The details gleaned from the company which was to merge with Tom Smiths, was a little hazy. They claimed, however, to be the very next company after Smiths to produce crackers. They were, it is said, producing out of the back yard, as early as 1854. These crackers were not named, and the most you will find on such boxes is a registration number or a product name, with no company name. As the law of copyright was still very new and somewhat dubiously observed, and trade descriptions acts had not even been heard of, many of these inferior brands were passed off, at least by copied designs, as Tom Smith Crackers, so that by 1890 Smiths were beginning to retaliate.
Persons copying or in any way infringing same are liable to legal proceedings'.
Their catalogue in the 1880's listed some ninety odd specially designed sets with matching boxes, plus some further eighty designs of a plainer nature. Elegant, fringed crackers with fine Chromolithographs picture scraps of Father Christmas. The contents were really well made paper costumes. In the early Victorian times, as in Georgian before, the merriest parties were held after Christmas, on Twelfth Night, the last day of the season. Twelfth Night parties were usually Masques, when people dressed up in fancy costumes.