The story is simply that there is no story …….. the Victorian family

We will all have some family pictures with faces whose names are lost in time.

"Uncle Bob and Aunty Jean and mother"

And even if there is a name, the family connection has been severed leaving just a host of questions.

So, who were Uncle Bob and Aunty Jean? Their names are recorded on the back of this picture postcard along with the comment that “mother is on the left”.

But just who they were, or when and where the picture was taken were never added.

I wish there were more.

Of course, the fashion historian will be able to suggest the decade the picture might have been taken, but alas I am not qualified to pass such a judgement.

But at least the three are young enough to be wearing clothes from the time they sat for the photo shoot.  With older people there is always that danger that they are wearing the fashions of their youth, which might stretch back into the past.

Sadly, there is no clue from the backdrop or from the objects held by the two women which in probability were also photographic props, and the name of the studio is absent from the back of the card.

Head and shoulders

So, I am forced back on the questions I know there are no answer to.

What special occasion might have warranted the visit to the studio and why is only one of the three staring directly at the camera?

And am I the only one who thinks there is something slightly amiss with the three heads, as if they have been superimposed?

Unknown

But then perhaps that is what comes of staring at a picture for too long, looking for something significant which offers up clues to the picture’s story.

I have Tony Goulding to thank for the picture, which he spotted in the local Oxfam shop, which begs another question, of how it got to be donated, and whether there is a connection between it and the other one he sent me of a young girl.

It would be easy to fall back on speculation, which can be fun but is not very historical, so I shall close with the thought that whoever the four were, at least they have come out into the daylight for a short while.



Location; unknown

Picture; the 3 and the one, dates unknown