From China: Sepia Saturday 218

I was struggling to find a picture and a link to this weeks theme.

 

The picture shows " the areas in Sydney affected by the outbreak of Bubonic Plague in 1900" and the suggestions for a topic are " fences, back yards or bubonic plague." Well, I have no interesting pictures of backyards, or of fences and I didn't think I had anything I could connect to bubonic plague either. However, having always been interested in things medical, I started to research around the topic of bubonic plague, or 'The Black Death' .

 

According to research "The first outbreak of plague occurred in China more than 2,600 years ago before reaching Europe via Central Asia's "Silk Road" trade route" and then went on to kill around one third of the population of Europe in the middle ages.  It's a zoonotic disease, meaning it's caught from animals, and in this case rats and fleas. Without treatment, the bubonic plague kills about two thirds of infected humans within four days.

 

So here is my link to the old pictures of China, maybe with or without Bubonic Plague:

 

European Gardens Shanghai

I can't find any reference to these gardens in modern times and my guess is they were removed as part of the cultural revolution in China.

 

Hankow Road, Shanghai

However Hankow road still exists but looks rather different now!



Picture Wikki commons

 

A Chinese houseboat



And this Chinese houseboat may well have attracted the odd plague infected rat!

 

I learned about the Black death at school but thought it had died out, but apparently a case was reported as recently as 2012 in China, and also in parts of Africa and South America. I remember this nursery rhyme I learned at school

 

Ring a ring o' roses

A pocketful of posies

A tishoo A tishoo

We all fall down

 

We thought it was sweet but it is supposedly about the Black Death.

 

 

For more on this theme go to Sepia Saturday

 



Sepia Saturday 216: Three men - a mystery

This weeks prompt for Sepia Saturday is of three men in hats.

I couldn't find three men in suits but I did find a picture of three men in hats.

The picture was amongst the collection recovered from the house of Ian's neighbour. It's in poor condition but you can definitely see three men and by the looks of it they are in some kind of costume. Perhaps they are in a play or a charade of some sort? I hope that's what it was because if you look closer....

... you can see that one of them is pointing a gun at the other man. They don't look too worried however...

Master Tom Welch, Comedian: Sepia Saturday 214

 

 



The prompt for Sepia Saturday this week is of a couple around a piano. It is an upright piano and similar to the one owned by my grandfather. One of my fondest memories of summer holidays as a child was listening to him playing the piano. He lived near the seaside and when we were younger the entire family descended on him and my grandmother for two weeks, staying with them in their small bungalow. The upright piano was in the sitting room; the sitting room that smelled slightly of pipe tobacco, mints, polished wood and musty music. In the evenings we could sometimes persuade Tom to open the piano, take out his songbook and tinkle on the keys. We were enchanted as we watched him loose himself in the songs.

My grandmother told us that Tom could play anything, that he learned most songs by ear, and that often he would just sit and play for the sheer pleasure of doing so, and maybe for the memories.

When they were younger my grandparents used to take part in music hall. I wouldn't imagine this was the music hall of the grand old type, but rather smaller, local events put on for and by communities across London. In the days before cinema and television live entertainment was more commonplace.

Tom started early. Amongst his memorabilia I found the remains of this programme dated April
1913, from the Hemmingford St John football club annual concert and dance

Add caption

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On the first page  just before the presentation of the swimming awards, you can see that the 'act' is Master Tom Welch, who was billed as a Comedian and was performing 'Yiddle on your fiddle' maybe sounding something like  this and 'I don't care what becomes of me'.  Tom would have been around 13 years old at the time of this performance.

Fifteen years later, at the age of 28,  Tom was still performing but this time he had a more sedate roll as the pianist at the 'Grand Smoking Concert' held after the final and semi finals of the Domino Championship, hosted by the ECDO sorters (the post office sorting department). (He worked for The Royal Mail for most of his life).

 

 

This time he was the opening act for both parts of the evening and the accompanist.

Tom also played the piano accordion, and my grandmother sang with him as a soprano. She once told me that she deeply regretted not following her desire to become a professional singer and have her voice properly trained.

In his later years Tom would occasionally play the piano at the local old folks home and day centres. When he died none of us had room in our small houses and apartments for the piano and my grandmother couldn't bear to look at it so she gave it to the church.

Tom and Dorothy

 

China and other stories: Sepia Saturday 213

I'm afraid there is a bit of tenuous link to the theme this week of holidays and suitcases, but I feel that now the time is right to share my secret 'treasure trove' of sepia with my fellow Sepians, and I can't wait for a more relevant prompt.

 

 



 I have to start with a bit of background information... Ian's mother used to live next door to two elderly ladies in South East London. They were sisters and shared a large Victorian House until they were both too old and frail. They never married and Ian's mum used to help them our from time to time. When they died she helped to clear their house and acquired a large wooden chest of drawers. When they finally got to look inside, tucked at the back was a collection of old photos. Most of them are on the original glass plates, there are a few negatives and a small collection of prints. Most of them are in poor condition.

No one has ever known what to do with them. The women's father was a Captain A Edwards and I think at one time he had some kind of ambassadorial role in China and/or Japan. The photographs must be from around the early 1900s and as such must have some historical value. In our hurry to move to France we just packed them up and brought them with us and they have remained in the boxes until now, when we have finally managed to unpack a few.

Amongst other things, the photographs seem to be of life in China and the day to day life of these two sisters, who we think were the photographers. So, I suppose the link is to one great big voyage that needed more than one or two suitcases.

The writing on the back of this picture says it was taken in China but that's all I know.  We would like to be able to recover the images from the glass plates, so if any fellow Sepians have any ideas as to how that could be done we would be most grateful.  Until we can find a home for them where they will be appreciated we will continue to be their guardians and maybe share a few more along the way.