Sepia Saturday - Hairdresser "Elise"

A  dressing room, a hair decoration  and a disdainful dog?

So what can I make out of this week's prompt photograph? 
  
I have chosen to tell  the story of hairdresser "Elise" - or more rightly Elsie Oldham of Blackpool, (1906-1989),  my mother's second cousin. 

 "Bobbing, Shingling, Marcel Waving and Perming", was the promise of hairdresser "Elise" whose business in Blackpool, Lancashire  was advertised in this lovely evocative 1920's "blotter.      

Elsie Oldham - "Elise" c. 1920's

Elise's real name was Elsie but perhaps the French adaptation was regarded as more appropriate for a hairdresser.   The business was conducted from the rather less elegant setting of her family home (below) with the large adverts in the windows and on the pole outside. Behind the house were the stables of the family's business of carters and coal merchants.

The Oldham home in Blackpool, Lancashire
with the adverts in the window and  on the garden pole.

Elsie set up her hairdresser's in  about 1926 and it continued until the property was sold in 1975. IMoving into a bungalow, one of the bedrooms was converted into a hairdresser salon, with Elsie working  until shortly before she died in 1989 - by that time the number of customers had dwindled to about three a week all of whom were as old as she was!  When the house was emptied a cupboard was discovered full of bottles of hair dye  in myriad colours - some of it must have been at least 20 or 30 years old!

Elsie's old set of scissors and hair clippers

 The Oldham family of Blackpool, Lancashire  were carters and coal merchants for  three generations - Joseph Prince Oldham (1855-1921), his son John William Oldham (1880-1939) and his granddaughter Elsie (1906-1989), whose husband  Arthur Edward Stuart Smith was also in the family business. 

 

 Two photographs of the young Elsie - (left) with her grandfather 

Elsie's son Stuart and I are third cousins and share the same Danson great, great grandfather (Henry Danson (1806-1881).  We made contact through my blog and discovered we lived only 50 miles  apart, so it was easy to meet and exchange photographs and memories -  we even discovered  we had been to the same primary school in Blackpool.   With thanks to Stuart for allowing me to tell the family story and to show these images.

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Sepia Saturday offers  bloggers the chance to share their history

through the medium of photographs. 

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are dressing up this week's prompt.