04 April 2011

Biscuit mailed home during WWI

As described at Spitalfields Lite...
...I walked up to St John’s Gate where a biscuit is preserved that was sent home from the trenches in World War I by Henry Charles Barefield. Surrounded by the priceless treasures of the Knights of St John magnificently displayed in the new museum, this old dry biscuit  has become an object of universal fascination both for its longevity and its ability to survive the rigours of the mail. Even the Queen wanted to know why the owner had sent his biscuit home in the post, when she came to open the museum. But no-one knows for sure, and this enigma is the source of the power of this surreal biscuit.
Via A London Salmagundi.

2 comments:

  1. I wonder what was written on the back of this old cracker ("biscuit" to the Brits). It is a tribute to the purported inedibility of such an item.

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  2. I have one of these that my grandfather mailed home from France to his then girlfriend, later to be his wife.

    Tim Cullis

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