Postcards From Home : The First Tram In Space

This is another old view of a road I knew so well. I used to walk down from school and then take a short cut from Clover Hill Road to Well Head and then the Bus Station for the bus home. There won't have been tram lines there in my school days, but somehow the memories all get jumbled up. My school days seem so long ago, and yet I can remember seeing a newspaper billboard outside the newsagents shop here (where the Swiss Cafe was, I think), announcing the first man in space. Ot maybe, the first tram in space.

The reverse of the card is, as always, interesting in its own right. Written in December 1909, it is a thank you note for presents which will have been sent for Christmas. Addressed to "Captain Pacey", it starts, "Dear Sister"; so I strongly suspect we are dealing with a member of the Salvation Army. There was a Salvation Army Maternity Hospital in Hackney around the time of this postcard, so perhaps that is a clue. But there again, Captain Pacey may have been the pilot of the intergalactic spaceship that regularly left from the Swiss Cottage Cafe in Halifax for the dark side of the moon.

Sepia Saturday 458 : Einstein Goes To Cannes

Our Sepia Saturday theme image this week features a 1910 photograph of a wine merchant's shop in France. I have to admit, there was a temptation to follow an alcoholic theme, but this is the morning after the night before at the pub, so I will stay clear of all alcoholic references and go to France instead. Rather than go back 100 years, I am going back just over fifty, to the summer of 1962, and a great family adventure when we headed abroad for the first time for a camping holiday in France.

My main photograph show my parents - Albert and Gladys - trying to cool off in the shade of a palm tree. I still cannot work out why they decided to go to France, it was a most un-Albertish thing to do (my Father would consider a trip to Dewsbury as being akin to a wild adventure). To go to a country where they didn't speak Yorkshire, to eat foreign food, and - worst of all - to drive on the wrong side of the road, was behaviour which was most out of character.

I was about fourteen at the time and I still remember the trip well. When we eventually arrived in the South of France, my poor father ventured out into the sun and finished up with severe sunburn, and he had to spend the rest of the holiday in the shade. My mother was slightly more careful. limiting herself to the occasional paddle in the warm waters of the Mediterranean.

Looking back at these photographs now, and taking into account that fifty years separates the theme image from my photos, and the same period separates my photos from today: what is fascinating is the warping of time. The old French wine merchant's shop seems like history: a different world, long, long ago. My photos from the south of France seem like only yesterday. Is this to do with Einstein's theory of light and time - or is it simply that I am getting old?

To see more posts based on this Sepia Saturday theme image, go to the Sepia Saturday Blog and follow the links

Random News : Hope For The Sick In Bradford

Bradford Telegraph : 22 February 1906

Our random number generated time machine may be a little shaky this week because it is suffering from a dose of electro-vibration. We are back in 1906 and attending the Medical-Electro Vibration Institute in Manningham, Bradford, and they are about to cure us of all our aches, pains and ailments. They offer a "free consultation and examination by the X-Rays high tell to a certainty what your ailment is"! And that ailment could be: "Rheumatism, Gout, Stomach Diseases, Indigestion, Flatulency, Sluggish Liver, Lumbago, Sciatica, Infantile Paralysis, Locomotor Ataxy, Bronchitis, Heart Disease, Nervous Disease, Consumption, Asthma, Deafness, Neuralgia, Sprains, Venritis, Synovitis, Varicose Veins .... and that well known disease recognised by quack doctors the world over, "etc". I don't know about you, but I have just done a quick check of that list and I suspect I suffer from at least 80% of them.

And what a range of treatments they have available: - Non-Electrical vibration, Electrical Vibration, the Static Spray, static Breeze Cathaporic and ozone inhalation treatment, the Electric Wave, Lynden Jar and Start Treatment, Treatment by the Violent Antinlight as used in cases of Consumption, Cancer, Lupus and various Skin Diseases. And to top it all off, "Psychological Medicine is used in mental derangement and habits"

Mr J Chance of 15, Bridge Street, Halifax went to the Institute with a knee that he had been unable to bend for 20 years, and after a course of perfectly painless treatment he was amazed to find that he could bend the said knee.  Why, indeed, should we continue to suffer?

Postcards From Home : An Edwardian Tweet About Halifax Post Office

The building that was Halifax Post Office, but now appears to be in a state of suspended urban animation, is featured on this lovely old postcard that was sent in 1903. When the card was sent, the building was less than twenty years old, and it was something the town was obviously proud of. It was a Camelot Castle of a Post Office with little towers and cupolas, bulls eye windows and coping stones built to cope with anything a northern industrial town could throw at them. It was designed by the architect Henry Tanner whilst he was serving as Surveyor at the Leeds Office of Public Works and opened in 1887. A contemporary newspaper report says that it "is a spacious building and has capital frontages to Commercial Street and Old Cock Yard". The cost of the building was £10,000, exclusive of the cost of the site.

The very first picture postcards did not have divided backs where you could write both a message and the address of the recipient; the reverse of the card was the exclusive province of a name and address - any message had to be compressed into the space surrounding the picture on the obverse side. It was a little like an early form of Twitter - the art was to compress your news and views into a few precious words.

As far as I can make out, the message on this particular card is as follows:-

My Dear Erica,  Thank you for your P.P.C. Have you got the results of each separate subject, if so I should very much like to know, for I have failed in drawing, but I have quite satisfied teachers at school and think father is pleased. He has given me a thick gold curl bracelet. From Mary H Mitchell.

I have done best at school and I am in S.A.E. I hope You have done best at your school.

There are a lot of words there, too many for a modern day Tweet, but the idea of writing small and curving the message around the edges of the card is a good one. Perhaps I will try it with my next Tweet!

Two Brothers, Two Townscapes

A couple of weeks ago I met up with my brother, Roger, for the first time in nine years. I had to travel halfway across the world to find him on the Caribbean island of Dominica, but once we were together our conversation soon turned to Halifax, the place we both call home. We also talked about the various project we were both involved with at the moment, and I happened to mention that I had been rescanning many of the photographs of Halifax I took some fifty years ago. By coincidence, Roger - who is a very successful artist and sculptor - had also been thinking about the Halifax of our youth, and was working on a book of his drawings, sketches and paintings from that period which he plans to call Townscapes. He has kindly allowed me to reproduce one of the sketches of Dean Clough and North Bridge that will feature in the book.

His sketch sent me searching through my negative archives and I discovered a photograph I must have taken forty or so years ago of the same bridges and the same buildings. Perhaps I should work on a companion volume to Townscapes!

Memories Of Cliff House, San Francisco

I found this postcard amongst a job lot I bought on eBay, all of which were supposed to be of West Yorkshire. I am not complaining, however, the beauty of job lots is the surprises they throw up and the serendipity that brings them to your door. The building which is featured on this old postcard - the Cliff House, San Francisco - is a very familiar one indeed. Six years ago we stayed for a couple of weeks in San Francisco in an apartment that was within walking distance of Cliff House. Of an evening we would walk up the hill to the bar and restaurant there, order a selection of excellent craft beers, listen to some good live jazz, and watch the waves on the Pacific Ocean. The postcard was, for me, dripping with memories of one of the best holidays I have ever had.

The message on the reverse of the card is not without interest itself. Although the stamp has been removed from the card, enough of the postmark is left to know it was sent in 1921. It was addressed to George Pink of The Limes, Newark on Trent, England and it was sent by the evocatively named, Lulu Cooper. The message appears to be as follows:-

"... feeling the coal strike, our language on the subject is unprintable. It doesn't seem possible that your boys are grown up and doing University courses - how time flies. I hope you and Auntie are keeping well. With love from Lulu Cooper"

It is possible that this is the second part of a message that was started on an earlier postcard: it would explain the somewhat abrupt opening line. I assume the "coal strike" in question was the long-running strike by the miners of West Virginia which led to the "Battle of Blair Mountain", where some 10,000 miners were opposed by 3,000 police and strikebreakers.  By the time the battle was over, one million rounds of ammunition had been fired and up to 100 people were dead. Such were the difficult times, it may have been that Lulu Cooper had been referring to the miners' strike in the UK, although why that should have brought about an outburst of unprintable language in San Francisco is unclear.

I will leave the coal strike alone, and concentrate on the happy memories of those wonderful evenings back in the summer of 2013 - good music, good beer, good company and views to remember for a very long time.

Stop 'n Snap 'n Ride

George Hotel, Huddersfield

Like many people who take photographs, I can be pretty annoying to walk around with, due to an inability to walk in a straight line from A to B without stopping to take photos at A1, A2, A3 etc. It is not too bad if I am by myself, as long as I leave myself plenty of time to stop 'n snap. So yesterday, when I needed to catch a train from Huddersfield to Penistone, I left myself time enough to try and capture some of the grandeur of Huddersfield in the winter sunshine.

Huddersfield Railway Station and Statue Of Harold Wilson

Huddersfield Railway Station

I had intended to keep snapping away as the train rattled its way from Huddersfield south towards Barnsley and Sheffield, but the sheer beauty of the scenery got in the way. No blink of my smartphone lens could hope to capture what was on view through the carriage window, as the train snaked it's way through villages that probably don't exist in real life. The journey took thirty minutes and cost my something around £6.  The railway companies are missing a trick; anyone with blood in their veins and a functioning imagination would happily pay twice as much to experience what must be one of the Great Railway Journeys of the World. Alas, I couldn't bring myself to take any photographs once I was on the train, so you will just have to imagine what it was like. Or make your way to Huddersfield and experience the journey yourself!

Walking Confidently Through The Twenties

We do know a little about the where and the when – and perhaps even a clue as to the who – from the message on the reverse of the card. It was posted from Margate in Kent during May 1926 and addressed to Mrs Dwerick of the Dial in Kemsing , Kent. The message is the kind of simple report of family events of the kind that these days would be consigned to Facebook for all the world to read.

Many thanks for the P.C. Am so glad you have had such a nice week. I took the boys out yesterday – they both look splendid and thoroughly enjoyed themselves paddling etc. I said thew should go for a row, but we could not find a “boat man”. They had an enormous tea. Much love, Helen.

One interesting little historic sidelight is that the postcard was sent either during or just after the General Strike of 1926 (the exact date on the postmark is unclear). Perhaps this is why the children were not able to find a “boat man”. The man striding confidently in the main photograph does not have the look of a striking worker. Perhaps for Helen and her friends and family, the poverty and misery of the Great Depression passed them by. Perhaps they walked confidently through the twenties.

Sepia Saturday 456 : At Camp With Monkey Matthews

Our Sepia Saturday theme image this week features a tent, a man and a cooking pot. My contribution features a tent, two men and a bucket.

The two men in question are - on the left - my father, Albert Burnett, and on the right a friend of his who went by the unforgettable name of "Monkey Matthews". The picture will have been taken somewhere in the Yorkshire Dales and the date will have been around 1931, when my father was twenty years old.

Why my father and Monkey Matthews were in a tent, I have no idea, but I have another photograph from what must have been the same camping trip that features my grandfather, Enoch Burnett, and my Auntie Miriam, in addition to the aforementioned pair.  Just why my father is wearing a distinctive bandage around his head is a mystery which will never be solved.

To see other Sepia Saturday contributions go to the Sepia Saturday Blog and follow the links

Random History : Giving Way To The Enjoyment Of The Conservative Ball

This week, our random-number-driven time machine takes us back to the year 1893 and to Huddersfield, where someone has been giving way to the enjoyment of the Conservative Ball. It resulted in ten bob fine plus expenses! Serves him right is all I can say.

OBSTRUCTING A POLICE OFFICER AT THE CONSERVATIVE BALL : Joseph Crow Taylor, innkeeper, Crosland Moor, was charged with having, on the 26th inst., obstructed a police-officer whilst he was in the execution of his duty. Defendant did not appear. The Chief Constable (Mr. Ward) said that on the morning, which would be stated by the officer, in accordance with orders, the officer went to the Town Hall, where the Conservative Ball was being held, to see that proper order was being kept and that the sale of drink had been stopped at the hour fixed by the license. The officer was met by the defendant, who said he should not go up. He said he should, and the defendant used bad language, and tried to prevent him going up. This was not the first time that sort of thing had occurred at balls. The defendant had been to see him and said he was very sorry, and that he had given way to the enjoyment of the evening more than he should have done, and that, perhaps. caused him to do what he did. But it was his (Mr. Ward's) duty to protect his men, and to see that the orders of the magistrates were carried out. Police-sergeant Jagger proved time facts as stated by Mr. Ward, and the Bench inflicted a fine of 10s. and the expenses.

Huddersfield Daily Examiner : Monday 6 February 1893 

Postcards From Home : Siddal's Comet

My relationship with Siddal is somewhat akin to the relationship between the earth and Halley's Comet. Very occasionally we are in close proximity: as a teenager I sought out a pub there that was reputed to have a liberal interpretation of the licensing laws, and many years later my brother lived there for a few months. Most of the time, however, I gaze at Siddal across the firmament and take sightings of it from more familiar regions such as Southowram and Salterhebble.

Therefore, when I recently came into possession of this old Real Photographic postcard of Siddal, I had to turn to Google maps to try and identify the exact location, and because many of the buildings no longer exist, a little bit of detective work was also called for. I am now reasonably confident in asserting that it is a view of Lower Siddal from the delightfully named "Bottoms", and that the fine school building (centre, right) is the old Siddal Junior School that has now been replaced by a new housing development. At the bottom of the picture you can just make out one of the locks on the old Halifax Branch Canal which connected the town to the Calder and Hebble Navigation at Salterhebble. The canal is long gone, and any attempt to capture a similar view today would be impossible due to the abundant growth of post-industrial vegetation.

Back Home

Here we are, back again. And it wasn't Mablethorpe, but somewhere a little more sunny. Exotic beaches and tropical cocktails are all very well, but they can't hold a candle to the fifty shades of grey that you can find on a soot-coated wall of a Yorkshire mill. The Caribbean Sea may be azure blue and full of technicolour fish, but in this scan of one of my photos from fifty years ago, the Hebble Brook shines like silver and is full of masonry bricks and life. I can happily holiday in paradise, but I need to live in Halifax.

Hebble Book and Dean Clough, Halifax. AB Negative (c.1970) (A41)