Sunday, October 19, 2014

A PHOTO A DAY....number FIFTEEN

This photo I think would have been taken in London in about 1909.  It is my paternal grandparents with their two little daughters Lilian and Winifred.  (They are the parents of my birth father). Don't you just love those hats?


I have told you how grandma 'dumped' her children 'cos she said she could no longer care for them and then went on to marry another chap a few years later.   The amazing thing to me is the fact that I could never find a record of grandfather's death, at least not until 1919, at which time grandma had married her second husband and had three children by him, one before they married.   Perhaps in those days they didn't ask many details when a person married.  Grandma's second marriage was in a Registry Office in 1916 and not a church.  Don't you just really enjoy these family mysteries.  Apart from Lilian (the older child here who ended up in a home and was sent to Canada where she did very well) they all (except poor old grandpa) emigrated to Australia.

6 comments:

  1. Those are quite the hats indeed.

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    1. I wonder how heavy they were and how many hatpins were required to keep them on in a stiff breeze.

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  2. Hari Om
    A fine looking group... Grandma influenced by the suffragette movement perhaps? Love these prints! YAM xx

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    1. Not sure what made grandma tick but am sure she was a woman who knew what she wanted regardless of anyone else's feelings. Am I being a tad hard perhaps? Just wish I knew all the details but they have gone to the grave with the people concerned and will never be found.
      I am so glad to have these old photos. xx

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  3. I do love those hats! I've often wondered how on earth they managed to keep them on. I know they had hat pins, but some hats were so large and fanciful, so heavily decorated, surely they would have blown off in a sudden gust of wind.
    Family secrets eh? My own family has its share of secrets. For instance my mum was always making a fuss over my daughter having children and being unmarried. She did eventually marry their father and both children were part of the wedding party. Years later I discovered my mum was herself six months old when her parents married.

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    1. Those hats are the epitome of fine dressing I would imagine.
      I delight in discovering those family skeletons. It's amazing how many I've discovered who were in that 'way' before they exchanged their marriage vows. My adopted dad married his first wife 8 days before their son was born. Talk about a shotgun wedding. Perhaps her dad couldn't find the shotgun earlier??

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