The Perks Family Photo Tin 2

As I trawl through the photos from an old toffee tin belonging to Fran's side of the family, I wonder how many mysteries will I leave behind for my descendants to ponder over in years to come. I can't count on this blog still existing, a century after I'm gone. I'm not sure if anything stored electronically will still be retrievable by then. If you were to go back to 1914 and ask someone then how best to store something safe for 100 years, they would say "Put it in an old toffee tin..." and would probably add, "...and bury it in the back garden!"

One thing has become clear - there's a lot more photos than I thought there would be! Let's have a look at a few. This time most of them will be folks I don't know - family, friends, colleagues or acquaintances?

To start with, there's this. Not a single female other than babies. Plenty of cloth caps in evidence. Some fine moustaches too! This is a mixture of men though. Although the three piece suit is not necessarily a pointer to prosperity - because most men had one for best, what the men wear under all that worsted cloth seems to say this is a gathering of different classes. From the bare-headed gent in the centre with the winged collar and narrow tie to the chap seated to the left of him who wears a closed-necked dark shirt, clogs and a heavy-duty jacket with large buttons.

At the back centre two chaps look like office workers, with lighter suits and ties. They are the only two bare-headed apart from the gent we've already mentioned at the front. Elsewhere we can see neckerchiefs and cravats and a muffler or scarf on the right. A couple of watch chains are in evidence and a briar pipe on the right contrasts with a white clay pipe on the left. A society or works do? The photo is likely to have been taken in Rochdale.

We met the two lads at the back in the last article I think. Frank on the left, the cheeky chap and his brother, the rather more reserved Bob Perks, Fran's Dad, on the right. Two younger siblings (I think!) have joined the family.

It would just kill the atmosphere of some of the photos to clean them up too much! Frank again - a bit younger than in the previous photo. I bet the photographer despaired over the facial expression, but someone loved this photo enough to have it hand-coloured.

Rochdale mill girls at a guess. There's a look of the Brophy side of the family in the girl on the right, it might even be Ellen Brophy, but I'm saying that without even knowing if she ever was a mill girl. If anyone recognises family or friends, please get in touch to advise of names/places/dates etc.

We originally thought this might be Peggy's mother, but her sister said it was another sister and great archivist that I am I can't remember the name she said... This was presented in a frame with metal sides and an oval cut-out, but I've scanned the entire photograph here, uncovering the Rochdale photographic studio name and given it quite a bit of cleaning up. Cleaning some of these photos is almost impossible unless I spend hours and hours on each. Any photo printed on lustre or silk photographic paper shows up either a pattern (silk) or lots of light dots from the raised stipple of lustre paper.

And here's Fran's mum, Peggy herself, seated in the centre of this group who we presume are colleagues. Peggy spent some time as a mill girl, but then ended up (as did Bob and Fran until we got married) working in a leatherworks on Queensway in Rochdale.

Final one for this time shows two children who are total strangers. I don't have any clue who they are. The chap at the back looks slightly familiar though and quite seasonal I suppose. The little lad is hoping for a Hornby train set, but the little girl is just hoping to get away as soon as possible!

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Record Shops to 1960

As you'll know if you are a regular reader of this blog, I have a fondness for all sorts of music. It's mainly for pre-21st century music if I'm honest, but there's always been and probably will always be good stuff turning out. Anyway it's time for a closer look at the 78rpm era. That era takes in the first flat disc records from the turn of the 20th century through to the very early 1960s. They carried on for a few years after in other countries such as India and all points east.

Here we moved on to 7" vinyl records that spun at 45rpm - revolutions per minute. Some of the later 78s were made with vinyl. Most were made of shellac, a natural substance secreted by bugs that can be made liquid and shaped using chemicals. I have a large collection of "78s" ranging from the late 1920s right up to around 1960.

We'll have a look at some of the records and artists another time. Now I'm going to look at the shops where we bought our records through the medium of the sleeves they sold to contain them.

There were no record shops in the early days. As with the early days of computers, other related industries took on the new product. They were mostly musical instrument dealers. Record shops, dealing exclusively with recorded music rather than its more human creation, were still only barely making ground when I was a boy. We did have an electric record player though - which we still called a gramophone, though really that name means a purely mechanical device. The turntable was driven by clockwork with a coiled spring (coiled tightly enough to kill if you tried to take the machine apart) which you tightened by winding it up with a handle.

Steel needles were used - you had to use a new needle for every side (a single track) that you played. There were three grades - soft (meaning quiet volume), medium and loud. Gramophones amplified the sound through a large horn and were LOUD!!!! To quieten them down so the neighbours wouldn't bang on the walls you stuffed material down the horn. That's where the saying "Put a sock in it!" comes from... Steel needles were large. You can't play 78s with a diamond stylus used for 45s and long-play albums as it would rattle around in the groove. Instead a larger stylus must be used. Indeed there are different sizes for different periods, though I've found most 78s play ok with the single sapphire stylus I use on my record player.

Most record companies had their own paper sleeves that the records came in, but most shops sold harder wearing cardboard sleeves which advertised their business. This one advertises Songster needles and has a series of handy hints for gramaphone users with this example (Hint No.4) warning users not to move gramophones from warm to cool rooms which could break the main spring.

We'll have a look at some of the record company sleeves later too, as there's a few more shop sleeves to look at here. Cramer and Lea Ltd. of Liverpool stapled the sides of their sleeves before taping a ribbon of paper to keep the sides of the sleeve together. The tell-tale brown marks seen through the ribbon show that there are four staples - going a touch rusty... The firm also had stickers made with their business details that they stuck onto the record label. Besides records they sold pianos, televisions, radios, gramophones, (sheet) music and band instruments. This probably means brass and woodwind and stringed instruments like violins rather than guitars...

The sleeve from the Forsyth Brothers shop on Deansgate in Manchester (specialising as a piano seller) had headings and space for the new record owner to write the details of their record, a reference, artists, A and B side titles, date and the type of needle to be used to play it. This has been filled out in this case with the details of the record currently occupying the sleeve, written in ink with a nib pen with a neat hand with lots of curls and flourishes. The record is Dinah Shore and Buddy Clark singing "My One and Only Highland Fling" from 1949, which I'm sure very few of you will remember. But you may recognise the B side, which is "Baby, It's Cold Outside" that was revived a few years ago by Rod Stewart and Dolly Parton.

Not all shop-bought sleeves were more sturdy than the record companies' own sleeves. This example from Kerr and Company of Workington is little more than a paper bag, quite a lot larger than the record - though I should point out that in the early days some records were made at ten and a half inches instead of the later standard ten inches. Kerr and Company seemed to cover all bases. Aside from records they sold hobby goods and "specialist" goods, which sounds intruiging... Oh, and cycles and accessories - not such a related area to record players as it might have been in the Walkman era... (Walkmans! Now I am showing my age!!!)

But they weren't alone. By far the most common 78 rpm record sleeve is plain brown paper. Shops used to stamp them with a rubber stamp and inkpad to advertise their business. And H Marsden of Bamber Bridge near Preston was another cycle shop. Ahem! Sorry! Cycle and Radio Agent! Given that radios of the day were the size of a large piece of furniture and definitely did not work off batteries, that seems another strange thing to carry on a bike... But H Marsden were specialists at lightweight wheel building so maybe that made up for the bulky weight of a wireless (as we used to call radios).

The record is another 1949 hit - Ronnie Ronalde's "In a Monastery Garden". Although the label says "Sung by", he actually whistles his way through it, sometimes blasting out (no other way to describe it) a tune and sometimes doing birdsong impressions. I remember it used to drive my Mum nuts... On some of his records he yodels too. Not at the same time as whistling obviously...

The Postcard Fixer's Art

I love this! On the back of this postcard it says "This is a real photograph." In actual fact it's a bit of a pre-digital mash-up. There's at least two photographs plus a great deal of a painter's imagination here!

I can confirm that it's the tower at Pisa that leans, not Blackpool Tower, and the tram in the foreground is smaller than the tracks it's supposed to be running on! That's the other photograph sitting under all that paint. All the illuminations are painted on, in fact, as are the rather fanciful headlamp beams of the cars. Dipped headlights in the UK point to the left of the vehicle. Even on full beam they point ahead, not to the right!

I suspect the main photograph was originally taken during the day when the sun was shining. There's too much detail otherwise and the area in front of the row of hotels is a bit of a giveaway. Come to think of it so are the shadows! Not every lamp post has one and the shadows of the cars are in a different direction to those of the illuminated laburnum trees!

The card was sent to an address in Hertfordshire on 9 July 1945. The writer packed so much onto the card that he or she had no room left to sign it! So unless the recipient recognises it then we'll never know who it was that sent it.

The card says (spelling and grammar as is): Dear Annie just a card to let you know we are having a nice time the weather as been good to us this time, been nice, we have got about a bit but it is so very crowded every were it tires you out. We are going to South port to morrow, for the day, all the shows are booked up, but we managed to book for the circus last Monday for Wed. afternoon this week. Hope you are well, love to your sister.