established in her honour (The Kate Greenaway Medal) recognising outstanding achievements in illustration. Her work epitomised a time when children were untainted by cynicism, negativity or hardship, instead encapsulating innocence and eliciting a longing for a bygone era. Fast forward to the late 1970s when all that was about to change, courtesy of a subversive young freelance artist….
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| Kate Greenaway (Image courtesy of https://www.npg.org.uk) |
During 1978/79 the UK saw the Winter of Discontent and Margaret Thatcher’s election as Prime Minister. The Clash released London Calling, the streets were piled with rubbish and Mary Whitehouse, self-appointed crusader against moral decay, was still fighting the filth. At the time Mick Hill was an illustrator from Whitstable commissioned to design three Huntley & Palmer biscuit tins and the opportunity to make a little mischief was simply too good to pass up.
Mucha do about puffing
Mick got to work on his first design for Huntley & Palmers Cocktail Biscuits by replicating the style of Alphonse Mucha. He created an Edwardian party scene in full swing complete with dancing couples, a band, bottles and bottles of champagne, luscious fruits and flowers… the illustration smacked of free-spirited opulence. But there was one small detail hiding in plain sight: a devilish-looking gent offering a buxom blonde an enormous spliff with one hand while pouring drink into his lap with the other. Evidently Mick wished to ensure the contents of the tin and the characters depicted on it had something in common: they were all baked.
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| Those Edwardians, eh? (image courtesy of https://picclick.co.uk) |
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The party in full swing (image courtesy of https://picclick.co.uk)
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Huntley & Palmers: (going at it) since 1979
This little act of dissent slipped under the radar and in 1979 Mick turned his attention to the next piece, basing it on Kate Greenaway’s famous Regency revival style (it resembles the accompanying illustration from her poem “The Tea Party”, published in 1892’s “Marigold Garden”). But this time Mick added an extra measure of spice to the tin, which featured children and young women dressed in that famous Greenaway style enjoying tea, cakes, tennis and kite-flying in front of a large country house. Sounds wholesome, doesn’t it? Again, things weren’t quite as they appeared: hidden in the background, underneath the feet of the innocent kiddies perched on the branch of a tree, are a couple enjoying some al fresco fun in the bushes while a pair of dogs are going at it in the garden’s right-hand border.
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| Kate’s original The Tea Party illustration (image courtesy of https://olddesignshop.com) |
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| Mick Hill’s Greenaway-style tin (image courtesy of https://www.metro.co.uk) |
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| The naughty bits (image courtesy of https://www.bathchronicle.co.uk) |
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| More naughty bits (images courtesy of https://www.bathchronicle.co.uk) |
Sex and drugs and profiteroles
For the final instalment in his hat-trick of naughtiness, Mick chose a Japanese theme that imitated woodblock printing, depicting a lively nocturnal scene in which traditional bare-chested female pearl divers brought their treasures to the surface. The scene is completed with an attractive cherry blossom tree, underneath which stands an artist painting a landscape scene. Now this one was a little more subtle, unless you are Japanese: the logographic characters running down the left of the artist’s picture spell out “Sex and drugs and rock ‘n roll” which Mick had a friend translate for him.
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| The Pearl Divers by Mick Hill (image courtesy of http://www.editiononline.co.uk) |
All good things must come to an end and it wasn’t long before someone
spotted the impish images and brought them to the attention of Huntley &
Palmers. The company didn’t take it
well, issuing a press statement that read, in part, “… we can only decide to
have a joke in rather poor taste” and describing the incident as “a very stupid
and costly prank”. Predictably the
papers had a field day and thousands of lofts the country over were raided in
the hope of finding contraband tins.
Mick was portrayed as being a vindictive ex-staff member but that was
never the case: he was a freelancer and described his actions as being “just
done for a bit of fun, for devilment really”.
You can watch the wonderful BBC interview with him here. One of each of the infamous tins resides in
the Reading Museum’s collection while the rest go for a pretty penny on online
auction sites.
Samuel Palmer’s family grave is on a small tarmacked path to the left
of the main path leading down from the cemetery gates on Fortune Green
Road. Samuel retired in 1898 and passed
away on 9th April 1903 suffering from Parkinson’s Disease. His wife, Mary Jane, joined him in 1910,
followed by their daughter Nora in 1932.
The monument in Hampstead Cemetery isn’t listed but the memorial
drinking fountain erected in his memory on nearby College Crescent (where the
family lived at No. 40) is. Constructed
in the Arts & Crafts / Gothic-style with pink granite and oak, the
inscription reads:
“This fountain, together with the open space on which it is erected,
was presented to the Borough of Hampstead for the public benefit, in memory of
the late Samuel Palmer, of Northcourt, Hampstead, by his widow and family,
1904”
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| Palmer family plot, Hampstead Cemetery |
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| Samuel Palmer Memorial Drinking Fountain, College Crescent, Swiss Cottage |
Kate Greenaway died on 6th November 1901 after suffering from breast cancer, which eventually spread to her lungs, for three years. Her Arts & Crafts-style Hampstead home (39 Frognal) boasts a blue plaque commemorating her achievements and she was cremated in a private service, joining her parents in the family grave on 13th November, aged 55. Her only brother, Alfred, joined them in 1938. The plot is almost completely covered by an impenetrable blanket of blackberries and brambles, with only part of her father’s name visible on the top of the headstone (stand directly in front of Joseph Lister’s grave and look slightly to the right under a large tree – thank you, helpful sunbeam, for shining directly onto the grave in the photo below). Her epitaph reads:
Heaven’s blue skies may shine above my head,
While you stand there – and say that I am dead!
So what would Samuel and Kate have made of these little acts of
rebellion? I’d like to imagine them
taking it in the humour in which it was intended, perhaps over a pot of tea and
some ginger snaps in that biscuit factory / artist studio in the sky, but
something tells me they wouldn’t have (fig) rolled with it.
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