The theme for Week 3 is "Favorite Photo." Amy Johnson Crow has devised these prompts and you can participate too by signing up here.
Tell the story of a favorite photo: Who is in it, when and where it was taken, and why it was taken. (That last part is often left out!)
Barbara Conner hanging up washing in Edinburgh
This is a photo of my mother hanging up the washing when we were living in Edinburgh in the 60s. I think my father took it to record what ordinary life was like at the time and to send back to the folks at home in Australia. I'm sure my mother was not pleased but I am so grateful because you can see so much in this photo. They had a kettle, something like a Sunbeam electric frypan. I think I can spot a toaster and a radio up on the top shelf. You can see that the glass came in milk bottles in those days and that the twin tub washing machine was in the kitchen. There are canisters for things like tea and coffee.
When MyHeritage brought out the colourizing tool last year I got to see what the dress was like in terms of colour. Fantastic!
I would never have guessed those colours so it was a great surprise to see. I suspect that this photo is taken at 7 Barnton Park Gardens which was a house in a newer estate but I'll need to check with my father.
We lived here from about October 1962 until June of 1963.
My mother wrote on a weekly basis to her father and I am very grateful for these detailed letters. Here's an extract:
"We're in! ....Things have been pretty frantic with one thing and another. To start with, the tin trunk didn't turn up 'til this morning, which left us without sheets, towels, teatowels, warm clothes (not that it's been that cold, but the majority of things we had with us on the ship were summer clothes...Now to the house. It's a little doll's house, Dad, complete with a wishing well in the back garden. It's in a new subdivision, all the houses being probably eight basic plans used on repetitive lines. I have a house with a staircase at last (a thing I will probably live to curse)....Alex thinks it's just the ants pants and goes up and down for the greater part of the day....There are two bedrooms and a dressing room upstairs...On the ground floor we have the nursery to the left...and on the right of the entrance is first the bathroom, behind that the kitchen, followed by the dining room, double doors which open to the sitting room.....It isn't a big house, about 12 and 1/2 squares but much more comfortable than Hurstville, there's carpet of sorts on most of the floors, well, ALL the floors really, except Alex's room which has lino tiles. It's centrally heated, not with a boiler which has to be stoked, thank heavens, but some electrical thing which operates oil.....I haven't seen a shower since I came into the country, even in the ritziest places...."
A week later they hired a secondhand TV for 10 shillings a week.
My mother mentions that she is shocked that there is no refrigeration in the shops for things like meat and that to walk past a fish and meat shop "is ghastly". She mentions the price of food - milk is 8 pence a pint and that no one buys more than half a dozen eggs at a time. She writes that bread cost 1/2 which I imagine is 1 shilling and two pence. Eggs were 4/2 per dozen or 4 shillings and 2 pence. She also mentions that greens are scarce as is fruit and that they are now eating a lot of frozen food.
Do you have any "natural" photos in your collection of people doing ordinary things and which give you a glimpse into life in the olden days?
How is your family history going? What do you enjoy most about family history?
