By hook or by crook
We’ve been having a little sort out. It was time to ensure safe keeping of Bettine’s treasures before her house is sold, which meant a few boxes of the Thomas family archive found their way to our studio. To make space for those, we needed to rearrange some of our own things, doing our best to avoid a house filled with boxes. Amidst all the bits and pieces was something I had actually seen before but was particularly glad to find again.
A small, purple covered book, now somewhat fragile with loose pages but something precious, for sure. Bettine had shown me it some time ago: her Mum’s Autograph book.
Daisy May Moore, my Hero’s Maternal Grandmother had spent her childhood in Cambridgeshire and would have been in her early twenties when she collected the autographs of her friends and family here. She wrote a stern warning on the first page of her book, to which some chose to reply.
One, in particular (above) was her boss, Alfred Ernest Mills, who ran the draper’s shop where she was working at the time.
There are some serious entries offering advice to a young woman starting out in the world. The handwriting suggests that Kate E Clarke is rather older than most of the contributors which might explain her emphasis.
A. Lenanton (Swanton?) offers similar encouragement above, but for the most part, Daisy’s friends wrote short, amusing verses, chosen from a repertoire of popular rhymes well suited for this purpose..
The handwriting again offering a clue to nature of the friend who brought a smile with this verse.
It’s fun to imagine the reaction the slightly risqué verses might have received…
though generally the verses are aimed squarely at an audience of young women. (But “on the phone” in 1914? I found that surprising!)
Two loose leaves were particularly interesting, one with a Braille translation and the other written in what looks to me like Pitman’s Shorthand.
In common with my own and every other autograph book I have come across, it’s comforting to find that the last page has the inevitable phrase!
I think it’s Bettine picking daisies in the background.
Daisy May’s Autograph book is treasured together with just a few photographs telling the story of her life, some of which continues from a page in her autograph book. She and her boss, Alfred Mills, eventually married, each of them having been widowed during the years of WW1 and immediately afterwards. Like their daughter, they lived long and happy lives, to 96 and 101 respectively.
