A Salford coal merchant and his two daughters who lived on Needham Avenue in Chorlton

This is Jacob Brimelow, coal merchant and I am guessing we will be somewhere in Salford. 

I don’t have a date but as Jacob was 25 in 1901 and a year later the family migrated to Australia where they stayed until the 1920s it is just possible that we are back in Salford just after they returned.

And there is a lot more to the picture because the wagon carried the name of William Perkins who was one of 11 coal merchants who had their offices at the coal depot on Ordsall Lane in 1911.

Jacob’s father had also been a coal merchant but appears to have changed occupations having described himself as a commercial clerk in 1881 but a decade later was selling coal.

And it may be that we can pin point that change to sometime after 1886 because in that year he is absent from the trade directories.

So with a bit more digging we should able to get an exact date for when he began trading and likewise when in the 1920s Jacob was also plying the Salford streets.

All of which brings me back to that picture and a date.

Look closely and at the rear of the wagon is a motor car while the hat and coat of the woman looking on suggest sometime in the 1920s or possibly early 1930s.

And I think we are dealing with something special for neither Jacob or the lad on the wagon are dirty or in their everyday work clothes.

Added to which the horse is decked out in gleaming brasses and head gear which may mean we are at the start of a special parade, but what that was is for now anyone’s guess.

But I have every confidence we shall.

Not that that is the end of the story, for two of Jacob's daughters who were born in Australia were later to settle in Chorlton and live beside each other in Needham Avenue.

Picture; Jacob Brimelow, date unknown, from the collection of Susan Barlow and familly.