It Runs in the Family E-Book

Ruth A Symes

• Herausgeber: The History Press
• Kategorie: Sachliteratur, Reportagen, Biografien
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 229

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2013

Beschreibung

In the quest to uncover our family history, we turn to written records, the family album and even heirlooms. However, they can often be difficult to interpret and sometimes pose more questions than they answer: Why didn't my ancestors smile for the camera? Why did great-grandfather wear a beard while his sons were clean-shaven? Why is my great-grandmother holding flowers in this photograph? Drawing on evidence from social history, women's history, and the histories of photography, art and fashion, and using examples from the lowly as well as the famous, Ruth Symes explores many aspects of ordinary life in the past – from the state of the nation's teeth, to the legal and economic connotations of wearing a wedding ring and even the business of keeping a dog. This fascinating volume aims to help family historians get to know their elusive ancestors by deciphering the wealth of personal and historical clues contained in photographs, documents and artefacts.

Leseprobe

For Billy, Ruby and Robertson, heralds of a new generation.

Contents

Title

Dedication

Introduction An Intimate Guide to Our Ancestors and Their Times

1 Caught by the Lens Eyes

2 Down in the Mouth Teeth

3 Their Crowning Glory Hair

4 By the Hairs on his Chin Beards

5 Marks of Distinction Distinguishing Features

6 Inked Tattoos

7 Head and Shoulders Above the Rest Stature

8 Pinning them Down Brooches

9 All Fastened Up Buttons

10 Just the Thing Rings

11 Links to the Past Cufflinks

12 A Waft of History Perfume

13 Floral Tributes Flowers

14 Like a Member of the Family Dogs

Copyright

Introduction

AN INTIMATE GUIDE TO OUR ANCESTORS AND THEIR TIMES

How often have we all returned to old photographs, written records and objects that we have inherited from our ancestors, hoping that simply by doing so they will somehow magically throw up more of their secrets? But historical ephemera can be frustratingly unforthcoming if we are not sure how to ‘read’ them. More often than not we may close the photograph album, return the document to its envelope, or put the object back on its shelf with a sense of dissatisfaction. Our ancestor remains clouded in mystery – a person unknown. This book aims to show you new ways of looking at your family history material in order that you may better understand the times (or, more correctly, the culture) in which the photograph was taken, the record made or the object used, and through this process allow your ancestor finally to step out of the shadows and make him or herself better known to you.

Everything from the past – from a collar stud to a whiff of perfume – is a product of its era and can be interpreted as such. How your ancestor chose to show his cufflinks, design his tattoo or even shape her eyebrows has a great deal to do with the prevailing norms and beliefs of the period in which he or she was living. In this way of looking at things, a hairstyle in an old photograph is not just a matter of personal grooming but might indicate all sorts of information about your ancestor, from age and health to social class, and even position in the family. Likewise, how your ancestor wore his beard may lead you to speculate on his religious or military associations, as well as his manliness or personal attractiveness. And the story behind your ancestor’s wedding ring might reveal something of her class status, her religious background, her income level and even her employment status – as well as, more obviously, her romantic life.

This book focuses mainly on the period from the beginning of the nineteenth century to the 1950s. During this time photographic records first became available to the general public, more official documentation was collected on ordinary people than ever before and mass consumerism meant that families owned many more material objects than they had done in earlier centuries. In the Victorian and Edwardian periods, and later in the twentieth century, many people visited photographic studios, created photo albums and came to own cameras of their own. The state also played its part in recording the more personal and intimate aspects of our ancestors’ lives, through ten-yearly censuses, prison records, transportation records, military records and hospital records, to name but a few. Many of these records have now been made available to the family historian through the wonders of easily (and often freely) searchable Internet databases. Many, many more fascinating documents, including newspapers, diaries, letters and wills, lie in archives dotted around the country waiting to be examined. And there are other more tangible personal items: locks of hair, half-used bottles of aftershave, pressed flowers, and buttons and brooches, stashed away in attics and garages, lodged between the pages of old books and nestled in family jewellery boxes – all of which may tell their own tale.

Social historians have written about all the aspects of ordinary life that interest people researching their families in the past, from the state of the nation’s teeth, diet, height and weight, to the ins and outs of the practice of shaving, the legal and economic connotations of wearing a wedding ring, and even the business of keeping a dog. One of the aims of this book is to make some of this research (including fascinating examples from magazines, poetry, novels and documentary studies of the past) accessible to the ordinary reader. Imagine history itself as a thick lock of hair: at whatever point you cut through it there will be multiple strands that make up that particular moment. This book looks at some of these strands: the superstitions and scientific beliefs, the fashions and medical advice, the developing manufacturing processes, penal laws, the situation of women and the condition of the working class, all of which characterised British society in the not-so-distant past. It will describe the role of empire, the horrors and deprivations of the two world wars, the development of criminal anthropology, the rise of national sovereignty and the cult of celebrity. And on the domestic front it will touch upon new ideas about weight, diet, personal cleanliness, correct behaviour and even sexuality that might have impacted on our ancestors’ experiences. In short, this book touches on many of the threads that made society what it was at any given moment in the past. In glimpsing some of these, it is hoped that you will come to understand more about your ancestors as products of their times – and through that will come to understand them better as individuals as well.

Family history is not just an academic exercise, of course, and this book will include such practical genealogical matters as how to find out where and when ancestors who worked in particular professions (such as dentists) practised, and advice on making educated guesses about inherited belongings – why your ancestor might have chosen a particular stone in her engagement ring, for example. The ‘Find Out More’ sections at the end of each chapter will point to ways in which you can extend your knowledge and understanding of a particular topic through other books and websites. Of course, these resources are just the tip of the iceberg. The recent information revolution has made an almost infinite number of sources on any given subject available in our own homes at the touch of a button. Starting with the small matters of physical characteristics and personal effects, this book will give you strategies for sifting through some of this information and picking out what might be relevant to your family story.

There are a number of things that this book doesn’t do. It does not, for example, offer scientific explanations on how physical characteristics might have been inherited; simple explanations of genetics are available on the Internet. Secondly, it does not offer a comprehensive history of photography, or an analysis of aspects of dress (or the other large props and backdrops) often visible in old photographs. These are topics much more ably addressed by my fellow family historians Jayne Shrimpton and Robert Pols. A list of some of their books on those subjects follows.

In family photographs from the past our ancestors stare out at us, somehow imploring us to understand them. The personal and official documents that record their lives likewise beg to be examined time and time again, and we have all turned over and over in our hands the objects that they used regularly, as if just by doing so we might come to know the people of the past better. This book should act as a magnifying glass turned on to that evidence, giving more prominence to these small matters. It should also act as a reading lamp, throwing light into the shadows and allowing you finally to get close to your ancestors in ways that you might never have believed possible.

FIND OUT MORE

Jayne Shrimpton, British Working Dress, Shire, 2012.

Jayne Shrimpton, Family Photographs and How to Date Them, Countryside Books, 2008.

Jayne Shrimpton, How to Get the Most from Family Photographs, Society of Genealogists Enterprises Ltd, 2011.

Robert Pols, Dating Old Photographs, second edition, FFHS Publications, 1998.

Robert Pols, Understanding Old Photographs, Robert Boyd Publications, 1995.

www.nationalarchives.gov.uk – the National Archives.

www.ancestry.co.uk; www.findmypast.co.uk; www.thegeneaologist.co.uk – online commercial websites dedicated to making available many genealogical databases.

1

Caught by the Lens

EYES

Like all family historians you will, no doubt, have spent a great deal of time scrutinising the eyes of the men, women and children in family photographs or – in some more exalted cases – painted family portraits. While all the other features of an ancestor’s image might give us clues to the material ways in which he or she lived, it is only in the eyes that something of his or her spirit is reflected.

The eyes in some portraits and photographs have that uncanny ability of following us around the room. This is a bizarre effect of any picture in which the subject is looking straight out of the canvas or straight at the lens, but it is a particularly unnerving one when the subject is an ancestor: we cannot but feel that they are casting a disapproving eye down the generations at us! The effect occurs because portraits and photographs are in two dimensions. The light, shadow and perspective depicted in each medium are fixed, and therefore don’t shift as the viewer moves around the room. Thus the eyes look pretty much the same regardless of the angle from which you are looking at them – something that doesn’t happen in (three-dimensional) real life.

Inevitably we consider the eyes of our ancestors looking for likenesses, for the shadows of generations not yet born. The shape of an ancestor’s eyes might remind us of his or her ethnic background, but it is impossible to determine eye colour from sepia or black-and-white photographs. Some Victorian photos were hand coloured by artists, but in these cases it is highly unlikely that the artist would ever have met the sitter. He would simply have been given instructions to paint the eyes ‘blue’, ‘green’ or ‘brown’, and the results would not have been accurate. Some modern photographic restoration processes might show up unusual eye/skin combinations such as very white skin and dark eyes, or heterochromia (one blue and one brown eye), a condition that can be inherited and affects about one in 10,000 people. For the exact colour of your ancestor’s eyes you will need to turn to written descriptions, such as those in prison records, transportation records, First World War service records and passports. There is more detail on all of these and how to access them in Chapter 5.

An unknown family in a Llandudno photographic studio, 1890s. The poses are typical: the father looks straight ahead with a confident gaze meant to inspire the respect afforded to the head of a family; the mother is more demurely turned to the side (a model of compliant femininity), while the child stares in fascination at the camera. (Author’s collection)

Our interest in our ancestors’ eyes is pretty much guaranteed, but what, if anything, are we likely to find out?

PORTRAITS AND PHOTOGRAPHS

In the eighteenth century, portrait painters who could accurately represent the eyes of their subject were highly regarded. After all, portraits were painted in order to convey the personality, psychology and inward characteristics of the sitter as much as his or her external appearance, and this information was largely conveyed through the eyes. You should bear in mind, though, that portrait painters were tasked with the job of creating a positive picture of the sitter, so any less than attractive ocular characteristics, such as squints or heavy under-eye bags, would have been deliberately obscured or altered.

So highly prized were skilful painted representations of the eyes that a curious offshoot of the fashion for portrait painting developed. This was the so-called ‘eye portrait’ or ‘lovers’ eye’ – a tiny painting of the eyes (or more often just one eye) of the subject, which could be concealed in a locket, brooch or ring. The fad for these peculiar little pictures was started in 1785 by George IV, who carried an eye portrait of his lover, Mrs Fitzherbert, apparently in order that her identity could be kept anonymous.

With the advent of popular photography in the mid-nineteenth century came a new challenge for those wishing to preserve images of the face. Photographic shutter times of many minutes required the subjects to keep their eyes open for extended periods – something that inevitably created an artificial stare in some early photographs, or alternatively a blur around the eye area when the subjects had blinked. Sometimes, in cases where a sitter had inadvertently closed his or her eyes, pupils would be painted on the photograph after the printing process was complete. With improvements in the collodion process, photographs became more accurate, more affordable and, portraits in particular, more popular. The first portrait photographer opened in London in 1841. By 1861 there were more than 200 such businesses in the capital.

Early photographic portraits (developed first in 1854 but popular in England from 1860) were made on cartes de visite or calling cards of 2¼in x 3½in mounted on a paper card of 2½in x 4in. Don’t imagine that your ancestor entered the photographic studio and chose how to stand or which way to look. From mid century there were training manuals for photographers that advised them on how to deal with ‘sitters’, and it is highly likely that your ancestor was instructed by the photographer on all matters including the direction of his or her gaze. In many early photographs the direction of the gaze simply followed the direction of the head, but subtleties soon developed, and the direction of the gaze became, in many instances, part of an elaborate code, which often conveyed something about the status of the sitters and the event that was being commemorated.

Adult men, for example, were usually portrayed with a look that suggested strength, dignity or even nobility. Young women were instructed not to look straight at the camera to avoid appearing loose or brazen. There were exceptions; in some early documentary-style photographs Lancashire pit girls in their work clothes glare at the camera. In their case the straight stare remained uncorrected by the photographer, who perhaps wished to portray them as provocative, masculine and, perhaps most of all, lower class. But most other women looked aside in photographs – a pose that suggested demureness, modesty and even chastity. In keeping with Victorian ideas about women’s supportive domestic role within a marriage, wives gazed adoringly (though never amorously) at their spouses. Widows and the bereaved looked down in exaggerated grief at bunches of flowers or photographs of the deceased to indicate their loss. Sometimes, of course, the photographer’s careful instructions just didn’t work: many sitters were baffled by the whole photographic process, and faced the camera with eyes that expressed a great deal of bashfulness and uncertainty.

The cartes de visite photographs of the mid-Victorian period gave way in the mid-1860s to the larger ‘cabinet photographs’ (the first, introduced by Marion and Co. in 1862, were 6¾in by 4½in). By the 1880s and 1890s head and shoulders vignette photographs – which eliminated the distraction of the hands or other parts of the body – were very popular. The essential character of the sitter was now suggested almost entirely by the facial characteristics, and particularly the eyes. Portrait photographs in the form of postcards appeared in about 1902. One of several popular photographic techniques was ‘Rembrandt Lighting’, which threw light on one side of the face while the other side was in shadow, in the manner of a Rembrandt painting. The shadowed side of the face characteristically included a triangle of light below the eye, no wider than the eye and no longer than the nose. The results were realistic but slightly dramatic portraits, in which emphasis was placed on the eyes. As society loosened up and technology improved from the Edwardian period onwards, the range of allowable emotions expressed by the eyes increased.

DATING A PORTRAIT OR PHOTOGRAPH FROM THE EYES

Surprisingly enough, the eyes might give us pointers to the date at which a painting was painted or a photograph taken.

SPECTACLES

Glasses for the eyes have a long history and have been worn by people of all classes since the thirteenth century. If your ancestor in a portrait or photograph is wearing spectacles, look carefully at the design. Bifocals, two lenses of different strengths joined across the middle, were in use from as early as the 1760s. Many early spectacles were handheld, and none had rigid sides or ‘temples’ until the late eighteenth century. And, even though they might have been deemed old-fashioned, spectacles that simply rested on the nose (so-called ‘pince-nez’) were commonly worn from the 1840s right through to the 1930s. Most spectacles of the nineteenth century had oval lenses. The terminals (ends of the sides) of spectacles moved through numerous designs during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries; from spirals to rings (perhaps for use with a ribbon) and then ovals. Double-jointed sides arrived in the mid-eighteenth century.

From the early nineteenth century a whole range of eyewear became popularly available, including lorgnettes, eyeglasses and quizzing glasses, as well as the more familiar ‘nose spectacles’ and spectacles with sides of different kinds. After the development of wire-drawing in 1837, many spectacles were made from ‘blued’ steel. These were particularly popular in the 1850s and 1860s. Flexible curl sides (with attractive descriptions such as ‘cable curl’, ‘comfort curl’ and ‘supercomfort cable curl’) were popular in spectacles (especially those worn by children) from the 1850s onwards. Look carefully at the shape of the bridge of the spectacles: C shapes were joined by X, K, ‘scroll’ and ‘crank’ shapes as the nineteenth century progressed. Bridges shaped like a W (sometimes known as a ‘saddlebridge’) did not appear until the 1880s and were very fashionable in the early 1900s, partly because they contributed to a better cosmetic appearance by making the nose look shorter!

There were a number of noteworthy milestones in design. In 1797, so-called ‘D-type’ spectacles appeared. These had supplementary lenses that could be folded over the main lenses to give a choice of optical experiences. With the arrival of open-air railway travel in the 1840s a particular model of these, known as ‘railway spectacles’, was developed, which aimed to protect the eyes from sparks, steam and dust.

Rimless spectacles of different designs were available throughout the nineteenth century, but the so-called ‘invisibles’, with thin wire frames set into grooves in the lenses, did not appear until the end of the century. Although tinted lenses had long been worn as an eye-correcting device, sunglasses as we know them today were first popular in the 1930s. For a much fuller description of the different kinds of spectacles worn in different historical periods, together with helpful images, see www.antiquespectacles.com/guide/guide_to_assist.htm.

The Rev. A.J. Glendinning Nash, Vicar of St John the Evangelist, Bradford, 1897. Pince-nez spectacles like these, with their oval lenses, hard bridge, nose pads and chain, were very popular with middle-aged men between 1890 and 1900. By 1920 they were seen as befitting only the elderly. (Rev. A.J. Glendinning Nash, Home Words For Heart and Hearth, ed. Rev. Charles Bullock, 1897)

EYE MAKE-UP

The presence of make-up around the eyes of your female ancestors may be another guide to dating portraits and photographs. In the late eighteenth century the ‘made-up’ look was highly artificial, with aristocratic ladies wearing white powder (often containing lead) on their faces, and sporting cheeks and lips coloured red with vegetable dyes and vinegar. The eyes were generally left undecorated, although eyebrows could be darkened and shaped, with the preferred style being full and semicircular. By the Victorian period, however, cosmetics of any kind were frowned upon for ladies and the middle classes. Heavy eye make-up in particular was seen as the provenance only of prostitutes or ladies of dubious morals. Many women, however, lined their eyes surreptitiously with candle soot or burnt matchsticks, and darkened their eyelashes with the melted wax of candles, applied with a needle or with beeswax. Pupils could always be artificially dilated and made to sparkle with a sprinkling of the juice of the deadly nightshade plant – hence its colloquial name ‘bella donna’ (the Italian for ‘beautiful woman’).

At the turn of the twentieth century commercial make-up was ready to make an assault on the senses of the female population. Mass publishing, made possible by advances in printing, led to a new emphasis on cosmetics in Edwardian magazines. The natural look was still favoured, but powder, rouge and eye make-up were once again as acceptable as they had first been over a hundred years earlier. The First World War (1914–18) brought increased financial independence for working-class women, and this in turn led to more cosmetics being bought and worn. In 1917 the London-based company Rimmel marketed the first packaged cosmetic mascara made from petroleum jelly and black coal dust. By the 1920s some prominent women were wearing distinctive heavy make-up. Queen Alexandra, wife of George V, for example, met with some public disapprobation because of her penchant for dark eye make-up. But it was probably not until the 1930s that the average woman started to use mascara, and not until the 1950s that she added eyeliner and eyeshadow.

The shape of women’s eyebrows (arched, angled, curved or flat) may be another clue to the date of twentieth-century photographs. Eyebrows could change (just as fashions in make-up and dress changed) with the current trends. The straight, thin eyebrows of the 1920s gave way in the 1930s to eyebrows that were even thinner, with accentuated height and length creating a look of permanent surprise. Some women even shaved off their eyebrows during this decade and there was also a fashion for false eyelashes. In the 1940s it was back to a natural appearance for eyebrows, with a medium thickness, while the chic women of the 1950s created a look around thick, dark, angled brows.

EMOTIONAL STATE

A less scientific way of dating photographs, but one which all family historians are guilty of, is to look for evidence of an ancestor’s well-being or emotional state in his or her eyes. It is tempting to interpret the look in the eyes in a particular photograph as evidence of our ancestor’s reaction to a recent family event: downcast eyes being a possible testimony to the raw grief of widowhood or the loss of a child; wide-open eyes and expectant eyebrows signalling happier events such as a betrothal or anniversary. It has often been commented, for instance, that after Prince Albert’s death in 1861, Queen Victoria’s luminous blue eyes became sorrowful and always looked as if they were brimming with tears. These matters, of course, are pure speculation. Nevertheless, they can provide compelling corroboration of the date of an image.

EYES AND CHARACTER

As well as helping you to date a photograph, your ancestors’ eyes may also signal deeper matters. There is still a commonly held belief that a person’s character may be accessed through his or her eyes. In the Bible, Matthew (6: 22) comments that ‘the light of the body is the eye’. And we are certainly wont to believe that our ancestors’ eyes were indeed ‘the windows to their souls’, thus bright, open eyes seem to signal honesty and optimism, while close-set or squinting eyes somehow make us imagine ill temper and cruelty. More than any other facial feature, the eyes promise to tell us something of our ancestors’ personalities and even their moral code.

These ideas are not merely the product of our wandering twenty-first-century imaginations. In the mid-nineteenth century there was a huge interest in the new pseudosciences of phrenology and physiognomy. Put simply, these fields of interest attributed mental characteristics to the shape of the skull and the characteristics of the face. The eyes were of supreme importance. If your ancestor had slightly protuberant ones, for example, his knowledgeable peers might have expected him to have ‘a facility for language’ and a very good memory. As an extension of this, ancestors with more distinctly bulging eyes with pouches and heavy eyelids might have been considered highly intelligent, if not geniuses. Phrenology and physiognomy had great credence in the first half of the nineteenth century, with people sometimes choosing their employees, spouses and friends on the basis of the shape of their skull and facial features!

By the end of the nineteenth century many of the phrenologists’ and physiognomists’ findings had been discredited, and their instruments and analysis were relegated to sideshows at the fairground or along the seaside promenade. Unhappily, however, some of the early ideas about connections between physical and moral characteristics were taken up by the budding proponents of criminal anthropology, and later eugenics. Towards the end of the Victorian era and well into the twentieth century ‘experts’ put forward the idea that those who had committed serious crimes were more likely to have certain physical characteristics – among which were bushy eyebrows that met across the nose and large eye sockets with deep-set eyes. The most dangerous of these theorists, of course, conflated racial or regional characteristics (particularly those of Jews and Irish immigrants) with negative moral characteristics.

EYE CONDITIONS AND BLINDNESS

With ophthalmology in its infancy in the nineteenth century, many eye conditions, including squints and glaucoma, remained untreated and may be apparent in your family portraits or photographs. If your ancestor was blind this may be indicated in a number of different ways, including closed eyes, whitened eyes, vacant stares, the use of dark glasses, thickened lenses, optical devices or blindfolds. For a fascinating gallery of portraits of people in the past suffering from eye conditions see www.commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category: Eye_problems_in_portrait_paintings. Blindness was also sometimes indicated by pose. The sitter might point at or touch his own eyes, he might hold his hands outwards, or display open hands that scan and feel the air. Props such as a cane or a musical instrument might also indicate blindness, as might the presence of a helper, such as a child or a dog. A blind ancestor will not have acquired a white cane until after 1921 or a trained guide dog until after 1931.

Pupils on the 1911 census at the Yorkshire School for the Blind, King’s Manor, York. In the ‘Infirmity’ column they are described either as ‘Totally blind’ or ‘Partially blind’. (www.findmypast.co.uk)