Backdrops to Life - Sepia Saturday

A  man standing outside his house is  this week's the prompt photograph from Sepia Saturday.  Cue for me to look at the Backdrops of Life whether it be doors, windows, gardens - or shops.

 

Weatherly's post office and shop in Earlston in the Scottish Borders.    In the 1901 census, John P. Weatherly was described as a 40 years old Postmaster of 73 High Street, Earlston,  living with his wife, mother-in-law and children. Edward, Ellen and Margaret. The Trade Directory two years later adds to his role that of bookseller and printer.

But take a closer look at that newspaper placard outside the shop, which announces that "Crippin Removed to Hospital" - the big clue to dating this image. 

Dr. Hawley Harvey Crippen, was an American doctor  He was hanged  23rd November 1910 in Pentonville Prison, London  for the murder of his wife Cora Henrietta Crippen, and was the first criminal to be captured with the aid of wireless telegraphy.

 

 Lochhead's watchmaker & jeweller on Earlston High Street.  Look at the right hand window for that unusual term "cyclealities".

Three images courtesy of my local heritage group Auld Earlston

 

Onto the backdrop of Doorways and Windows - with images from my family collection  

My grandparents William Danson and Alice English, c,1916

A happy photograph but a sad tale.  Here is Dorothy Chisholm, on a ladder in a doorway pruning a plant. Dorothy was engaged to be married to my great uncle John Danson, a widower whose wife had died at the age of 21, and  whose daughter Annie lived with her grandmother.  John died in 1917 whilst in army camp, but the family always retained their link with Dorothy, one of the many women after the war  who never married.  I remember visiting her in bedsit with my mother and aunt when she must have been in her 80's.

 

My mother's cousin, Elsie Oldham, - standing outside her home which also  was where she ran her hairdressing  business  as Elise, c.1930s.

Another enterprising business woman from the 1930s - my mother  - Kathleen Danson.  She was apprenticed as a tailoress at the age of 14.   Here she is  modelling her dresses, outside the family home in Poulton-le-Fylde, Lancashire. 

                   

        

 

 

 My father, John Weston,  with my mother on the right and my aunt Edith on the left, c.1941.

In the doorway after their marriage in 1948  at St. Church, Poulton le Fylde, Lancashire, my aunt Peggy Danson and her husband Con. They met during the war and in 1949 emigrated to Australia. 

A wartime wedding of my Uncle Billy Danson and his wife Louie  

 Little me, at the back door of our home, near Blackpool,  Lancashire. 1944. 

 

A  bit older here with my father - at the same back door. 

 

 Here I am with my mother who I can only remember with grey hair. I can't remember having the kitten either!   Nowadays I think we would move that dustbin out of the way before taking a photograph!

 

It must  have been sunny!  

My mother and I again in unmistakably 1970s colourful fashion, outside the Edinburgh flat I shared with friends.

 

 

 Thirty years on and this is my little daughter playing hide and seek in a doorway at the ruined Heritage Castle near Hawick in the Scottish Borders. 

 

 

 

Hermitage Castle  was a favourite outing. Here on the right in the white coat is my aunt Peggy who emigrated to Australia in 1949 shortly after her marriage.  She returned for her only visit c.1980 and came up to Scotland. Here with my Aunt Edith (her sister), myself  and my young daughter.

 

 

 And I could not resist showing again this happy photograph of a  granddaughter at the window of her Wendy house.

 

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