Guessing The Past

Guessing The Past

As I work my way through the old negatives I have found, there are certain challenges. The scanning is pretty straightforward and the task manageable in that I am not attempting to restore, just to get a rough image to identify the content. If I come across something incredible, then I will move to restoration for that image.

Guessing is a bit too severe though, in that I have lots of printed and annotated pictures from the same era, so likenesses can be compared and in many cases identification is not a problem. Places can be difficult, but many I know anyway. In the case of these images, basically shot by my family in the 1930s, they are likely to be The Kingdom of Fife, especially St Andrews or Crail, Southport and Ainsdale, Manchester, Irlams o' th' Height or Tunstall and Knypersley.

This is tricky, but possibly my Aunt Denise in Scotland or at Seascale.



My Granny (maternal) when she was a young mum.



This is very tricky, but judging from posture as well as activity, perhaps my Great Aunty Elsie and Great Great Aunty Florrie in their younger days.



My Grandad was a dentist, so I'm going to guess that these gentlemen could be his colleagues at Edinburgh University. Fierce looking enough to be dentists?



No, I give in with this one!



Three suspicious looking characters on a bench, and if not related then maybe some of my Grandad's drinking buddies. A wee dram anyone?



The smallest is my mum, the older sister is Denise and the gentleman is, I suspect, William Ernest FitzGerald, my Great Uncle and Medical Officer for Health for Southport in the 1940s.



The fun continues, and it's quite exciting wondering what the next negative will turn up. I also wonder where all the prints for these have gone, as only one or two of them actual exist already as prints in our archive.