Cigarette card with a colour image of a woman selling potatoes entitled 'New Potatoes'. Text on reverse reads: 'The potato is said to have been introduced about 1584, by Sir W.Raleigh, and in the reign of James I. had become so common that “Potatoes! Ripe Potatoes” was a cry often heard in London. It is to be feared that the dealers were not more honest than others who sold their wares by weight, for a poet of 1662 wrote of them- “ You that sell your wares by weight, and live upon the trade, Some beams be false, some waits too light, such tricks there have been plaid!” '. Number 2 in a set of 25 cigarette cards entitled 'Cries of London'. Issued by John Player & Sons, a branch of the Imperial Tobacco Co. Ltd.
