The mystery collection part 4 ............. the portrait, the town and the men at sea

Now I am back with that mystery collection of photographs of which we know very little about.

In all there are forty-six images which were originally on 4x5 glass negatives showing everyday life somewhere on the Belgian coast at the beginning of the last century.

In all probability they would have been lost had they not been given to friend of David Kennedy who thought he might be interested in them and as they say the rest is photographic history.

I dare say there are collections with a greater claim on photographic history but these nevertheless capture the moment.

Today I am drawn to three very different images.

The first is of an unknown man and his son.

They stare back at us with all the confidence of people who have the money to command a posed studio photograph.

And like most people I focus on their appearance.  The father is in a well made suit with matching waistcoat and tie and his son is dressed in a sailor suit which was standard dress for his class from the mid 19th century onwards.

But look a little more closely and it is apparent that this is a working photograph perhaps the first of a series because the backdrop doesn’t quite fill the whole picture.

Behind them are shelves full of photographic props along with discarded frames and pictures and if we look even closer the backdrop itself is uneven and creased.

So, perhaps this is not the high class studio I had at first thought.

That said our photographer was not averse to getting out and recording the everyday life of the streets and the workplace.

Of these one of my favourites is the busy town square with its row of cafes, bars and hotels and a  mix of people going about their business.

I did try using the names of those hotels to locate where we are but the passage of a century and a bit pretty much meant this was a dead end.  Still I always travel in hope and it may just be that one of them will crop up on an advert or in a directory.

Which just leaves me with the third which unlike the others is one of those work a day images.

Almost half of the collection concentrates on men at sea and this one I like because there is nothing staged about it rather it captures a moment at sea with the captain and first mate deep in conversation while the
business of steering the ship goes on.

Pictures, from the collection of David Kennedy

The mystery collection........... part 3 a working day

The last in the series featuring an unknown collection of photographs from the beginning of the 20th century.

Now I am always fascinated by pictures which challenge you to uncover their secrets.

They are usually ones where there are few clues to where they were taken with no date and often shed no light on the identities of the people who stare back at you.

And that is pretty much what we have here from a collection of images which belong to David Kennedy.

The originals were 4 by 5 glass negatives and date from sometime around the end of the 19th or the beginning of the 20th century.

Some are of street scenes, others of men and women at work and include a fair number showing life on board a selection of working ships.

They range from causally posed scenes to ones where the photographer has caught his subjects fully occupied and perhaps unaware that they are being photographed.

And amongst the collection are some which open up the world of work in a town somewhere just across the Channel.

Now I say that because at least one picture carries references to Belgium and in particular the towns of Nieupoort and Ostend and intriguingly to a number of restaurants which in the fullness of time might yield some more information on the location of the pictures.

But that aside they capture perfectly a group of people going about the daily routines of work.

A man trundles a cart accompanied by two dogs and given the umbrella covers the top of the cart and his white coat I wonder if he is out selling ice cream.

Of course that is bordering on a heap of speculation, but I am on firmer ground with the working boats and what might be a water tower.

And lastly there is the building with its posters advertising a host of different things including that word Telegraaf which Google Translate tells me is Dutch but is more equally Flemish or Belgian Dutch which fixes our photographs in the northern part of Belgium.

Of the three this one interests me the most.

Our photographer has caught one of those quiet moments perhaps during the midday lunch break when only the dog is out in the heat of the sun.

Something has been going on and I guess will do so again as the open cellar doors and the nearby wagon testify.

But at that precise point in time nothing stirs save the dog, which just leaves us to focus on the posters and in particular that one high up on the wall advertising some long gone event.

Alas I doubt that I will ever know what it was

Pictures; by courtesy of David Kennedy

The mystery collection........... part 2 working the ships

Now I am always fascinated by pictures which challenge you to uncover their secrets and yesterday I featured a young woman and her baby.

I don’t know who they were or when and where the pictures were taken.

They come from a collection of glass negatives dating from the very beginning of the last century and were saved from being thrown away by David Kennedy.

They are usually ones where there are few clues to where they were taken with no date and often shed no light on the identities of the people who stare back at you.

Some are of street scenes, others of men and women at work and include a fair number showing life on board a selection of working ships.

They range from causally posed scenes to ones where the photographer has caught his subjects fully occupied and perhaps unaware that they are being photographed.

These I think must be from a cross channel steamer given that others from the collection  are of Ostend and the surrounding countryside.

If I have favourite it is the one of the three crew members taking a rest and staring back at the camera.

Working these ships was not easy and the rare moments for relation must have been treasured even if in this one there seems to have been a fair degree of acting in front of the lens.

But work and the demands of running such a ship will have crowded out many opportunities for play.
All of which just leaves me that image of the woman caught walking away from the photographer and like all good pictures you are left wondering what she was doing.



Pictures; by courtesy of David Kennedy

The mystery collection........... part 1 the photographer and his subject

Now I am always fascinated by pictures which challenge you to uncover their secrets.

They are usually ones where there are few clues to where they were taken with no date and often shed no light on the identities of the people who stare back at you.

And that is pretty much what we have here from a collection of images which belong to David Kennedy.

The originals were 4 by 5 glass negatives and date from sometime around the end of the 19th or the beginning of the 20th century.

Some are of street scenes, others of men and women at work and include a fair number showing life on board a selection of working ships.

They range from causally posed scenes to ones where the photographer has caught his subjects fully occupied and perhaps unaware that they are being photographed.

Amongst these are a few which may even be family members including this one which is a favourite of mine which is one of two.

In the first the mother is staring down at her baby and in the second she smiles back at the camera while in both the photographer is caught in the mirror.

There are no clues as to where they were taken but in one there is a reference to Ostend and a few carry the names of hotels and restaurants, added to which there is a very distinctive church  all of which should help.

And so over the next few weeks I shall feature more of these images and try to get closer to solving their mystery.

Pictures; by courtesy of David Kennedy

The story behind that path in Chorlton Park ............ discovering Sir Nicholas Mosley's grand drive

Walking towards the Hall. 2015

I must have walked this route countless times and never made the connection with that 400 year old house which sits away in the distance.

The house is Hough End Hall and we are in Chorlton Park.

Old maps show what will once have been a grand drive up from Barlow Moor Road to the hall.

In its time it will have been wide enough to accommodate a carriage and horses and may also have been flanked by avenues of trees.

This after all was the first glimpse that visitors would have had of the home of Sir Nicholas Mosley who made a fortune trading in the city of London, was elected its mayor and walked with royalty.

The end of the path with the hall opposite, 2015

And long after the Mosley’s had left Hough End and it had become a more humble farm house this was still the main way to get to the hall.

It shows up on maps from the 18th and 19th centuries and so when in the 1920s the Corporation created Chorlton Park it made sense to incorporate it as a pathway.

Now I grant you that this discovery may not rank with the great tales of history but it is the sort that I like pointing as it does to that simple observation that quite often there is a story where you least expect it.

The grand drive in 1845

Pictures; Chorlton Park looking towards Hough End Hal, May 2015, from the collection of Costel Harnasz, and the route to Hough End Hall,from the 1845 OS for Lancashire, courtesy of Digital Archives Association, http://www.digitalarchives.co.uk

*Hough End Hall The Story, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/2015/05/hough-end-hall-book-on-sale.html

Pictures with no stories ........ no 1 on a beach sometime before now

Now I am fascinated by stories  and more than that the way that a photograph can offer up a story even when there is apparently nothing there.

And this is one of those.

It comes from a collection of picture postcards which were found by a friend of Ron Stubley who looked after them and recently passed them over to me.

They are a mixed bag, consisting of saucy seaside cards, more than a few of holiday destinations and some which are of a family but have no names and no dates.

Many were sent to addresses in north Manchester from resorts on the Welsh coast and that is about it.

Over the last few months quite a few of them have featured on the blog but until now I have not used those which have no means of identifying the place or the people.

And that brings me to this one.  We are clearly on a beach with a pier and judging by other cards in the collection I think the date will be sometime in the 1930s.

Someone may well recognise the pier in the distance, although I am not counting on it.

For me the story is just that the picture perfectly offers up a day at the seaside.

That mix of sand, sandwiches, warm beer, tepid tea and very cold sea water.

Location; unknown






Picture; somewhere on a beach, date unknown, from the collection of Ron Stubley

Images of our industrial past ...... nu 2 working the metal 80 years ago

I am back with two more “lost images” from the family collection.

I have no idea who this man was and can only guess that it was either my grandfather or one of his work mates.

Moreover I cannot date the pictures or offer up a location, other than that they will be over 80 years old.
If it is my grandfather then it will be Derby and a rare moment when he was in full time work.

According to my mother like many men during the period he faced long bouts of unemployment which only really came to an end with the outbreak of the Second World War.

Sadly there is no one left I can ask who could tell me about the pictures, and I of course never bothered to ask what he did during the interwar years.

So we are left with just one man at work, sometime in the 1930s in all probability somewhere in Derby.

But that said I am drawn to them, not least because both carry fingerprints which were left on these two negatives.

Not that I will ever be able to discover who they belonged or why the prints have long since vanished but the these negatives survived.

But then that is often the case.

The prints get handed around or put into a book while the negatives are stored away just in case they are needed.

Of course that is seldom the case, but that simple decision means they will survive long after the cherished print has gone.
Pictures, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

Who do I ask? .............. Lost family stories

I will never know who this man is, or when he posed for this picture on a building site in Derby or for that matter any of the other men in the remaining two pictures.

They were found in a collection of old photographs that we inherited long after my grandparents and parents had all died.

None of them were very promising, for all three were negatives and have rested in an old torn envelope for eighty years.  The original prints have long since been lost and at first glance these did not offer up much.

For a start they were not the usual small size negatives so would not fit into one of those commercial machines you can buy to reproduce a print and they seemed pretty faded.

But ever the optimist I put them through the home scanner and this is what we got.  Despite their age they have a quality and detail which is remarkable.

That said I did manage to reverse one image, so that on close inspection the lettering on the shop front is back to back.  Given time I shall correct the mistake but for now this is what you have got.

Now I think we must be dealing with my grandfather who pretty much lived his entire life in Derby.

He had been born in Birmingham in 1899, lived in Kent around the turn of the last century and was in Derby from 1902, when his mother gave birth to his sister in the Derby Workhouse.

The next thirteen years of his life were spent in various care homes including a year in a naval boot camp before like so many young men he was swept up by the Great War.

He enlisted in 1916 and stayed in the army until 1922.  By which time he had met and married my grandmother who was German and they had two young children.

So much of his early life and their married lives in Derby remains a mystery.  Indeed I doubt that he had much of an idea about the first five or so years of his life.  For whatever reason my great grandparents parted company in 1902 and I doubt he had much more than a vague memory of his father.

This may account for why on his marriage certificate he gave his place of birth as the Transvaal in South Africa which was where my great grandfather had served in the early 1890s or just possibly was motivated by a desire to seem a little more romantic to his young German bride and the assembled family and civic authorities.

And that air of mystery continued through the next twenty years in Derby.  I can only guess at how difficult grandmother found the journey alone with two small children from Germany to Derby for her husband had been transported separately to the UK and demobbed in Belfast.

The early years of their marriage were difficult, she encountered some anti German hostility and he found it difficult to find regular work.

Which brings me back to the pictures.

I think I can indentify one of the men as grandfather standing at the back of the group in the last picture, but of the man on the building site, and sitting alone on the upturned barrel I am less sure.

Of course there will be those who question does it matter?

Well to me it does, but even if that is put aside there is that more general point that so many family pictures are lost to us because no one bothered to provide a name of a date.

Those long lost relatives and friends of family stare back at us with no means of knowing who they were or their significance in the story of who we are.

That said these are a little snapshot of how we worked eighty or so years ago and are also a reminder of just how much chance plays in the survival of family memorabilia.   The original prints have long since vanished but the negatives not much cared for at the time were just put to one side and lasted the course.

Pictures; from the collection of Andrew Simpson

From the other side ............ messages to Berlin from the Western Front 1916

There is something compelling about this picture postcard.

On the simplest of levels it is that here we have a group of German soldiers staring back at us and that of course makes it different from the usual collection of photographs and picture postcards from the Great War.

And the more I look at them the more I am drawn to those unfamiliar uniforms which look so different from the standard British ones that I know so well.

I have no idea where they are or where they were from and only know that the card was sent in May 1916 to an address in Berlin.

In time I might be able to make something of the message, but I am operating with both hands tied behind my back for not only is it in German but the handwriting  is difficult to decipher, all of which just leaves me with the name Herman Waller.

But despite these problems the card fascinates me not least because some of my great uncles would have fought in those uniforms.

And that makes that conflict a civil war for our family.

Alongside my German relatives we can count six who fought in the armies of the King ranging from two uncles, two great uncles, to my grandfather and great grandfather.

Sadly little of their records, possessions or even their memories have survived the last century and at present there is even less from Germany.

In fact all we have is a sturdy metal note pad case with a name engraved on the back and a raised black iron crossed on the front.

All of which takes me back to the photograph and that less than original observation that once you ignore those uniforms the faces that stare back  could quite easily have been the faces of men from Manchester, London, Rome or Vienna.

Their expressions are a mix of smiles and studied seriousness and just like their opposite numbers they pose with cigarettes in their hands.

And no doubt think of the next meal, the time till their next leave and those back at home.

Picture; unknown group of German soldiers, circa 1916 from the collection of David Harrop

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

A house in Harpurhey, the holiday in Weston-super-Mare and the start of a story

Now I will have to take advice on this one but I think Beach Lawns at Weston-Super-Mare may be all that is left of a trail I have been on for the last half an hour.

It began and looks as if it will end with the detail in this picture postcard which was sent to Mr and Mrs Turner c/o Mrs Hanman at 15 Oxton Street, Harpurhey in the August of 1933.

Eve wrote to the Turner’s  "Dear Eddie and Bessie.

Having a very nice holiday.  Had a visit from Flo and Frank yesterday.  How’s this for a lovely spot?”

And as you do I went looking for Oxton Street but it has vanished and appears to have had a short existence.  It dates from some time at the beginning of the last century but is now no more.

Nor without a surname will I be able to find Eve or for that matter Fred and Flo, leaving only an outside chance that the Turner’s or Mrs Hanman will turn up in the historical record.

Not that I will be deterred, there are always the city’s burial records, the directories and  the census returns.

The 1939 Register had quite a few Turner’s so with patience and a bit of luck something might come out of the shadows.

So for now I am back with Beach Lawns.  We did Weston some years ago but I have no recollection of this bit so I shall have to ask my friend Lois who has lived there on and off for a long time.

Location; Weston-Super-Mare and Harpurhey

Picture; Beach Lawns at Weston Super Mare, circa 1933 from the collection of Ron Stubley

Pictures with secrets ........ and stories

 Now I am always fascinated by pictures which challenge you to uncover their secrets.

They are usually ones where there are few clues to where they were taken with no date and often shed no light on the identities of the people who stare back at you.

And that is pretty much what we have here from a collection of images which belong to David Kennedy.

The originals were 4 by 5 glass negatives and date from sometime around the end of the 19th or the beginning of the 20th century.

Some are of street scenes, others of men and women at work and include a fair number showing life on board a selection of working ships.

They range from causally posed scenes to ones where the photographer has caught his subjects fully occupied and perhaps unaware that they are being photographed.

Amongst these are a few which may even be family members including this one which is a favourite of mine which is one of two.

In the first the mother is staring down at her baby and in the second she smiles back at the camera while in both the photographer is caught in the mirror.

There are no clues as to where they were taken but in one there is a reference to Ostend and a few carry the names of hotels and restaurants, added to which there is a very distinctive church  all of which should help.

And I am always reminded of "Shooting the Past" which was a television drama, by Stephen Poliakoff first shown in 1999.  

The plot revolves around a huge photographic collection dating back to the 19th century, which has been acquired by an American corporation as part of the purchase of a Victorian mansion.  

The executives have no interest in the pictures, but two of the custodians set out to save the images by persuading the Americans of the importance of the pictures.  

This they do by researching the stories behind the some of the photographs.

What the two uncover gets to the heart of how photographs can tell stories about the lives of people, which can be incredibly revealing and fascinating.

Pictures; by courtesy of David Kennedy

*Shooting the Past, Stephen Poliakoff, 1999, and staring,  Timothy Spall and Lindsay Duncan 

The photograph which begs a story

I have no idea who this woman is or where and when the picture was taken.

But that doesn’t diminish my interest in the photograph.

It comes from David Harrop who has kindly given me access to what is a fascinating collection of letters, postcards and photographs spanning the late 19th century to the present.*

At the core of the collection are a priceless array of material from the two world wars which provide an insight into how people got on with their lives during these conflicts.

And so back to the photograph which shows a woman working in a back yard.

She could be a servant which is a reasonable guess given that she appears to be wearing a uniform.

But the picture was one of a number of which all the rest showed a young man from the Great War and so I guess she may be his grandmother carrying on a set of domestic chores on a warm summer's day.

Sadly I guess we will never know.

But it remains one of those pictures which draws you in and prompts a whole range of questions which is just as it should be.

Picture; unknown woman, date unknown, from the collection of David Harrop

*David Harrop, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/David%20Harrop 

Pictures with no stories ........ no 3 the unknown young couple

Now the key to the identity of this young couple may lie in the soldier’s cap badge.

It belongs to the Royal Medical Corps.

The picture comes from a collection most of which have a connection with north Manchester but that is it.

There are no names, no dates or even a reference to a photographer which pretty much means that we will never know who they were or what happened to them.

I would dearly like them to have survived the war and that they stayed married, had a happy life and looked back on the events of that hard century surrounded by family and friends.

But that of course is a tad unhistorical .

Location; unknown

Picture; young couple, date unknown from the collection of Ron Stubley

Sunday in Heaton Park before the Great War

The historian in me wants to know when this picture was taken and where.

It is another of those that sit in the collection with little clue as to time or location.

And yet I have to say of all the pictures that have been donated to me it is one of my favourites.

I would guess we are in Heaton Park some time before the Great War on what looks to be a bright but cool spring day.

If pushed we might have a stab at a Sunday, for here are a veritable collection of people out for a day of genteel fun and all in their best clothes.

The destination boards from the long line of trams suggest that our crowd are from all over the city and will be travelling back on routes that terminate in Albert Square, Exchange and High Town, and if I am not mistaken not all of them are Manchester Corporation Trams.

But above all what I like about the picture is the way that it has captured perfectly a day out. The tram crews stand around taking a break in the sunshine, perhaps pondering on what they would do with a day off in Heaton Park

The young girls out for adventure in their best Sunday clothes, the middle aged woman caught with a faint and perhaps embarrassed smile playing on her lips as she is caught on camera while  her husband stares back unperturbed.

Beside them could be their mother in law with cane in hand looking on, perhaps pondering on the fuss and reflecting on past days in the park .

It is easy and perhaps not very historical to allow so much speculation to creep in but then it is a picture that lends itself to a bit of gentle guess work and sometimes where is the harm in that?

And then, quick as a flash, my friend Kay replied to the post, with an offer to go looking for the location and came back with, "Here you go, Martin of Heaton Park Tramway replied: Hi Kay. It is the Heaton Park Tramway sidings now in use as the bottom end of Heaton Park Tramway by Middleton Road Gates. The 3rd track siding in the picture was removed and relocated to become access to the tram shed when the museum was being built. Hope that helps".

Which it does.

Picture; from the collection of Allan Brown

Mary Elizabeth Stanton in 1865, a life slowly being revealed

This is Mary Elizabeth Stanton and apart from her name and the barest of details I know nothing about her.

But I have to say I am drawn to young Mary.

The picture is one of a collection belonging to Mary’s descendant and they all date from the 1860s.

Now I am not an expert on the fashions of the 19th century but I think Mary’s dress can be dated to around 1864.

The wide dress relied on crinolines and hoops to give it that ample shape but by that date they were not as large or ostentatious as they had been and that is as far as I dare go without some advice.

But the story is an ongoing one and over the next few weeks I want to share what I find out.

So today I shall start with the photograph.

It was taken by Edward Shayler who had studios at 173 Upper Street in Islington and 82 St John Street Clerkenwell.  Both properties still exist although they are no longer studios.
Edward Shayler was well enough known to have left a biography, and was a popular choice for the family who commissioned him to take five pictures.

On the reverse of each someone has added a little information which allows me to know that “Mary Elizabeth Stanton [was] eldest daughter of Aunty Betsy.”

Now Aunt Betsy was Elizabeth Stanton who was married to John Stanton who at the time of his daughter’s birth was a “master optical turner employing six men.”

Mary was born in 1844 in Holborn and by one of those quirky family traditions her given name was Elizabeth Jane.

So knowing that she was born in 1844 we may be able to offer up her age, because the photograph could be of her wedding day in 1865, and if that is the case then the young Mary will be just twenty-one years old when she posed for this picture.

And it might explain her absence from the family in the 1871 census, but that as they say is for another story.

Picture; from the collection of Jean Gammons

Pictures with no stories ........ no 2 the family on holiday

Now I am fascinated by stories  and more than that the way that a photograph can offer up a story even when there is apparently nothing there.

And this is another one of those.

It comes from a collection of picture postcards which were found by a friend of Ron Stubley who looked after them and recently passed them over to me.

They are a mixed bag, consisting of saucy seaside cards, more than a few of holiday destinations and some which are of a family but have no names and no dates.

Many were sent to addresses in north Manchester from resorts on the Welsh coast and that is about it.

Over the last few months quite a few of them have featured on the blog but until now I have not used those which have no means of identifying the place or the people.

And that brings me to this one.  We are looking at a family snapshot and judging by the sun I am guessing it is a holiday snap taken one summer.

But that is it, leaving me to let you add your own story.

Picture; somewhere on a beach, date unknown, from the collection of Ron Stubley

Stories which never get written

There is something fascinating about writing about the lives of people from the past.  

It begins with a photograph or letter and by degree how they lived their lives is revealed through census returns, newspaper clippings, and the memories of friends and family.

Of course it will never be a complete picture, because so many little bits of detail are lost forever, and in some cases what is discovered is best left in the shadows.

But equally fascinating are the stories which never get written, even though a heap of research has gone into their making.

Usually it is because all the diligent peeling back of a life is not enough and there is still much that cannot be found, leaving you either with an incomplete story or one that is just abandoned.

Sometimes however, there is reluctance on the part of the family to let the story out, which I fully understand and respect and just occasionally the finished research is met with silence.

A few months back I happily helped out someone who wanted to know about a previous occupant in the house they owned.  It didn’t take long and on the way I learnt a little about the place they lived.

But there had been an understanding, that in return they would offer up some pictures which never came and so the story was never written.

And it is of pictures that I want to finish with.  These two are undated, and no names appear on the back.

They were part of a collection that had belonged to our dad and I am guessing that the people in both were known to him.

But sadly not to us.

The group looks to be a wedding party and I would guess the picture was taken in the 1920s or early 30s but the identities of the people will never now be revealed.

And the same is true of the young woman, who appears in four different photographs, all outside the back window in the yard of someone’s house.

Given that dad grew up in Gateshead I think this will be the location of the picture.

She smiles back at us but who the smile was for along with her name and that of the identity of the hand are also lost.

More than once I have tried writing the story but the unknowns are too many and so, she and the hand continue to be just a picture.

Location; unknown



Pictures; from the collection of Andrew Simpson

Who was Miss G Sedgwick and what happened to her after she had her picture taken in 1917?

Now a century old photograph has the power to draw you in and ask a set of questions to which I doubt there are any answers.

This is Miss G Sedgwick aged 19, taken on November 21 1917.

I have no clue as to where she lived other than that the picture postcard was produced by Van Ralty Ltd who had studios in Manchester, Liverpool Sheffield, Nottingham, Oldham and Bolton.

In 1911 they had two branches here in Manchester, one at 92 London Road and a second at 91 Oldham Street.

And despite a shedload load of their pictures offered on ebay and sitting in the digital collection at Manchester Archives + I can’t find a history of the business or any catalogue, which doesn’t mean there isn’t one out there just I haven’t found it yet.*

I would like to think that she posed for her picture in one of the Manchester studios, but it is equally likely it could be Liverpool, Oldham, Bolton or Sheffield but I rather think it might be Sheffield for no other reason than I have in the collection a picture of  Miss Violet Sedgwick who was 20 in 1917 and was born and grew up  in Sheffield.

That doesn’t mean they are related and so far there is no evidence that they were but the two pictures are part of the same batch which my friend David Harrop showed me so there will be a link, it is all a matter of finding it.

At which some point there will be a few who mutter that this is slim pickings and hardly amounts to  story but I would disagree.

We have a picture and a name and somewhere there will be a story which will offer up some fascinating insights into a young women a hundred years ago.

Well we shall see.

Location; unknown

Picture; Miss G Sedgwick, 1917, from the collection of David Harrop

* Manchester Archives + https://www.flickr.com/photos/manchesterarchiveplus/9247818576

**Miss Violet Sedgwick just 21 years old and busy in a munitions factory ......... stories behind the book nu 16, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search?updated-max=2016-04-15T12:16:00%2B01:00&max-results=7

Looking for clues in an old family photograph .......... George and Nellie Davison in Ireland in 1916

Many of us will have a family picture like this dating from the Great War.

This one of George and Nellie Davison was taken in 1916.

In late 1915 George was posted to Woolwich and from there to Ireland and ultimately the Western Front where he died just months before the end of the conflict.

And the picture is just one of an extensive collection of material stretching back to 1899 and on into the middle of the 20th century.

It includes school reports, a testimonial as well the notes he wrote to Nellie from Chorlton when they were “walking out” and letters and postcards sent from 1915 to 1918 and continues on with the inevitable official correspondence.

Nor does it finish there because there are also letters written by Nellie, medical bills and much more stretching into the 1950s.

There may be similar collections but this one allows us to track one Manchester family pretty much across the 20th century and brings together much of that everyday material which is often lost.

Now I am not an expert at decoding family portraits like this, but there are many clues which confirm what I already know about the family and in particular George’s war service.

His cap badge spurs and bandoleer offer information up on his regiment and the stripe helps further date the picture.

But it is the name of the photographer on the reverse which fastens our picture to sometime in 1916.

This was J.S. Kingston, of Kilborgan Hill, Bandon which is in County Cork just south of the city of Cork.

Kilborgan Hill is a pleasant road that runs up from the square.  Mr Kingston is listed in the directories* from 1913 till 1922 at North Main Street,Bandon, and in time I should be able to locate the photographic studio, but for now it is enough to know that Bandon was where George was stationed for most of 1916.

And their presence together in Bandon also confirms what I had begun to conclude from some of Nellie’s letters that she had spent time in Ireland and may well have been with him later when he was sent back to Woolwich.

In turn it might also explain the total absence of any letters for 1917.  I had at first assumed that they were lost but it is equally likely that the couple were together during the year.

At some point she sub let their cottage in Romiley and returned to Manchester, perhaps to be close to family and also refers in a letter to renting a room “while in Ireland and London.”**

I had no idea that she had moved around the country so much during the war and begs the question as to how common this was.

All of which will take me back to his letters.

The evidence suggests that she was not in Ireland for long because the photograph was sent to her back in Hulme.

But in the meantime I shall close with another look at the photograph focusing on the studio props with the painted backdrop and Nellie’s formal pose holding the piece of paper.

Picture; family portrait Bandon, 1916, from the Davison collection, courtesy of David Harrop

*Guys Cork Almanack, 1913 and Postal Directory 1921

**July 7 1919