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Kitty writes in: I am writing a short dissertation on the contents of people’s suitcases, the history of suitcase design and of special travel items (for example travel irons, plug adapters etc), as an indicator of cultural and social changes over the past seventy years or so. I have had real difficulty finding any material on this subject at all. I was wondering whether anyone at the Globetrotters club knows of any books published on travels trunks or suitcases, the turning points in design (for example when more people wanted to have a lightweight case, rather than making a big deal out of their journey with bringing a trunk…), or any history of packing. Kitty can be contacted by e-mail on: kittybennett@mac.com
I have spent most of my adult life travelling the world as a professional merchant seaman. I first went to sea in 1961 and joined my first ship, in the Royal Albert Docks, London, with the most enormous cabin trunk imagineable and on my second trip took a bicycle as well. At this time it was normal practice to join a ship in UK and stay with the ship until it returned to UK, which in the case of a tramp ship could be many months or even run into years. Before the end of that decade shipping companies were routinely relieving crews anywhere in the world when their agreed tour of duty was completed and flying them home for their leave. Naturally lugging a great big cabin trunk around on airplanes was not very practical, so we all downgraded to a suitcase or two and in fact I have seen some engineers and seamen joining ships with a holdall containing a couple of boiler suits a change of underware and not much else. Obviously the biggest change in “luggage habits” was as a result of air travel becoming the norm, when a trip to the far side of the world would take 24 to 36 hours instead of 6 weeks on a slow ship. I would say that the sixties was the decade of biggest change for this.