No declarations of love this year? It could be worse, you could be receiving a pile of vinegar valentines. Vinegar Valentines were a popular novelty item, dropping into letterboxes for well over a century. Popularised in the 1840s, simple postcards decorated with insulting cartoons and verses were sent anonymously as novelty items to unsuspecting recipients. During their period of popularity, millions of cards were sent, received with laughter, tears and even threats of violence!

The commercialisation of Valentine’s day hasn’t always been a simple matter of throwing a few frills on a chocolate box. Vinegar Valentines were one of the earliest examples of trying to extend the holiday into something more substantial…and financially rewarding.

The verses themselves were generally rather cutting and cruel, introduced into the American market by a variety of printers who were already well-versed in producing conventional Valentine’s cards. It wasn’t until the turn of the century that the British market cottoned on to these postable insults, but soon enough, the market took off and even publishers with a Royal Warrant were producing cheap, one-sided cards. That’s not to say that all Vinegar Valentines were delivered safely – many were discarded by postal staff, believing them to be too obscene to be posted. In the USA, for many decades of the card’s popularity, the receiver, rather than the poster, was expected to pay for the postage, and the privilege of being insulted.

Academic Annebella Pollen has written one of few substantial papers about this Victorian curiosity, and explains how the mid-19th century was a time of ‘Valentine’s craze or Valentine’s mania’ where they sold in unprecedented numbers ‘were new, kind of mind-boggling quantities, these millions and millions of cards.’

As quoted in the Smithsonian, In 1857, The Newcastle Weekly Courant complained that “the stationers’ shop windows are full, not of pretty love-tokens, but of vile, ugly, misshapen caricatures of men and women, designed for the special benefit of those who by some chance render themselves unpopular in the humbler circles of life.”

Popular designs included characters of unattractive and unintelligent men and women, sent at the cost of just a penny, making them accessible and popular across all social classes and economic circumstances. Quite often, these Vinegar Valentines, or ‘Mock Valentines’, poked fun at the receiver’s occupation, not simply their looks or intelligence.

Understandably, reports of violence and physical harm relating to Vinegar Valentines were not uncommon. In 1855, London’s Pall Mall Gazette reported that a man had shot his estranged wife in the neck following his receipt of a Vinegar Valentine, which he was sure she’d sent. According to Pollen, there were also reports of suicides relating to these cards, an act which some cards endorsed.

Sadly, although millions of cards were sent, very few survive in museum collections today. Although, that’s rather understandable – not many people want to preserve a stash of insults. So if you’re feeling gloomy that you’re alone this Valentine’s Day, cheer up, at least you haven’t got a pile of these through your letterbox!

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