This comic postcard, published by Bamforth & Company, was printed in England.

Other comic postcards of Bamforth (the large moustache, the forgotten purse) have been shared to this group.

On the face, a young man and a young woman are seated in close proximity on a “fainting couch”.

The woman appears to be teasing the man, who has his hand on her knee.

(The young man appears to be in clerical garb – unless there is a kind of collarless jacket, unknown to me before the popularity of “nehru jackets” of the late1960’s.)

Beneath the amorous couple is the legend, “Now be good, and if you can’t be good be careful.”

The advice is both humorous and baldly true – and the “humor” cannot quite disguise the ugly judgements that prevailed about unwed mothers in 1907.

For women of 1907, the attribution of “virtuous” and “virginal” were synonymous.

There were no reliable contraceptives widely and cheaply available in the early twentieth century.

A survey of census records will confirm the significant numbers of children born within a few months of marriage.

Although the homes for “fallen women” had begun to be renamed by 1900, newspapers of 1907 still referred commonly to “bastard children” born to single women.

The postcard is addressed to two young men of Corona, California.

Corona is in Riverside County, now part of the Greater Los Angeles region of Southern California. 

East of LA, Corona grew up in the 1880’s as a center of citrus farming.

The young men, Reuel Cooper and Frank Gates, received the postcard in September of 1907.

I cannot decipher the incomplete postmark of the place from which the postcard was mailed.

The message, “say, this is good advice from one who knows”, may be a sober admonition or it could be a bit of bragging from a guy who claimed to have a lot of “experience”.

The reverse of the postcard does not bear a name.

The frankness of the postcard legend foreshadows a substantial shift in mores and social attitudes that occurred in the years after the first World War.