Welcome to the postcard.co.uk board, for discussion on all aspects of the hobby. You'll need to register to post but this only takes a few seconds and gives you access to more of the features and options available. Please read the the HOW to REGISTER article first. thanks
I run a very successful local history page for the town I live in and through it I am looking to sell a magazine in the near future. In the magazine I want to feature some postcards I own which date from 1900 - 1920. they are mainly obscure street scenes from local areas. They are RPs. Some have publishers names and others have nothing. One of the publishers is Bell's Photo Co of Leigh On Sea Essex. Assuming the 70 year rule applies to these, do I need to be concerned about publishing them commercially? Also, if a publisher is not stated what do I do? Last question. I notice lots of old post cards have some kind of number on them. What is this?
We've discussed copyright before on this forum and it's a recurring theme on a Great War Forum to which I belong. If you can readily determine that the publisher is still in business then it would be courteous to contact them. But in most cases the copyright will have lapsed, or the copyright owner can't be traced, and if they do pop up they probably won't be at all bothered. And to be honest there's not much that they can do and will probably (have to)accept an apology.
You could include a disclaimer on the lines of "The author has attempted to identify the owners of any copyright of material used in this book but this has not not always been possible. Should anyone believe they have a claim to copyright they are invited to contact the author."
There are dozens of books that reproduce century-old postcards and I suspect that most of the authors are not as conscientious as you.
The numbers you ask are almost certainly reference numbers used by the publisher, sometimes in lieu of any caption and to help differentiate between similar scenes of "The High Street".
