On the back is written - in my mother's handwriting, when she was annotating this for some future curious person - "Howard & Helen Jaggar. Picnic at Fountains Abbey. July 18th 1905." That would be my great uncle and a great aunt - Howard on the left; Helen - or Auntie Nell - on the right. Right in the front - the little girl - is Doris, my grandmother (and who died on this day in 1975, by some strange coincidence - that was another bleak pre-Christmas departure); and behind her Auntie Jess, who started training as a doctor; went off to nurse during the first world war (in Turkey, I believe); and ended up as the pharmacist at Dewsbury Royal Infirmary. Second to the left - Auntie Elsie - I think she was the one who went of to Australia in hot pursuit of a young man who went off to be a vicar in the bush (shame he was gay; that didn't work out) - she returned with (among other things) the Australian edition of Mrs Beeton, which tells you how to roast kangaroo. Next to her, Auntie Lil; then my formidable great grandmother Elizabeth, the Justice of the Peace, who collapsed and died whilst performing her duties in court; and between Jess and Nell, my great grandfather Robert, shoddy mill owner in Ossett.
Because of WW1 (and the gay vicar), my grandmother was the only one to marry. It's just struck me that I'm the only surviving relative of all these people, and therefore the end of this line. Who, looking at this picture in 1905, wouldn't assume that they'd go on and proliferate like the Forsyte Saga?
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