Does this photograph show my husband’s grandmother and her sister?

QCan you tell me when this photo was taken? I think the girls might be my husband’s gran and her older sister, one born 1879 and the other in 1882. They lived in Motherwell. Sara McMahon

AIt is difficult to date photographs of children precisely from their appearance alone, since their dress, while broadly reflecting adult modes, also incorporated youthful features that continued beyond high fashion trends. So we need to examine every available clue, including the photographic card mount. The reverse view shows the dividedback style of postcard introduced for postal communication in 1902. The printed style of this example suggests the 1910s/early 1920s.

Happily, the studio is named: James Dewar of 296 Shields Street and 8 Mathieson Street, Glasgow. Good sources for early Glasgow photographers are the printed guide Scottish Studio Photographers

to 1914 by D Richard Torrance (2011), and the Glasgow Victorian Photographers website thelows.madasafish.com/main.htm. These both record your James Dewar at the two addresses in 1914, but don’t cover his later dates.

These two girls are dressed in the fashions of the 1910s. Their loose frocks and vaguely sailor-style coloured collar and tie details slightly resemble Edwardian fashions, when girls wore full smock dresses. However, their shorter knee-length hemlines and knee-high socks confirm a year of at least 1910. Their hairstyles also express prewar and First World War youthful fashions, so I’d estimate a date of c1910–1918. Aged about 6–8 and 10–11 years old, these girls cannot be the ancestors you suggested, born in 1879 and 1882.

Jayne Shrimpton

1 FORMAT

The 20th-century divided-back photographic portrait postcard is sometimes called a ‘real photo postcard’, to distinguish it from the scenic souvenir picture postcard.

2 HAIRSTYLES

These distinctive hairstyles are typical of the 1910s: long hair was side-parted and worn loose, secured to one side with a large white or coloured silk bow.

3 AGES

Clues concerning the girls’ identities are the Glasgow location and their birthdates (three to four years apart) between c1898 and c1912. They are a later generation to your husband’s grandmother; could one of them be his mother?

4 FROCKS

The girls are neatly dressed, their matching frocks suggesting sisters probably wearing homemade garments. Many mothers made their children’s clothes, especially during the war when economies were necessary.

5 SOCKS

Their knee-high socks and low-cut shoes represent the modern children’s hosiery and footwear that, from the 1910s, replaced traditional Victorian/Edwardian woollen stockings and leather boots.