The Lads

Australian men in suits and oversized hats is this week's Sepia Saturday prompt here.  I know I have an elusive postcard somewhere of men in hats and suits, but failing to find it I flipped through the Gardner family album and found this:

I hoped there would be a photographers name on the back when I took it out of its pocket but alas no. Were these men brother, cousins or friends?  We will never know but the photographic studio must have had a shortage of chairs as you can see when I crop the photo and the strange carpet out of the frame:-

Leaning, kneeling and the lone sitter. Sheet music and two flutes, one held and one on the table but is the man at the back smoking a pipe or holding a short flute?  I've seen a similar photograph to this before but despite an entertaining search on the internet nothing appeared, they look an amusing trio and if living today might just be getting together to go for a night out on the town. I would guess the photo is from the 1860s but may be later, the bowler hat became more popular as the 19th century progressed. The suit was de rigueur and like hats the Victorian man was never seen without one.  My father, who always wore a three piece suit even in retirement (although it did latterly alter to a sports jacket) recounted his father in law( my grandfather) saying a gentleman should never removed his jacket no matter the temperature.

Charles Henry Gardner (1874-1958)

And here is my grandfather living up to that maxim although in casual knickerbockers and straw hat.  This is the only photograph I have of him as a relatively young man.   I think he liked winged collard shirts as he continued to wear them and they appear in the few photographs I have of him.  The album I took the first photo from was his, it is one of three each separately held today by his grandchildren.  They were always kept by my grandmothers in the bottom of a huge chest of drawers where she used to collect all the family material together, and occasionally get them out and entertain her many grandchildren with a flick through the pages, although the photographs I liked best as a child she kept in a old tin box.

         

Waiting

I just want to unpack this week's Sepia Saturday suitcase (which features an advert for the Pacific Trunk Company) lay it out and look at all the objects they imagined a male traveller would carry.  For other Sepian adventures that may, or may not, involve suitcases see here.  I knew I would have photos of suitcases. In those times before tablets and mobiles there were always moments to fill when waiting for a train so why not take a photograph.

This Friday is a special day for me and I am featuring the reason, which is my mother, whose birthday was the 31st January.  I also always associate her birthday with change, the lengthening of days becoming noticeable and the promise of the year ahead.   To return to the photograph, taken at a different time of year, October 1958.  I would be about 9 and it looks as though my growing spurt is on the way to overtaking my mothers hight of 5 ft. She was an accomplished in sewing so the coat is one of her creations, as is the hat.  She would continue to knit hats, both when she ran a wool shop and towards the end of her life when she specialised in brushed woollen ones, always admired.  The photo shows us packed and waiting at Ulverston station on the way to Preston.   The journey would have been to visit my Auntie Phyl who lived there for a short while.  I think that was also the time I fell off the dining room chair, (yes I was swinging back on it) and put my teeth through under my bottom lip. I was in good hands though because my Aunt was a nurse and like my mother very good at needlework although I hasten to add not on me, there was more blood than injury, although  enough that I was given Dettol antiseptic mouthwashes for the duration of the stay, and afterwards.  I still remember the pungent smell.      

Sarah (Sadie) Pugh

As a child holidays were always spent visiting relations, usually my mothers sisters, or on a weekly run-around rail ticket.  When my parents became more affluent then their holiday of choice was to go walking.  Here she is waiting at the outside of the station of the previous photograph, Ulverston .  Is it me or do those plants in the background look remarkably like cabbages?  The suitcase may have changed but the strap on one of them has a familiar look to the first photo, belts and braces packing. My farther has filled the backs of this set of photographs with information, it was one of their favourite holidays.  This one says "Saturday June 30th 1984. After the holiday at Freshwater Bay, Isle of Wight. I wait with the bags while Sadie goes to the phone (for a taxi) at Station Corner".  Is this before, or after, she has charged off to the phone box? She only had one pace, fast, even into her eighties she was going the same speed.  She also always liked to be busy so the walk up the hill to the phone box would fill in some of that pesky waiting time.                

The Unknown Family

I haven't done a Sepia Saturday prompt for an age but hopefully I'll get back in the swing of things this week with the theme of the unknown and nameless family.  Those enigmatic photographs whose stories and people we do not know like this one

 

in the Gardner family album. My father was always prompted his mother in law to write the names in the albums whenever she got books out. Happily she did, under duress, write on some of the photographs but even she did not know all the faces.  I have chosen this photograph because it is the only one in the book which is from Burnley, a place which I have no knowledge of any of the family coming from.  I would guess this is a Grandmother with her granddaughters, a memento perhaps because they do not live nearby.  Apart from Grandmother's fine Victorian posture they look a relaxed group and I think there is affection in the portrait, one girl resting are arm on her Grannie's shoulder.  

The photographer's details are on the back "all negatives are kept", wouldn't that be a thing to find, all neatly catalogued.  Dream on.  I had a look to see what Healey Wood Road looked like and it turned out to be a typical Lancashire terraced house street but I also found someone who was doing some research on David Brooks and discovered, through them,  that the Brooks families lived at 11, 14 and 18 Healey Wood Road for a number of censuses, David Brooks appearing on the 1891 census as a photographer.  This ties in nicely with the back of this card because as can be seen bottom left it is a Marion & Co*  design. These designs for the back of carte de visite and cabinet cards from 1870 onwards were sold to photographers all over England. This particular design and the number on the bottom right dates the card to between 1892-4 so although I still don't know who the family is I do know the dates the photograph was taken. If we go back to the Brooks family their daughters in 1881 were cotton weavers which as Burnley was at the heart of  cotton mills country (at one time having 99,000 power looms) would have been very common but by 1891 the daughter of the family were dressmakers.  I wonder what the girls in the photo went on to do. 

Source:-

 *Marion & Co - Victorian Photograph Card Printers by Roger Vaughan

  

   

A Flat Cap and Bonnets

An entry to Sepia Saturday. "Using old images as prompts for new reflections"

Charles A Pugh

Here is my father wearing a substantial flat cap.  He has written on the back "about 1924" when he would be 17 or 18.   When he was a lot younger than this there is a link to this week's theme of hats. His first job was delivering hats across the town to the women of  Barrow in Furness for their social occasions.  I never thought to ask him who he worked for or how many he delivered but he visited the full span of social classes.  When he got his orders he was disappointed if the address was in a wealthy area for he said that they were poor tippers, but if his task was to call at one of the terraced house where the girls who  worked  in the factories lived he knew it was likely they would tip generously.  He left the job to work for Cases Brewery but he observed that to do so meant he took a drop in wages but had better prospects.   Perhaps his job with the hat shop influenced him for he was never seen without a hat throughout his life, although his preference was for a trilby rather than a cap.  A three piece suit was a constant too.

 

The photograph was taken at Hawcoat Quarry on the highest part of the town, a wood and views may have made it a pleasant walk. The red sandstone blocks taken from this quarry built most of the Victorian public buildings in the town.

 

Going further back in time

is a carte de visite of two of my maternal ancestors, names unknown 

Peering at the mother's straw hat I am wondering if the bow on the top was an added embellishment for the photograph, but the child's smile is perfect for the all encompassing bonnet and wonderfully frilly dress.  The woman looks towards the camera but the baby sees something to smile at to its left and out of the picture

 

The all important mirror to look in to see the hat is on right.  I've never had this carte de visite out of the album so it was a surprise to see Albert Gorton's pretty advert on the reverse. 

Pram-bulating

An entry to Sepia Saturday "Using old images as prompts for new reflections"

From the gardens of the Schloss Belvedere and the wonderful needlework seen on the Sepia Saturday prompt picture lets journey to northern England

and wave.  I'm waving at my father here but was told I used to wave at everyone from the pram; I still enjoy waving.  This is Bardsea Road one Sunday in June 1950 it encompassed a walk which I would take with my mother Sadie shown here until her old age, you had to take up a brisk pace because she considered that slow walking tired her out. While browsing through the many pictures of me in a pram I noticed for the first time the pretty woven basket which seems to vary from half to brimming full.

Wheeling back in time a month to

May 1950 here at Canal Foot by the side of Morecambe Bay, the railway viaduct just visible in the background.  Now there are two elements from the prompt both a pram and a blanket. My mother and her life long friends Julia and Harry Boyd share a rug while it looks as though my 'Aunt' Julia is instructing her son Roger to do something or more likely not do something, I'm an 'innocence bystander'. 

Five years later and I don't think I quite fit a pram although it was good fun to roll up and down the garden path in it. The month is August and the photo says it is a warm day; I look brown so, unlike this year, it has been a good summer. I once stayed with Mrs High, the mother of my friend here Marion (who you can see is blond with complexion to match).  She tried to scrub the 'dirt' off my knees in the bath until I told her it wasn't going to come off because that was me.   But lets get back to the pram, I suspect this is the one from which I saw a tyre in a stream and insisted on visiting it every day which meant that the Bardsea Road walk in the first photo was one that my mother could not deviate from for some time.

Not long after this photo only the wheels survived of the pram when they were turned into Go-cart, not by me but one of the neighbourhood boys, although I did get rides on the completed construction, bliss. You never see home made go-carts today and I have no photos of these particular wheels but to relive those memories of simpler times with the help of Flickr and the National Library of Wales

The Longden Bay Go-cart Racers, September 1953 - Photographer Geoff Charles (1909-2002)

Cool Cats

 An entry to Sepia Saturday. "Using old images as prompts for new reflections"

Here we are at the farm gate.  Where better place to find a cat, or indeed be a cat.  Imagine all the potential for mouse chasing and when that is all done just lying in the sun. Although at the moment of this photograph this particular cat has been scooped up by Peter and it gazes towards his sister Susan, or maybe it is just looking for a way to escape.  No chance, looks as though Peter has a firm grip.    

Aynsome Mill Farm was the home of  my mother's cousin Alice Airey (the mother of Susan and Peter) and we often used to visit.  I wonder as my mother holds me on a sunny Sunday in July whether this would be the first time I had been there.  Throughout my childhood we would travel to Cartmel to stay for the day and sometimes during the school holidays I would come here to stay. Sleeping in a ground floor room I would be awakened by mooing and shouting as the cows ambled and clattered  past the window on their way to be milked.  A day of play lay ahead.  I don't remember much about the cats but was particularly fascinated by pigs so they were always our first port of call.  As with most childhood memories the days always seemed to be as sunny as this photograph.

But to come up with two elements of the prompt picture

here is a doorstep and a cat, but this time of the tabby variety.  My father has written on the back "by the Co-op, Ulverston" so that is why there is crockery in the window but I am not sure of the significance of the illegible notice which has the amount £13 17s 6d in large letters. Seems a lot of money for 1955.  Anyway back to the cat, after stroking it I was probably wanting to take it home. I occasionally arrived home with "strays", they never were, or at least that is what my mother said as she sent them on their way.        

Round Em Up

An entry to Sepia Saturday "using old images as prompts for new reflections"

As soon as I saw those cows on the Sepia Saturday prompt I knew which picture I would use:

All the young cattle are on the move surrounding the still centre of my Grandmother, Winifred Swindlehurst.  One of them looks to have a white band so I'm hoping its a Belted Galloway just because I think they are such pretty cows with their broad white stripe.  But whatever they are they are rushing forward with lots of curiosity.   I don't know what age she would be here but she was born in 1891 so possibly could be about 20?  The cow on the right looks to be gazing into her eyes meanwhile she is laughing at the unknown photographer at the curious position she is in.  Moving from the enclosed fields of Lancashire to the prairies of Canada    

a tinted postcard of the early 20th Century "Young Cow Punchers, Calgary".  My Grandmother's two sisters emigrated to Canada, she was supposed to go with them but changed her mind at the last minute but they and their families sent postcards from Canada, always enclosed with letters, so unfortunately no handy date stamps.  

The reverse of the divided back card indicates a date from 1903-1914 so at the time she was in the field with cows, say 1911, they write "This is the way they catch the cattle on the Prairie when they want to brand them".  (The cards often explained life in Canada). Whichever side of the Atlantic the families were on they could both have gone to the cinema in 1916 to watch the film directed and starring Tom Mix called "The Cowpunchers Peril". there always seemed to be lots of peril in silent films whether dramatic or comedic but they certainly produced them at a rate. I couldn't resist a filmography of Tom Mix especially with cowboy songs from a luscious voiced, but uncredited, singer.

Wedding Time

  

 

This time of year is a popular time for weddings, I've already been to one this year but for Sepia Saturday's theme of groups of course I'll go way back in time to this little gathering which I would guess is around 1914. The soldier is Jack Hewitt who's sister Isabel gets the chair because she's the bride. My grandmother Winifred Swindlehurst stands next to Jack and her brother William, the groom, is next, he was her only brother. His eleven sisters never called him William because he gained a nickname as a young boy of 'blurt' because he always we going off somewhere and shooting his gun. I guess that is either a dialect word or the blurt refers to the dictionary definition of "sudden or unadvisedly".  I do not know who the couple on the right are but from looks perhaps the bridesmaid is Isabel's sister and the man is showing off his gloves to perfection.

 Go forward a couple of years and this faded and battered photo which to judge from its cardboard backing at one time must have had another piece and have been on display.  My Grandmother Winifred gets centre seat as the bride. Isabel, (seated left) who was always known as Aunt Bell now has a child. My grandmothers first husband Jack Taylor stands behind her and sadly was to die in the First World War.  Photographs of this period always have poignancy from what we the viewers know from history that the happy group does not.  I love group photographs for their variety of personalities, such as the little girl at the front with a hat just plopped on her head or the man at the back chewing on his pipe, even though I have no idea who the majority are. One thing I do know is where the photograph was taken for I have seen the doorway on many occasion, always featuring in the Swindlehurst family photographs - Hazelslack Tower Farm near Arnside, Lancashire. Depending on the time of year sometimes there is sometimes a glimpse of roses in flower on the porch. But look at the upper left window and two faces peer out to watch the excitement of the photograph, and is that a twitch of the curtain I see on the bottom right.

An entry to Sepia Saturday

  

Summer Days

An entry to Sepia Saturday.  "Using old images as prompts for new reflections".

I am taking this week's prompt and putting the word 'out' into out-of-doors, or should I say going outdoors. 

 

My Aunt Winnie (left) and my mother Sarah, usually called Sadie crossing the River Ribble near Settle in the Yorkshire Dales on a sunny Sunday in August 1955.  My Aunt lived in the village and as a child we often used to go there for a holiday and I wonder if this is one such occasion.  It is marvellous walking country and both families liked to walk.  I would love to know what colour the summer dresses are, my mother had a wonderful eye for colour.  The day looks breezy which I know for certain  

  

 

it would be here on one of the lake steamers on Windermere in the Lake District.  Looking at the date on the back I discovered it says the 10 August 1955 which was four days before the first photo so I will have to revise my first statement and think we must have had a week's runabout ticket on the railway, I always loved those type of holidays as a child, a different place everyday.  The additional note on the back says "On the steamer coming back from Ambleside. This was a warm day." (I'm still wearing a cardigan though).  We would have got the train to Lakeside and have boarded the steamer to go the length of the lake, I seem  to be still enjoying the journey although the boy behind looks as though he wants to have a go up here too.  You can still take a trip on a train to Lakeside and get an all in ticket for the boat on Windermere but now it is a heritage railway, no longer connected to the network.

From the summer dresses in the first photo here is an occasion where you can wear a lovely dress and a hat, an unknown man and women at the races

in the days when one also wore gloves. The date is 1st of January 1934, summer in the southern hemisphere at the Warwick Farm Racecourse.  She is cooling him door with a taste of ice-cream. The photographer is Tom Lennon who took pictures of the social activities of the Sydneysiders from 1927 to 1949. This picture is part of the Sydney Powerhouse Museum Tom Lennon collection. 

Scouting Days

An entry to Sepia Saturday. "Using old images as prompts for new reflections".

 My father (right) and his life long friend Cyril Pratt enjoying camp life in the Crake Valley sometime around 1938.  Both were actively involved in the Scout Movement for many years and when distance separated them they wrote entertaining letters to each other, Cyril always peppered his letters with amusing little drawings and always signed off with his scout name and symbol of 'Morning Star'.   My father loved to write and some of his memories of these days remain

 "Scouting Days. Just a few memories of Alf Pugh, July 1927 to 1933"

Scoutmaster 1927 to 1942 including Group S.M. and District S.M.

in an exercise book of his time in the 9th Barrow in Furness (1st Emmanuel) Boy Scouts .  He would have been 21 when he was scoutmaster in 1927, the picture he uses is when he was 25.  He had been a scout for a large portion of his life at this time.  They tell of weekends spent in rain and sunshine, and more rare,  the excitement of having a whole week's holiday away.  The journeys to camp, taken by train or bicycle and the transportation of all the gear could be as eventful as the days spent in camp.

Flookburgh Camp July 30-Aug 6 1933 which my father wrote about as  "Disturbers of the Peace" when the troop spent part of the night chasing cows away from their cookhouse attracted by food and water but making so much noise as they  munched the potatoes and drinking  water that the scouts had been alerted to potential disaster.

 Cubs

Seascale Camp, 1929. Twenty nine Scouts, cubs and officers spent a week under canvas. They travelled there by train but the weather (torrential rain) had been so bad that the farmer had not expected them and had not come down in the truck to collect the equipment. Tumbling into the waiting room a plan of attack takes place.
"Three of us follows get into bathing togs, ready for operations, Bob and I splash up to the farm to inquire about the transport which should meet us. An ark would be the thing. The rain assisted by a heavy wind is fairly lashing it down. Up the hill bent double against the wind we go, mind those puddles, which? There's only one now. On we splash, at last, the farms. Cheers. The farmer is very surprised to see us."

The farmer offers them to camp down in his Dutch Barn which they find great fun and set up the tents in the field the next day.

  Bob Green, Tom Butcher, my father Alf Pugh (seated) whose scout name was 'Lone Pine' because he was tall, hence he is sitting down.

There are many amusing stories but also descriptions of the beautiful surrounds, birds and wildlife. Two years are notable for their absence, which are those of the Scout Jamboree in England in 1929 which I know my father attended, perhaps this was in another book, since lost. I have a small wooden engraved drinking bowl with Hungarian writing and the date 1933 which is when the Jamboree was held in Hungary. Was this bowl given in 1929 in anticipation or did a member of the scout troop go to Hungary. There is a group portrait

I know was taken in England because it is a post card.  The uniforms all look different but all that is written on the back is 1933.  I recognise my father's friend and Patrol Leader Rodney Whittle on the right who I never met (he was killed in the war) because he is the exact image of his sister.  He scout name I seem to remember was Otter because he was an amazing swimmer, totally in his element in the water.

Here is some of the places they liked to swim in what they called Caribou Creek and Otter Pool which was a mill dam.  I wonder if some of the troop got their swimming badges here.  Lastly as short extract taken from 1930 when there was a what my father describes as wonderful week under canvas and describes the meaning of  Emmanuel Scouts words  "expressions elucidated" 

 

The Gardners

 An entry to Sepia Saturday. "Using old images as prompts for new reflections"

There appears no extravagant facial hair in the Gardner family album for  this week's theme of the hirsute. There are quite a few bushy black beards, but instead I'll start with the mutton chop

 

just because I like the look of him and his nonchalant pose.   The cap is military but the jacket looks as though it should be on board a ship. I have no idea who he is. There were three thick family albums of the Gardner family which on my Grandparents 's death would have gone to my three uncles but only two went that way as my Uncle Stanley had disappeared without trace (he recently made contact from Australia, after fifty years, to much family rejoicing) so my mother as the eldest received the third and now I have it.  There are lots of gaps where it looks as though photos have been removed but still enough to browse through for beards.

 

The striped effect. These two look as though they have a story to tell, wearing her tea-cosy hat and day dress
 she looks a no nonsense type of person.  Their clothing looks late Victorian., with his beard and twinkle he could make a great Father Christmas.  Lastly here is

 

 the chinstrap.  An unknown hand has written underneath the photograph Tom Gardner, Grandfather and mother (on reverse of photo "Joseph Cross, Photographer, Lancaster").  Looking on my cousin Alan's family tree I thought this was my Great, Great Uncle, only drawback was he had never married, try again.  I had to do a bit of my own research and added another Great onto that Uncle and came up with Thomas born in 1819 in Quernmore and married to Grace Winder (christened in Christ Church, Wyresdale 1822) and married on 25 August 1844 at St Mary's, Lancaster so our sitters now have names AND I noticed Grace has a finger inside a book, gosh I could have used this the other week for the Sepia Saturday books theme.  They lived at Crag End Farm, Ellel.  Yes shake a Gardner and a farmer will fall out, even those whose parents who have come away from the land go back to it, must be in the DNA.  Thomas (1819-1892) and Grace (c1822-1900) had six children and are both buried at Quernmore Methodist Church.  This was a surprise I had always looked at this my maternal family as high church (Church of England) whereas my fathers family were nonconformist. Guess these two were the exception, the little Wesleyan Methodist Church in Quernmore  with its graveyard was only built in 1877.  Lastly a photograph for no other reason other than I like the lettering on the lynch gate at the Lancashire church where my Great, Great, Great Aunt Grace was christening which says

"I am the door of the sheep"

        Sometimes called 'The Shepherds Church'

Gymnastics

 An entry to Sepia Saturday.   "Using old images as prompts for new reflections".

My parents always wondered where I got my love of sports, neither of them had any particular interest, perhaps it was from my maternal grandmother

 Winifred and Dora Swindlehurst

seen here, on the left,  with her sister Dora in their gymnast uniforms.  I believe she had quite a flair for this game. The postcard photo is a bit of a mystery because it is only one half, whatever or whoever was in the other half there is no clue, only that they were not nearby.  I assumed at first that women of this time would be doing rhythmic gymnastics but this photo

 from the McCall's magazine of November 1904 shows that was not the case, so here is some more

equipment, but no women, although they would have used the same equipment as the men.  It says "Arnside Gymn. 1912-3", the name is a small village on the shores of Morecambe Bay and as there is a stage in the photo with those wonderfully arranged boys in descending (or ascending) order of hight, I would guess this room  was used for lots of other things as well.  I do like the patriotic display of flags, George V had just been crowned king the previous year, 1911.  The names of the participants are unknown but I do know their instructor's name because there is another postcard

where my grandmother has written on the back "Gymnasium Displayers, February 1911", and then at a later date added "Bert Cliff and Mrs Nelson".  The former gets to wear a very flash top.  The boy on his right is obviously the joker of the pack, not only has he a cheery smile, his tie is skewed to the side and has a hole in the knee of his costume. The one on the far right may have appeared on the  'small end' of the middle photo his legs not touching the floor. By the looks of their faces the group on the left are getting bored as is the man behind who has moved, his image becoming blurred.

I wonder what Mrs Nelson, my grandmother's instructor,  is holding in her hands, is it a scroll  or a piece of equipment, like the throwing clubs balanced in front. The clubs of this period look larger than today, and are made of wood which could probably could give the novice a few bruises.  This group would not have had this problem

British Women's Gymnastic Display Team of the 1908 London Olympics. (They were not allowed to compete until 1928 at the Amsterdam games).  The perfect way to celebrate winning a Gymnastic competition for a photograph would be

 Photo from the Leeds Museums and Galleries

The 3rd Leeds North East St Winifred's Boy Scouts Gymnastic Team, Winners of 1st prize at the Imperial Scoutcraft Exhibition, Birmingham 1913.