I knew their names, their parents’ names, the dates of their respective births and deaths and the date of their marriage.
I had stood at the front door of the house they occupied in the latter years of their life.
I had photographed their grave, read the sad litany of names of their dead daughters.
I knew that Susanna had been sufficiently highly thought of to be invited to a civic tea to commemorate the winning of the Crimean War, and that John loved cricket, was ‘greatly esteemed’ on the Bradford Wool Exchange and had suffered from asthma for much of his life.
But until I found this photograph, anonymous amidst a collection of cartes de visite, I had no idea what they looked like.
I had photographed their grave, read the sad litany of names of their dead daughters.
I knew that Susanna had been sufficiently highly thought of to be invited to a civic tea to commemorate the winning of the Crimean War, and that John loved cricket, was ‘greatly esteemed’ on the Bradford Wool Exchange and had suffered from asthma for much of his life.
But until I found this photograph, anonymous amidst a collection of cartes de visite, I had no idea what they looked like.
I am more grateful than can possibly be imagined that they took the trouble to visit a Blackpool photographic studio, sometime in the early 1870s, to stiffly pose for their photograph.
This post began life as a response to today's Thinking Ten prompt 'Posing for a photograph' and is just one of the ways I have been time travelling this week. Action in my current novel takes place in 1971, with some ten year flash-backs, and I have been remembering that time too.
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