Quaterne

Goodall and Son are best known for their playing cards and wide variety of card sets and game paraphernalia. But they also produced a number of children’s games, although not on the same scale as De La Rue. One of these games was Quaterne which, according to Mike Goodall, was first published in 1873¹. Each pack of 48 cards comprises 12 sets of 4 cards in woodcut-style line illustrations, in different colours, as it says on the box – black, red, brown and yellow. Each of the sets in my copy of the game is shown below. There are 4 Kings, 4 Queens, 4 knaves etc.

Close inspection of the particular sets of cards in this box suggests something is not quite right. There seems to be no logical link or theme between some of the sets and others. Members of the royal family and various occupations seem straightforward, but the others appear less so. Judy and Toby are presumably from Punch and Judy, Buttons is traditionally part of the Cinderella story but Hector, in the form of a rocking horse, is less easy to place. Perhaps this meant something more to children playing the game in the 1870s. It looks as if it was designed more for fun than for education, and for quite young children too.

Quaterne was originally produced in six different sets: Dogs, Cats and Rabbits; London Mixture; Monkeys, Owls and Snails; Punch and Judy, Royal Court and Zoological. It is now easy to see that my pack is made up from several of these separate games. Yet, all of the cards are clearly of the same vintage, wear and backing colour, and, frankly, feel like a pack of cards that have been together for a long time.

I’d like to speculate that my set was jumbled together by a young owner who owned more than one of this series of games, who played with all the cards together but was less than careful about which cards went into which box at the end of play!

To make it even more intriguing the side of my box is labelled “DOGS, CATS & RABBITS” which in no way represents the cards which it now contains– apart from Toby!

To complicate matters still further, one can see that this label has been pasted over an alternative list which ended in “LS”. This additional labelling appears, from the colour and materials used, to have been done by the manufacturer, or retailer, back in the 1870s. Speculating further, it seems likely that the box was originally printed to contain the only other set ending in “LS”, namely “MONKEYS, OWLS & SNAILS”. My set is clearly a mishmash with a complicated history!

However, what do we know? Quaterne was one of a series of games with this title first published by Goodall & Sons in 1873. My box contains a mixture of cards from at least three different versions of this game. The games were mass produced for children, and the quality of the cards was poor by comparison with other Goodall products. The Quaterne box, unlike playing card containers, opens like a match box .

Sadly my pack contains no playing instructions which would undoubtedly have been included when sold. It is obvious that 12 sets of four cards could be used in a wide variety of children’s games current at that time, from Snap to Pelmanism. The name "Quaterne" is derived from the Latin quaterni (meaning “four each”), emphasizing that the object of the game is to collect sets of four related cards.

Reference

1. M. H. Goodall, The Family and the Firm, 1820-1922, 2000