When there are no clues left to the identities on a family snap

Now I will never know who any of these men are.

I am guessing they were friends and work mates of my grandfather and I think I can identify him but the others are lost in time.

And the images themselves could very well have also been lost.

I came across them in a collection of old photographs, letters and bills.

Of course on one level there is nothing special about them, most of us will have similar collections tucked away half forgotten and pretty much a mystery.

Most of us never take the time to write a name and add a date on the back and within a generation the identity of the people and the significance of the event are unknown.

More so as in this case these images were not even prints, instead they were negatives, which I scanned with little expectation that they would amount to much.

More so because they will date from the 1930s.

The best I can come up with is that they are Derby where my grandparents settled after the Great War.

There may be a clue in the shop name which I managed to reverse in scanning and in the large painted sign.
Four or five years ago someone suggested a link to a factory in Derby but I never followed it up.

So now these men stare back at me stubbornly providing no clues as to who they were, or when they posed for the camera.

All of which makes this I suppose one of those “non stories” but then it is family and that continues to exercise my interest.

And reminds me of that simple but most important point that you should always name and date a picture.

But then I am as guilty as my parents on that score.

So having done the public announcement I shall leave you with these images of men at work sometime over 80 years ago.

Pictures; from the collection of Andrew Simpson