‘THE CODFATHER’ IS A NAME shared by many fish and chips shops in England. There is one such establishment opposite the railway station at Ryde Esplanade on the Isle of Wight. It is a typical traditional fish and chips place, but with one distinguishing feature.
There is a circular commemorative plaque on its external wall. This was placed to remember when this shop was raided by the police in September 1953. Then, the shop was owned by John Leigh. During the raid, the police confiscated 1087 postcards designed by Donald McGill.
McGill (1875-1962), a graphic artist, created over 12000 seaside postcards between 1904 and his death. Almost all of them had humorous pictures on them. They were prints made from his colour-washed drawings. Some of them were classed as “saucy”, which means they depicted scenes with typically British sexual innuendo.
In 1954, McGill fell foul of the Obscene Publications Act of 1857, and was found guilty. He was fined £50, and had to pay £25 in legal costs. The 1953 raid on John Leigh’s shop was only one of 5 such raids in Ryde. Mr Leigh was the proprietor of what was then ‘The Esplanade Bazaar’, which sold ‘fancy goods’. It would seem that he also stocked saucy postcards, maybe illicitly.
Today, The Codfather occupies Mr Leigh’s shop. Its polite helpful staff served us fish and chips, but seemed not to know much about the raid on their premises seventy years ago.
yamey 