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Who remembers Simpson's self-raising Flour? Christmas advertisement from the Mayfair Theatre, 1944-1946.

By Tania Schafer, Librarian, Queensland Memory | 23 December 2020

Advertisement for Simpson's self-raising flour

Advertisement for Simpson's self-raising flour. Image number: 32406-0001-0003, 32406 Mayfair Theatre lantern slides, John Oxley Library, State Library of Queensland.

I wanted to know more about this Christmas advertisement from the John Oxley Library collection, 32406 Mayfair Theatre lantern slides. The collection contains 20 magic lantern slide advertisements that were shown at Mayfair Theatre at Sandgate in 1944-1946.

From a newspaper article I found digitised on Trove, "Flour Milling". The Brisbane Courier (Qld. : 1864 - 1933) 5 August 1930,  I found out that the Simpson brothers came to Brisbane in 1909 and started producing self-raising flour in Stanley Street, South Brisbane.

By 1929 they had vastly expanded their business, selling their products across Queensland, Northern Rivers of New South Wales, Darwin, Thursday Island and Torres Straits, New Guinea and Java. Some of their products included Simpson's self-raising flour, breakfast meal, wholemeal self-raising flour, "Koala" jelly crystals, and "Royal Blue" dried fruits.

To advertise their products, Simpson's produced cake recipe booklets featuring Ruby Borrowdale, Queensland's best-known cookery expert from the 1930s to the 1960s. The John Oxley Library holds the collection, 5501 Ruby Borrowdale Papers 1925-1987  that contains photographs, booklets, newspaper clippings and ephemera associated with Ruby Borrowdale. State Library's 2009 John Oxley Library Fellow, Susan Addison produced a short digital story called “Crazy about Cakes” focusing on the influence of Ruby Borrowdale's cake recipes booklets, produced by the Simpson Brothers.

Now I am left with a question “What happened to the Simpson’s Brothers company?” Please comment on this blog if you have anymore information? 

If you're interested in seeing some of the other lantern slide advertisements from the Mayfair Theature, please see our Flickr album.

Tania Schafer, Librarian, Queensland Memory.

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