How acidic Valentine's Day cards were sent to mock

The cards - such as this one - were sent to mock or humiliate their recipient

An acidic collection of 19th Century Valentine's Day cards that were meant to mock their recipients are on display.

Most of the so-called Vinegar Valentines cards are unsold stock from a Dorset shop that was open in Wimborne High Street between 1837 and 1871.

The cards were sometimes used to discourage the attention of would-be suitors through mockery and contempt and were sent anonymously.

The Museum of East Dorset's curator said the collection of 350 cards would be the first thing staff would seek to save in the event of a fire.

"Character assassination may be rife online nowadays but looking at these Vinegar Valentines, Victorians certainly also knew how to hit where it hurt," Rob Gray said.

The cards were popular from the 1840s after the Penny Post revolutionised the postal service and the volume of letters sent.

The museum's display of the hundreds of cards is open all year

In 1840, the first year of the Penny Post, the number of letters sent more than doubled and within 10 years that had doubled again.

Most of the cards in the Wimborne museum's collection was taken from William Low's stationery and printing shop, where the museum is now based.

The collection, which also includes traditional - and more complimentary - Valentine's Day cards, were discovered by an ironmonger in 1904, who took over the old shop unit after it was boarded up by a previous occupier in 1872.

They were nearly pulped during World War Two as part of an effort to reuse paper but were successfully saved.