By NEVILLE DENSON

IN these days of open and almost constant hostility towards smokers and the tobacco companies, it's pleasing to be able to reflect on cigarette cards as one good thing tobacco brought. They were issued in cigarette packets from 1885 until the outbreak of the Second World War. And St Helens wasn't neglected by the tobacco companies. As thousands of smokers across the nation opened their cigarette packets, up would pop a picture having some connection with the area.

Civic matters featured prominently and the town's Coat of Arms was to be found in a set issued back in 1906. It tells us that the arms are made up entirely from the arms of local families. The black cross of the Ecclestons is combined with the two blue bars of the Parrs, Marquises of Northampton. The St Andrew's crosses are from the arms of Lord Gerard and the black griffins from the Bold family. The lion (Walmsley) holds an ingot of silver and the two fleur-de-lis are from the arms of the borough's first mayor, Sir D Gamble, Bart.

Not surprisingly, sport too, was a popular subject for cigarette card producers. St Helens Leslie Fairclough featured in at least two sets, one from 1926, when he is seen wearing his international cap and an action picture which appeared a couple of years later. A local boy, he signed for the Saints when he was only 14. The cards describe him as one of the cleverest, finest attacking players in the Rugby League and say that 'the quality of his work is reflected in the successes gained by his club in League and Cup warfare'. Fairclough apparently had many offers to leave St Helens but he preferred to play in his native town.

He represented Great Britain six times against Australia and New Zealand between 1926 and 1929.

John Wallace of St Helens Recreation is another player from the 1920s who found fame on the cards. He came to the club from Barrow and was said to have quickly become 'the star back, though able to play in any position and possessing great speed.' Wallace represented Lancashire and when the card was issued in 1926 it was said that only injury had kept him out of the England team. But perhaps the most famous and widely-known of St Helens sons to grace a card is Sir Thomas Beecham. Looking very youthful, and in the days before his knighthood, his picture is to be found in a set of Musical Celebrities from 1914. The card calls him 'one of our prominent new conductors' who 'brought himself into great prominence recently by his operatic enterprises at His Majesty's Theatre and at Covent Garden.' He produced 'at enormous expense (for the first time in England) Richard Strauss' operas 'Salome' and 'Electra' and is the founder and conductor of the Beecham Symphony Orchestra.' The son of 'pill millionaire', Sir Joseph Beecham, he was to go on to become conductor of the Metropolitan Opera in New York and later to found the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. Sir Thomas was also noted for his 'Lollipop' encores and after-concert speeches.

Lots of cards were designed to have a general appeal and carried pictures of the countryside and exotic, faraway places. There's a strange irony in that indirectly cigarettes must have brought a breath of fresh air to many a working man and woman, living in squalid industrial areas with little leisure time.

A few facts about cigarette cards:

Originally, blank cards were put in packets to protect the cigarettes.

Soon these were to contain pictures - quite something in an age when there was no radio, TV, cinema or colourful magazines. Nor were there photographs in newspapers in the very early days of cigarette cards.

Apart from their pictorial attraction, cards contained useful, reliable information at a time when most knowledge had to be sought from huge, scholarly books - a daunting prospect to most people.

Over the years there were series ranging from Gilbert and Sullivan to game birds, fish to film stars, Alpine flowers to aviation and boxers to butterflies.

Most of the millions of cards issued will have been thrown away but many survive, some even in mint condition.

A set of 50 can still be bought for well under £10 but rarer cards fetch much more.

In 1987, £15,500 was paid for 20 Clowns and Circus Artistes. That price looks an absolute bargain and 'chickenfeed' alongside the 451,000 dollars paid in New York in 1991 for a single card of a baseball player. Mind you, it was in mint condition! The player was one Honus Wagner - a non-smoker.

We've all heard about the waste of being a slave to the weed - of money 'going up in smoke'. But I don't suppose many people ever thought that throwing away cards that popped-up from cigarette packets could in time, prove to be just as wasteful.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.