Not Knowing What You've Got

[jacey]

Talk about not knowing what you've got.

Ally – a regular poster to uk.music.folk – posted a link to an old photograph of an Edinburgh character called John Codona, a one-man-band street entertainer in the 1950s and 60s. It immediately rang a faint bell at the back of my brain.

I'm the current custodian of photographs originally belonging to Dorothy Una Ratcliffe, the Yorkshire Dales dialect poet (1887 - 1967). They were given to me by her niece, Ludi Horenstein who has since died and there is no other family.

I've notified Leeds University that I have them but they seem supremely disinterested in doing anything with the other half of the collection which ended up with them after Ludi's death, so I figure it's better for me to make sure that they end up somewhere sensible. (flickr for starters, probably) and to keep them available for anyone who wants to come and take a look at them (which a couple of people have done already having found me via the relevant page on my artisan website http://www.artisan-harmony.com).

Anyhow, to cut a very long story short, because of the biographical research I've done on Dorothy, I was originally much more interested in the earlier family photos, but DUR's third husband was a professional photographer Alfred Vowles (later changed by deed poll to Alfred Vowles Phillips - another long and irrelevant story.) But part of my photo collection includes an album of black and white photos taken in Scotland, Ireland, the South West and Yorkshire. The ones from the 1950s are mostly Alfred's.

And sitting there in the middle of the 1950s album are some Edinburgh street photographs. Sure enough John Codona is in there but mis-labelled John Cadogan. It's definitely the same bloke as in Ally's 1960s picture, though. There are two photographs of him which I've put them on my new flickr site. Both are taken in Ann Street, Edinburgh 1955 where Dorothy and Alfred lived.

Looking through the photograph album I've got a chunk of social history in my hands - a fair bit of it is Scottish. There's everything here from photos of ancient stones to tinker camps, from groups of children (the Stout family) on the Fair Isles to fishing boats on the Fife coast. I've made a start on posting some of them. Take a look at my pics in the Dororthy Una Ratcliffe Gallery

I will gradually get around to posting more.

Comments

[green-knight.livejournal.com]

Go, Flickr, go!

I hope you're acquainted with the Library of Congress's account - http://www.flickr.com/photos/library_of_congress , which makes around 3000 photos - from the 1910s and colour photographs from the 30s & 40s - freely available. Putting your collection up on Flickr would be great, because it allows other people to access it, label it, and share it.

[charlieallery.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I need to put my dad's collection of wartime photos up - and maybe his 1950s New Zealand ones as well. I often wonder how many people might recognise someone in photos that are meaningless to me.

[birdsedge.livejournal.com]

A friend of mine has photos from Hiroshima taken by his late father who was in one of the first British units in there after the bomb. They were expressly forbidden to take photos (no surprise really) but friend's dad thought someone should document the horror of it. Having done that the photos were so horrific that he could then never share them with anyone. I have seen them, but only because I asked. They need to be seen but putting them up for exhibition would be gruelling work.

[charlieallery.livejournal.com]

My father was an RAF photographer, assigned to the Fleet Air Arm on loan, but most of the photos have crown copyright stamped on the back, although many are piccies of social occasions. They're now out of copyright of course and if official would be available under freedom of information - 50+ yrs - so it's time to do something with them. He does have 2 though, which are aerial shots of Cologne, post-bombing. The most striking for me are the pics of Swordfish sitting on the Kenyan plains (RNAS Nairobi) with a row of local warriors in front of them - they were 'blessing' the aircraft apparently. :)

Also I have my Aunt and uncle's photos, many from the 40s and 50s and many of those include Sir Charles Evans - the man who would have been first to the top of Everest in 53 if his team-mate's oxygen hadn't frozen up. He was a friend of my uncle's from medical school.

Eventually I'll hang them off my own web-site, but, for the moment Flickr seems a better way to make them available to everyone. I love the idea of sharing history! :)

[birdsedge.livejournal.com]

Yes, sharing history is fantastic.

I've been doing a lot of family history and managed to get photos going back to great-great grandparents on both sides of the family, but a notable gap is that I don't have a photo of my paternal grandfather, Clifford Lockyer, as an adult. (My grandparents split up when my father was only ten.)

I do have a family photo of my great grandparents with two small children - Victorian boys in frocks - but I can't work out which one is Clifford and there's a possibility that neither is.

Somewhere I figure that some distant family member... or possibly his illegitimate son's family (my dad had a half-brother he didn't even know about until he was in his forties)... will have a photo of my granddad.

Maybe one day, on flickr...

[birdsedge.livejournal.com]

Yes, sharing history is fantastic.

I've been doing a lot of family history and managed to get photos going back to great-great grandparents on both sides of the family, but a notable gap is that I don't have a photo of my paternal grandfather as an adult. (My grandparents split up when my father was only ten.)

I do have a family photo of his parents with two small children - Victorian boys in frocks - but I can't work out which one is Clifford and there's a possibility that neither is.

Somewhere I figure that some distant family member will have one. My granddad died young (age 55) but he had a secret family and my dad had a half brother he didn't know about until he was in his forties.

[birdsedge.livejournal.com]

I have seen the amazing L of C stuff. I'm not sure I could be as scholarly. I have the skills but not the time.
But, of course, we're all contributing to the contemporary archive with every photo we add to flickr. I'm not sure what will happen to the flickr site eventually. How secure is it, long-term?

[heleninwales.livejournal.com]

Did you hear the recent Radio 4 programme about the chap who goes around recording and photographing traditional events? My search fu has deserted me and I can't find it on the Listen Again. Doc something or other he was called. He also now has a huge collection of material that will need a home in the future or it will otherwise be lost.

I hope you find a home for things, but Flickr is certainly a good place to start.

[birdsedge.livejournal.com]

I think you mean Doc Rowe and his amazing collection found a home in Sheffield in 2004 (so it may have been an older programme from the archives).
http://www.folk-network.com/miscellany/doc_rowe.html

[heleninwales.livejournal.com]

Yes, it was Doc Rowe. Also you're right that it must have been a repeat. I knew I'd heard a programme about him before, but wasn't sure whether this was the same one or an update.

The trouble is, Radio 4 is my default station but I just listen when I happen to be in the kitchen, so I'd heard bits of the earlier broadcast and bits of the repeat, but there wasn't enough of an overlap to be sure. :)

Thanks for the link. It's good to know that all that irreplacable material is now safely lodged somewhere where it can be made available to researchers.