Seven disheveled men in mismatched worn clothing sit in a row on a wooden ledge holding walking sticks, posed as a comic temperance tableau in this photographic postcard published by Bamforth and Co., Holmfirth and New York, catalog number 10c, titled "A Band of Hope" in hand-lettered text across the lower foreground. The card was mailed from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on December 5, 1906, addressed to Mrs. Eliz. M. Deacon of Birdsboro, Pennsylvania, and received there the same day, with a one-cent Franklin stamp affixed.

The men wear an assortment of battered hats including a fur cap, a crushed top hat, a bowler, and several soft-brimmed felt hats, their jackets variously torn, stained, and mismatched. Each figure holds a thin white cane or stick angled downward between his knees, and all display exaggerated expressions of bleary resignation. A painted outdoor backdrop with trees fills the background behind the group.

Bamforth and Co. of Holmfirth, Yorkshire was one of Britain's most prolific producers of comic and sentimental photographic postcards, active from the 1870s through the early twentieth century. The Band of Hope was a British temperance organization founded in 1847 to promote abstinence from alcohol among working-class communities, and the card's title applies the name ironically to a row of men whose appearance suggests the opposite of temperance reform.