World Photography Day - The picture that told a thousand tales.

'A picture is worth a thousand words' or 'a picture tells a thousand words'. Pick your favourite English idiom.

Today is World Photography Day, so it's likely you've been reminded of this one or two times as it trended on social media. The messages that an image can deliver that a thousand words might not fully do justice.

For me, it was a reminder of how one photograph can end up telling a thousand tales - stories of people in history whose lives were ordinary but no less meaningful.

When we moved in to our ‘new’ house, a characterful Edwardian property, the previous owners left us with a message. Two period photographs had been left hanging in the upper hallway.

They had ‘inherited’ them from the family they had bought the house from, as had they from the family before them. Homeowner after homeowner had retained the tradition and they felt they now belonged to the house. They respectfully asked that we become the new guardians and continue the tradition.

Curious, we headed straight for the photographs. Both were black and white, but clearly from different era’s. One was a picture of a University cricket team in the 1950s. The detail and date, with the individual names of team members, were included within the framing. The second was a woman in Edwardian dress.  She was seated at a table which had been placed in front of a photographer’s backdrop. The countryside scene painting, with tree’s looming large over one shoulder, seemed at odds with the small square table before her and the closed pamphlet placed upon it. My curiosity was sparked. The first initial and surname of the photographer, plus address of the relatively local studio, were included on the front framing in gold embossed lettering.  When we took it down from the wall and flicked over the frame, a message was handwritten in pencil. ‘Friday May 3rd. As promised.’ Now my curiosity was on fire.

Deeds and public records became a gift of adventure, with the internet as a sometimes slightly confusing map or maze. I may have got a bit overexcited about my mission of discovery. I found documents that showed who had owned the land before the houses were built and what had been demolished to make way for these once ‘modern dwellings'. I saw the names of people whose lives had suddenly changed due to one mans new idea.

Our paperwork showed which local builder had been commissioned to design and erect the houses and who had been the first person to buy it. All were men, a sign of the times, and as interesting as I was sure their stories would turn out to be, I wanted to know about her.

The checking of public records showed that the person who first bought the house was a local Cotton Manufacturer and yet it seemed that he never lived at the house. The records showed that at the time of purchase he was living in a house ‘just up the road’ and that he was still living at that house ten years down the line at the time of the next census. It appeared that he bought a house he never lived in, and never had any intention of living in, just a stones throw away from his own abode.  It made me a little more curious. Was it merely a property investment or was there something more to it?

According to the census records nearest to the date of original purchase, a young family were the first occupants. A man, his wife, and their 2 children, later to become 3 children. Due to her age and the style of dress, it seemed likely that the mysterious woman in the photograph was this ‘lady of the house’. It suggested that we had found her, our silent housemate, but we had no weight to the theory. There did seem something oddly familiar about the surname, though.

I pass the photograph multiple times a day, as I take a trip to the bathroom, and she had quickly become a visual member of my life. Her half smile and ‘thoughtful’ pose, the charm bracelet on her wrist and the hint of a collection of rings on her wedding finger are things that feel familiar to me. I took a longer look at her the next time I passed, now that she had a potential name, and there was the link before me.

The ‘head of the household’ had the same initial and surname as that of the photographer. It seemed unlikely to be a coincidence, yet it also seemed unlikely that this man took a photograph of his wife as it didn’t sit with the records of his recorded career progression. A little more eager late night searching showed he had a younger brother, with the same first initial, who had at one time been a photographer. Was this then a promised gift to a much beloved sister-in-law? Could we more confidently put this potential name to the woman in the photograph? I started thinking of her by this first name. Just having a possible name seemed to give her life and put personality to the shades and lines on paper framed and hung on a wall.

Towards the end of the first world war, and after the original family had left, advertisements in the local newspaper showed there was still a link to the original purchaser. All enquiries to rent the now vacant property were to be directed to his home address, just up the road. Though this first family had grown within these walls, seen a world war both unravel and take their loved ones as they lived within them, they'd never owned it. It had never been theirs.

'Our' house was seemingly a relatively short period in their larger lives, but one that was fundamentally altering on so many levels.  That felt personal to me.

In trying to find out anything about where they came from, why they picked this house, why they left, or where they might have moved on to, I found a beautiful part-hidden link. Marriage certificates and birth records showed the ‘first lady’ of the house to be the grown daughter of the man who made the original purchase. Three years after his only daughter had married, and in the year of the birth of her first child, he bought a property that she could move her new family in to. Her father could likely see them coming and going from at least a couple of windows in his own home.  Other records revealed that her younger brother was, at the same time, living in a house just a little further up the road. Her father was seemingly a man who kept his grown children close. She was a woman who was surrounded and, to all appearances from the records, much loved by the people in her life.

As link after link was identified and explored, as I travelled further through the maze of historical records, the hours on the internet whiled away. Further stories revealed themselves.

- A man who became a stepfather of two at twenty years old, when he married a widow eleven years his senior, and a father at twenty-one when she had his child the following year.

- Siblings who stuck together after being orphaned, but with two brothers tragically lost to war in devastatingly quick succession.

- A family of multiple siblings who lived their married lives as an extended family of close neighbours, but whose records seem to indicate that all in the male line were strangely unable to have children.

Forgotten lives, forgotten tales all intertwined, and I do not feel like I’ve finished learning from them. I took a beautiful journey through history because of one photograph and I feel strangely enriched by it.  Yes, I can definitely hear the other one calling, but that's for another day. 

As always, if you have been affected by any of the issues raised in this piece, please consider whether you would benefit from accessing relevant support. See https://helplines.org/helplines

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