Friday, 11 August 2017

“Dear Husband, we are just off to Aunties” .............. a postcard from Oldham in 1915

In age of emails, facebook and the mobile the sending of a message on a picture postcard seems so anachronistic and yet I rather like the idea.

Of course it helped that the frequent collections and deliveries during a day meant that a card sent first thing in the morning might well be on the table by midday.

So this one sent on a Sunday evening in March would in all probability have arrived the following morning and been read by Private Joseph Platt of B Company, the 24th Manchester Regiment later that day.

It is a mix of the usual personal messages.  His wife tells him that she will be sending him “a few things in the morning” and was pleased with  the photos he had sent which “are good ones,  [adding] we are all well and glad you are, it is lovely this morning, with love from all.”

Now I can’t be sure but I think she will be Clara Platt who had been married to Joseph for fourteen years.

In the April of 1911 they had been had been living in the Liberal Chub in Hollinwood, in Oldham where Mr Platt had been employed as the steward and they had a daughter born in 1900 and a son born in 1910.

And I think I have found some at least of his military records.  There is a reference to a Private Joseph Platt of the Manchester Regiment having been awarded the British War Medal and Victory Medal and who was killed on the Western Front in the August of 1918.

In time I would like to dig deeper and see what more I may be able to find out about both Private Platt and his family.

Location; Oldham

Picture; picture postcard, 1915, from the collection of David Harrop

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