Trades People Happy Families
Happy Families card game depicting trades people from 1920s.
Happy Families game depicting trades people from 1920s, unknown maker/publisher, a total of 56 cards. Price one Shilling.
The various characters and their families are brightly coloured, dressed in their working clothes. Each family has a Mr, Mrs, Master and Miss - Baker, Butcher, Coalman, Cobbler, Dustman, Fireman, Fishmonger, Grocer, Milkman, Policeman, Porter, Postman, Sweep, Tailor - fourteen families whose specialised skills and respectful service was integral to daily life in our local communities, often delivering to the doorstep, before the advent of supermarkets and internet shopping.








Above: Happy Families set, unknown maker / publisher, 56 cards, square corners, plain pink backs, size of cards = 60mm x 88mm, no identity on the box. A companion Snap game was also published with some of the same characters.

By Rex Pitts (1940-2021)
Member since January 30, 2009
View ArticlesRex's main interest was in card games, because, he said, they were cheap and easy to get hold of in his early days of collecting. He is well known for his extensive knowledge of Pepys games and his book is on the bookshelves of many.
His other interest was non-standard playing cards. He also had collections of sheet music, music CDs, models of London buses, London Transport timetables and maps and other objects that intrigued him.
Rex had a chequered career at school. He was expelled twice, on one occasion for smoking! Despite this he trained as a radio engineer and worked for the BBC in the World Service.
Later he moved into sales and worked for a firm that made all kinds of packaging, a job he enjoyed until his retirement. He became an expert on boxes and would always investigate those that held his cards. He could always recognize a box made for Pepys, which were the same as those of Alf Cooke’s Universal Playing Card Company, who printed the card games. This interest changed into an ability to make and mend boxes, which he did with great dexterity. He loved this kind of handicraft work.
His dexterity of hand and eye soon led to his making card games of his own design. He spent hours and hours carefully cutting them out and colouring them by hand.