Who is this woman? (a genealogico-photographic detective story)

For many years, this photograph has been in our photo album collection of my wife Caroline's ancestors, but we were not sure who she was. We had no more than Caroline's mother's note on the back: “Floie Tidd's grandmother..?” Florence (“Floie”) Pidduck (nee Tidd), 1901 – 1976, was my wife's maternal grandmother. Her ancestors and relations have lived in England's County of Kent, south and east of Canterbury, for centuries. Having wondered about this for a long time, I set out to solve the puzzle.

If the lady in the photo is one of Floie's grandmothers, I knew who were the candidates: 1) maternal grandmother Susannah Finch (nee Cook), who was born in Dover, Kent (of the white cliffs) in 1836 and died in Faversham, Kent in 1872; or paternal grandmother Ann Worrell (nee Tidd), who was born in Teigh, Rutland in 1830, and died in Dover in 1909. The lady in the photograph appears to be in her 50s (55 plus or minus three years, I thought). If you look closely at the lower right corner of the photograph, you may jump to the same conclusion that I did (“It says Dover...must be Ann Worrell”). Well, maybe. If the woman IS Ann Worrell, and her age is, say 55, the photograph would have been taken sometime close to 1885. I knew that the next step toward solving this mystery was to date the photograph.

To my good fortune, after Googling “dating old English portrait photographs,” I found a treasure of a web site to help me date the photo of the lady. It was constructed by Robert Vaughan from his personal collection and is titled simply “Put a date on that old photograph.” Mr Vaughan guided me through the dating method so ably that I felt like Dr Watson following along three steps behind Sherlock Holmes. 

Here is the address of his invaluable web resource:

http://freepages.rootsweb.com/~victorianphotographs/family/index.htm

(Robert Vaughan, c. 2012)

Using Mr Vaughan's method, I was able to deduce that what we have is a carte-de-visite (square cut, thin card stock, 10.2 cm X 6.2 cm) from the 1860s. Despite the name, the carte-de-visite was not used as a calling card, but rather it was usually placed in the family photo album.

Next, Mr Vaughan puts us on the trail of the photographer. At the lower right corner of our lady's picture we see “Clark.” More information is found on the back side:

J Clark – 46 Snargate Street – DOVER

(Snargate? How Dickensian!)

With rising excitement, I opened Mr Vaughan's roster of Victorian English photographers, only to find no Clark from Dover in the list. Not giving up, Google leads me to an article about Dover's photographers on a wonderful web site about the town's history (https://doverhistorian.com) where I learn that:

“By 1862, Clark & Co opened up at 42, Townwall Street and James Clark opened a studio at 46 Snargate Street, staying for 7 years.”

The style of the card, and what we've learned about the photographer point to the 1860s. Mr Vaughan's web pages include a fascinating gallery of Victorian photographs arranged by year that gives further evidence that our lady's image was captured sometime between 1862 and 1865.– most definitely NOT during the 1880s. And that calls into question whether she can be either Susannah Finch OR Ann Worrell.

Now I had to do some real arithmetic, which has never been my strong suit. If we assume our photo was taken in 1864 and the lady is 55 years old, she would have been born in 1809 (long before the 1830s births of our previous candidates). With that in mind, I searched my family tree records in RootsMagic, a very useful software program for genealogists that has great search and reporting features. I searched for anyone in my tree born after 1802 and before 1815 who ever resided in Dover. 

From that search, only one person emerged as a likely subject of our mystery photograph: Susannah Cook (nee Belsey), who lived her entire life in Dover. She was born there in October 1805, to tailor William Belsey and his wife Susanna (nee Randall), and she died there in 1863. She married carpenter Robert Cook at the age of 23 and gave birth to five sons and one daughter (Susannah, “Floie's grandmother”). In the 1851 English Census, Susannah's occupation is given as “Matron Alms House.” English alms houses are charitable homes for the elderly or the poor. For a married woman to list any occupation on the census is notable, as most either replied with “None” or something like “Domestic duties” in that category.

The 1851 Census record gives another glimpse or two into the lives of the Cook family. The younger Susanna Cook, age 16 is listed as resident in the house next door as the servant of Surgeon Thomas Heritage, MRCS (Member of the Royal College of Surgeons – London). The residence is listed as a “dispensary;” an out-patient clinic for the poor that also dispensed medicines. It may have been associated with the alms houses for which Susannah Cook the elder served as matron. Finally, this historical tidbit from the 1851 Census report. The census taker lists a lodger of unknown name, age 50, who is described only as a “Frenchman.”

I cannot claim 100% certainty that the mystery woman in our family photograph is Susannah Cook (nee Belsey). However, one final observation weighs in favor of the identification: it is that this branch of Caroline's family seems most successfully to have saved and passed down many of the ancestral photographs that are preserved in our family album.

If you have read this far, I thank you for coming along on my search!

Sources:

1. "Put a date on that old photograph," Robert Vaughan, c. 2012, http://freepages.rootsweb.com/~victorianphotographs/family/index.htm

Accessed 16 MAY 2020 

2. "Dover's photographer's and the film festival," https://doverhistorian.com/2016/01/23/dovers-photographers-the-film-festival/ Posted 23 JAN 2016; Accessed 16 MAY 2020.

3. Ancestry.com. 1851 England Census [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations Inc, 2005. Class: HO107; Piece: 1632; Folio: 361; Page: 36; GSU roll: 193534-193535