Unique attraction at Watford Public Library Hall this week is an exhibition of nearly 5,000 playing cards, many of them hundreds of years old.

They are part of the collection of Mr H.T. Morley, of Reading, a noted antiquarian whose interest in playing cards was aroused some 40 years ago when he was offered the purchase of a complete pack reputed to have been issued in the reign of George III. Since then Mr Morley, now an octogenarian, has collected something like 20,000 specimens and in 1931 published a book under the title “Old and Curous Playing Cards”.

The cards on view at the public library are choice selections from the collection. There are fascinating exhibits from places as far afield as India, Persia, China and Tibet, and cards designed to express typical French satire. One complete set bears the music and words of Jon Gay’s “Beggar’s Opera” and another, from Austria, has the music of 1,001 waltzes.

The oldest cards on view come from Spain and are dated 1597. The smallest are painted on chicken skin and measure only six thirty-seconds by nine thirty seconds of an inch.

[From the Watford Observer of May 23, 1947]