Wartime UK postcard: Schoolboy cryptography? Maths homework? Help!

March 24, 2023 1:57 PM

I recently bought WW1 postcards (Twitter thread) from a market stall here in London. As you'll see from the link, I have reason to believe they're from a British boarding school pupil writing to an older member of his family back home in Yorkshire. It's the first image in the second tweet there that intrigues me. Is this a family code of some kind? A form of mathematical notation I'm not familiar with? Let's solve this, Metafilter!
posted by Paul Slade to Writing & Language (8 answers total)

Ralph "The Brother" TURTON was born on 8 Jul 1908 and is getting that ripping atlas.
The code PC starts with a D+ear rebus.
CMT is surely the boys' mother Cecilia Mary Turton (Leeson) aka Cheelah
posted by BobTheScientist at 2:23 PM on March 24, 2023

Hypothesis: the digits only run 1-5; suppose they represent vowels a e i o u then
#2 is much the most common vowel . . .
the greeting has _ea_ in the middle of the first word = Dear as well as the rebus
and "I" starting line 2
and "you" starting line 4
and "I _a_e" starting line 7
Is M5MM_ mummy?
posted by BobTheScientist at 2:48 PM on March 24, 2023

The boxy shapes reminds me a pigpen cypher. Maybe someone else can take it from there?
posted by metahawk at 3:16 PM on March 24, 2023

Could some of the characters be shorthand? It's not as squiggly as the examples I've seen, but there seem to have been a lot of different systems.
posted by figurant at 3:43 PM on March 24, 2023

Response by poster: I made a stupid mistake in my OP, where I said "1940s postcards". In fact, the cards' postmarks (supported by the photos on their other sides) show they were mailed in 1915, when Britain was one year into the First World War and Robin away at Eton. Apologies for the wrong steer.

All the cards are addressed to "Miss CM Turton". There are several women of different generations in that family who were given the first name Cecilia, and a middle name starting with "M". This must have been a tradition in the Turton clan, I guess. Whichever "our" CMT was, she seems also to have gone by the nickname "Bunji".

[Mods please correct link in OP to read "WW1 postcards" if possible. Thank you.]
posted by Paul Slade at 4:16 PM on March 24, 2023

Right, based off BobTheScientist's theory about vowels & Mummy, I think I have most of it. Picture of the correspondence I've put together between symbols and letters here.

Message:

PS
Please send
more stamps

Dear "?"

I hope? a??
very well
Could u please
send my "gym
shoes" and "scool" cap
I gave "Annie" "mummy"'s
letter for mummy
posted by Law of Demeter at 11:41 PM on March 24, 2023 [4 favorites]

Woot! well done, LoD.
I read Line 2 as "I hope u are"
Vertically on left has: From "___"
Interesting early use of u for you? But not as early as Thomas Hardy in 1862.
posted by BobTheScientist at 3:39 AM on March 25, 2023 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: Big thanks to both BobTheScientist and Law of Demeter for their work here. That sort of coded postcard is just the sort of thing a bored schoolboy at the time might have amused himself with on a dull evening in the dorm.

I've added a couple more coded cards from Robin to Cecilia to the Twitter thread in my original post, so have another look there if you're interested. One appears to be written in Chinese characters, one as a pictogram and the last ... well, see it for yourself.
posted by Paul Slade at 8:08 AM on March 25, 2023 [1 favorite]