Sepia Saturday 187: The family bible

This is a photograph of some members of my grandmother's family. At first I thought I didn't know who they were and then I found this handwritten note from my mother in the photograph album.
(It's a small picture and not in good condition, so you can only really make out the shapes of the people)

"from left to right:

Nan Welch's mother Charlotte Turner, nee Sayer

Nan Welch's mother's sister Gertie

Nan Welch's mother's mother, Helen Thackery (maiden name)

Nan Welch's mother's father, Luke Sayers , compositor"

'Nan Welch' was what we always called my mother's mother, Dorothy Welch, nee Turner. Interestingly those were my mother's exact words in the description, so she must have been writing this down for us, as she would have referred to her as 'mum'.

I'm veering from the point of this post now, which is about the family bible, but that is because I have just read something on the back of this slip of paper that just has to be included here!

"Sister Gertie 'got into trouble' with a Canadian in the First World War who 'passed on something to her". She was taken in by my mother's mother until treated and cured in spite of scandal and opposition from my mother's father!" (I would guess these to be the words of my grandmother.)

Anyway, a fascinating if rather sad insight into the times. Syphilis, which I would guess this was, was rife amongst the soldiers returning from the front and as this was in days before the invention of penicillin I would imagine treatment was as unpleasant as the disease.

Now to the bible. None of my family have ever been particularly religious. That's not to say they were atheists, but they were not regular church goers. We had a bible when we were at school but it was not a regular feature of our lives. My mother grew up with her parents in a house in the suburbs of London. My grandparents bought it when it was first built. When my parents got married they bought the house from my grandparents and I grew up there as well.  Families stayed put in those times and so my mother knew the parents of my friends and some of their parents as well.

I can't remember the exact details as to how this came about, but my mother met the family of someone who lived round the corner from us. They were moving house that week. Somehow the conversation turned to families and names and addresses, and the woman my mother was talking to stopped dead in her tracks and said "We have your family bible". One of my grandmother's relatives had lived round the corner for many years. (I can't remember what one, maybe her mother?). When she died the house was sold  to this family and somehow the bible got left in it.  By the time the new owners moved in and found it they had no contact details for the seller. As it was a bible, no one wanted to throw it out, so the family held on to it for about 50 years, never knowing who the bible now belonged to or anything about the names of all the people in it. Had she not met my mother that week the bible would have probably been lost to the family forever.

My mother held onto the bible until she died last year. I couldn't bring it on the plane with me as it is enormous and so my brother has it at his house.  Writing this has made me think that I should do some investigating into the surviving relatives of other branches of my grandmother's family, as we have no children on our side to pass on the family bible. It was obviously meant to stay in the family.

A smoking break: Sepia Saturday 175

We were brought up in a non-smoking household and warned against the dangers of smoking. My father smoked as a young man, as did everyone when he was younger. In fact it used to be part of the treatment for Tuberculosis as it made you cough! He stopped as soon as it became clear that smoking was bad for you.

My grandfather smoked a pipe (and the occasional cigar, and maybe even  smoked cigarettes in his youth.) My mother never smoked and as far as I knew neither did my grandmother; until I saw this photo!

It's not a brilliant photo but clearly shows my grandfather drinking a cup of tea and my grandmother lighting up a fag. They were on their way to the South Coast from London and taking a break. It was taken around 1952, and my mother was most likely the photographer. The car was their Ford Popular, which I remember. My grandfather treated it like a treasure; taking it out weekly to polish it, and never driving it more than 28 mph. It must have taken them a long time to get to Sussex!

The other thing I noticed is how smartly dressed they are. Nowadays it would be comfortable casual clothes for a journey!

A jolly hiking holiday-Sepia Saturday 172

These photographs were knocking around in my mother's wardrobe for years. They bear the scars as both are rather damaged. When I was a child I used to sneak into my parent's room and go through all the photographs in the wardrobe. They contained pictures of my parents before they met each other and before I was born, and were full of fascination.

This group of walkers looked relaxed and happy. The man on the left is my father but the woman next to him is not my mother! She never knew who she was .."just someone he knew before he met me!" (Apparently in his younger days there were plenty of women that were interested in him!)

Thus is the same group, looking very fit and healthy. They could almost be in an advertisement for a health cure!

I'm not sure where they are but my guess would be either the Isle of Wight or Jersey.

Arundel Castle 1955 -Sepia Saturday 171

1955... Looking at the photos in my mother's old album I think it was the year she met my father as he appears for the first time. However, there were also pictures of family outings and holidays. These photos of Arundel Castle and High Street were taken as part of a trip to West Sussex, with my mother and her parents. She would have been 25 at the time and I assume she was the photographer.

Arundel Castle 1955



Arundel High Street 1955







Views from Arundel Castle




When I used to go on mountain bike rides we went all over the South Downs and ended up in or near Arundel on several occasions. From what I remember it hasn't really changed much in 50 years.

The old boy: Sepia Saturday 165

This photograph was in my mother's collection. All the other photos were carefully named but this one had a question mark by it. "Who's he?" I said. "I don't know who the old boy is", she replied, "nan couldn't remember either, some relative of Tom's (my grandather)".

I know my grandfather's family were originally from Merthyr Tydfil, in South Wales and the family names were Price and Welch. That's all I know.

The photograph was taken at The Penton Studio in Pentonville Road and I have been able to locate some in a similar style here. They would suggest a date of between 1895 and 1903 and a photographer called Wilhlem Goebellhof.

Tom and the bird: Sepia Saturday 164

 

 

 

The prompt for this week shows an Australian soldier looking intently at his tortoise. It reminded me instantly of this picture of my grandfather.

 

 

I absolutely love this photo, and I present it to you as it was found; faded, wonky, tattered and blurred.  It shows him in just his vest, hair uncombed, staring intently at his budgerigar. He is standing by the back window, looking out into the garden as the sun streams in.

I can't remember the name of the budgie, in fact I think he had a few over the years and at least one of them could speak and sing. My grandfather loved music so I think he enjoyed teaching the budgie to sing along with him! On one occasion my father looked after it for a week or so while my grandparents were on holiday and it came back with a slightly fruiter vocabulary, much to the annoyance of my grandmother!

Although it was interesting to discover more about my grandfather's life as a younger man, this is the grandfather that I remember; the sensitive, quiet, slightly nervous budgerigar loving, gardening, pipe smoking man, who spent his whole life with my grandmother. I think she must have taken this photo and that's probably why she kept it all those years. They were completely devoted to each other and had been together all their lives, starting as childhood friends, marrying in their twenties and staying together until he died. Tom never did know how many sugars he took in his tea! A true love story of the time, as I don't know whether those types of relationships are so common now.

The relationships between humans and their animals are fundamental. They help to keep us sane, in touch with nature and the world, and by their very non-humaness keep us in touch with our own humanity.

Here is my more modern contribution to Valentine's day!
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Discovering my grandfather: Sepia Saturday 162

I have gone with the 'men in hats or uniform' theme this week and actually trying to uncover some of the puzzles behind the photograph has been very interesting.

Thomas Welch and friends

The man on the right was my grandfather, and this photograph was taken during the Second World War, sometime in the early 1940s I would guess, when he was in his early 40s. I knew that he did something in London during the blitz, but I never really knew what. However, there were a few clues in the photo.



The first clue is the letters on the cuff of the uniform; ARP. This stood for 'Air Raid Precautions' and was an organisation set up just prior to the outbreak of WW2 with the aim of protecting civilians from the dangers of air raids. They were responsible for issuing gas masks, air raid shelters and managing and enforcing the 'blackout'. Volunteer air raid wardens were recruited to do this, and at first I thought that this was what my grandfather had done. However, when I looked for photos of ARP wardens the unforms didn't look quite the same.

 

Clue number two came from the hat. Wardens had tin hats, but this one looked rather different.

 

 

 

 

 

Further investigation lead me to this:

 

 

This is the uniform from the St John's Ambulance and you can see my grandfather sporting a uniform very similar to that of 1950. During WW2 The St John's Ambulance volunteers acted as ARP ambulance attendants, and their job was to aid casualties, search for survivors and remove dead bodies.

 

What struck me from the photo was that despite this gruesome job, they all look quite cheerful and they look impecably smart! No sign of a high visabilty jacket anywhere! My grandfather did take this role quite seriously and he would have done this in evenings, after doing his day job as a postman.

 

Story of a shopkeeper: Sepia Saturday 161

This is a picture of my father Arthur, although I never knew him when he looked like that!  By the time we were born he was older and more mature and not one to want his photo taken!  He was, however, still a shopkeeper and for the first two years of my life we lived in the flat above the shop where he worked.

I can't remember whether it was the flat above what is now the estate agents (the yellow fronted buidling) or the launderette. At the time it was a grocers shop and I'm sure I remember my father calling it 'Perks', although I can find no record of such a store. He also mentioned it being called 'Liptons' (as in the tea) and Liptons was part of a chain of stores that formed Allied Suppliers. 

My father started as a grocer's boy when he was 14 or 13 years old and by the time he was 18 was one of the youngest shop managers in London. He worked in stores all over North and Central London, before settling down to this store, in Canons Corner, near  Stanmore. In the early 1960s it was still an old fashioned grocers shop, with a service counter, a manager and a host of shop assistants. My father always muddled up the names of the girls that worked for him! When he married my mother he used to sometimes call her by the names of his employees as well, which did not go down too well!  However times were changing, the supermarkets were coming,and the small grocers shops were no longer profitable. The Canons Corner store was closed and he was  moved to various stores around North and West London, usually for a year or two, as a temporary measure. Finally in 1972 Allied Supplies was taken over by Caversham foods, and about that time my father was made redundant, after more than 40 years of service. He finished off his working life as a security guard in the British Library.

Caversham foods was eventually sold to Safeways and in recent years the Morrison's group. My father had a pension from them, which he left to my mother after he died. It was a tiny amount as a widow's pension, but he always laughed about it before his death, as my mother was much younger than him and they ended up having to pay it out for 26 years!

Sepia Saturday 160

A more difficult one this time; to find an old photo where the background is more interesting than the subject. I don't think that I have quite succeeded. Firstly it isn't sepia, secondly it isn't that old (from 1985) and thirdly for me the people in the foreground are an important part of the story.

 

The woman in the photo is Loris. She is from Minnesota and she was my mother's American penfriend for close to 65 years. They met on two occasions. The first time was in the 1960s when Loris came to London and stayed with us. We took her to see all the sights and it was probably the only time we got to see them ourselves. We walked over London and Bridge and at the time it must have looked a bit like this.

 

 



 

This is the only picture I could find of it from the 1950s (it was being sold on Ebay)!

In 1967 the bridge was replaced by a new one and the old one was carefully demolished and sold to Arizona. Rumour has it they thought they were getting the more iconic Tower Bridge.

Loris and her husband made a point of visiting it again, in its new location and sent the photos to my mother to show her!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

On the back of the photos she scribbled the following:

 

Loris and Oliver, October 1985, London Bridge, Lake Havasu, Arizona.

Sepia Saturday

I found this blog the other day and decided to have a go! This is a picture of my Grandmother on holiday!


Thanks for all the comments. I'm getting the hang of this now and realise the idea is to write something to accompany the picture!

We did not find this photo until after my grandmother died. I would guess she would have been about 16 years old and it was probably taken about 1910. I don't know where it was exactly but I would guess somewhere like Brighton or Southend. They lived in London and wouldn't have travelled much further for a holiday.

We (my sister and I) giggled when we saw this photo. Nan had always been rather short and stout, but delighted in telling us that when she was a young girl her waist was so tiny you could get your hands right round it!

I will also visit all your posts and add some comments so be patient with me while I am learning the ropes!