Sepia Saturday - Enjoying Life

Sepia Saturday encourages bloggers to record their family history through photographs.

Here is a group clearly enjoying life!











I don't have many group photographs in my collection, but here are two of my Danson family from Poulton-le-Fylde, Lancashire).   where everyone seems very happy.  Judging by the dresses, they were taken on the same day, but  I don't know  what the occasion was - and I never asked the right questions, when I first came across the pictures in a family album.  
 

 

This appears to be taken outside a typical Blackpool bed & breakfast.  My grandmother (Alice Danson, nee English)  is in the centre of the group and to the right her daughters Kathleen (my mother), and Edith, and crouching at the side could be my Uncle Harry, smoking and wearing a carnation - though I did not instantly recognise him here. 

 

The second photograph shows  the Danson family - Edith, youngest daughter Peggy, my grandparents William and Alice, son Harry   and Kathleen, with youngest son Billy missing. The three sisters enjoyed fashion and  made their own clothes, with my mother apprenticed to a tailor at the age of 14. 

 

My guess as to the occasion rests on Uncle Harry wearing the carnation  Was this his short- lived wartime wedding?  But where was his bride?  Or was he best man?  Is that the happy couple  on the left of the first photograph where the girl has her arm around the man by her side, who I think is also sporting a buttonhole.   But why was my grandmother taking the centre stage position? 

 

Throughout my own life,  Uncle Harry lived in the family home with my grandfather and sister Edith (my grandmother died in 1945).  But through snatches of conversation I picked up as a child, I became aware that he had at some time married and was divorced - all very hush, hush  in those days, swept under the carpet and certainly never openly mentioned. 

 

It was only after his death, I found the papers confirming a marriage on 11th June 1940 and divorce in 1947.   

 

The marriage date is significant as Uncle Harry was one of the thousands of troops evacuated from Dunkirk on the flotilla of small ships  between 27th  May and 4th  June 1940. Yet here  he was some ten days later. 

 

My mother recalled how Harry arrived back home from Dunkirk  still in the uniform in which he entered the sea to be rescued.   He never talked about his wartime experiences, but seeing commemoration services or documentaries on TV could bring tears to his eyes, so the memories remained very strong.

 

 



Harry sorting quite a hairstyle! 
This studio pose was taken at a photographers in Salisbury. 
Could this have been when Harry was on army training? 



 The Errol Flynn look? 

 

Harry never remarried but lived a full life with interests in sailing, photography, stamp collecting and ballroom dancing where he was never short of partners.   He died  at  the age of 89, still retaining his good looks.  

  

Click HERE  to see how other bloggers were portraying life to the full.  

 

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