History of London illustrated playing cards

Published September 24, 2023 • Updated December 02, 2024

A catalogue in 54 cards of some of the treasures held within the Museum of London collections.

Published by the Heritage Playing Card Company in 2009, this is not a typical photographic tourist souvenir of London but rather a catalogue in 54 cards of some of the treasures held within the Museum of London collections. The cards display a broad range of photographs (with titles and detailed descriptions) of treasures, interesting artefacts (some historic, some more mundane), and scenes and stories about daily life in London from the pre-historic era to the present day. Early treasures include a flint hand-axe and roman pavement mosaics, while later artefacts include a policeman’s rattle, a suffrage handbill, Oliver Cromwell’s death mask, and a plague bell. The two jokers show an 1848 wood engraving of “Dirty Father Thames” and an early twentieth century police telephone box.

History of London playing cards published by the Heritage Playing Card Company in 2009

Above: History of London playing cards published by the Heritage Playing Card Company in 2009.

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By Peter Burnett

United Kingdom • Member since July 27, 2022

I graduated in Russian and East European Studies from Birmingham University in 1969. It was as an undergraduate in Moscow in 1968 that I stumbled upon my first 3 packs of “unusual” playing cards which fired my curiosity and thence my life-long interest. I began researching and collecting cards in the early 1970s, since when I’ve acquired over 3,330 packs of non-standard cards, mainly from North America, UK and Western Europe, and of course from Russia and the former communist countries.

• Russian Playing Cards

Following my retirement from the Bodleian Library in Dec. 2007 I took up a new role as Head of Library Development at the International Network for the Availability of Scientific Publications (INASP) to support library development in low-income countries. This work necessitated regular training visits to many sub-Saharan African countries and also further afield, to Vietnam, Nepal and Bangladesh – all of which provided rich opportunities to further expand my playing card collection.

Since 2019 I’ve been working part-time in the Bodleian Library where I’ve been cataloguing the bequest of the late Donald Welsh, founder of the English Playing Card Society.