Cigarette card with a colour image of a man carrying a box on a strap over his shoulder entitled 'Buy a Fine Singing Bird' Number 7 in a set of 25 cigarette cards entitled 'Cries of London'. Issued by John Player & Sons, a branch of the Imperial Tobacco Co. Ltd. text on reverse reads:'The seller of birds, with his cages of feathered songster and his cry of “Come buy my singing birds,” or “Come buy a linnet or a goldfinch,” has long disappeared fromour city streets. In the time of Charles 11., the keeping of caged birds was very much more popular than it is to-day. At that time the very south of Birdcage Walk to the south of St James’s park, was lined with aviaries of singing birds belonging to the “merry monarch.”
