HODKIN, Leonard Service. 172 hand drawn standard sized postcards in pen and ink, created around 1910 by Leonard Service Hodkin [1895-1976] of Sheffield, U.K.
Leonard Service Hodkin was born in 1895, to Frederick William Hodkin and Rosa Hodkin. His father was an Electro Silver Plater for one of the many Sheffield silver manufacturing firms.
The family home was 28 Thoresby Street, Nether Hallam (now in the Hillsborough area), Sheffield, inherited by Leonard after his parents’ deaths. Most of the postcards can be dated to 1907-1910, when Leonard was attending Morley Street Council School, [headteacher Mr Parkinson, and class teacher Mr G. Goulding when Leonard was 13]. The school had opened in 1901, becoming more correctly known as Hillsborough Council School. There were 437 boys. Leonard [aged 15] had left school by the time of the 1911 Census, in which he is listed as an Electro Silver Plater’s apprentice, following the same trade as his father. His brother was attending Sheffield University. The advent of the Great War saw him joining the Royal Field Artillery [regt. No. 130877] as a driver and seeing service in Salonika, Egypt, Palestine France and Germany. Wounded in Germany in 1919, he returned to England on 8thMay 1919 and was demobilised. In 1915, at the time of signing up, Leonard was 5’ 4” tall; weighed 8st 6lbs and had a 34” chest. His physical development was described as ‘good’.
The 1939 Register shows he was married to a Gertrude Scholey of Walkley. The couple, along with Leonard’s parents, were now living in Wadsley, Sheffield.
The postcards are almost all signed and dated [by Leonard’s age] by his father. A few of the drawings are also signed by Leonard’s headmaster and class teacher. Apparently, several newspapers ran competitions for school children between 1905-1910 for hand-drawn postcards, which would then presumably have to be countersigned by a headmaster /class teacher as verification. Now preserved in a purpose made clamshell box.
[Original research by John Place]
