Group of Children in Duff Street, Dalry

Duff Street Children

Thank you to Kim Traynor for allowing me to reproduce this photograph taken at Duff Street, Dalry. One of the children seems to be an individual. He is seated on his bike, wearing a flat cap.

Kim wrote:

Around 1920

"I don’t think this is a school photo. (The ages of the subjects vary.) It shows a group of children in Duff Street, Dalry.

From the presence of my mother and one of my Aunts, I can date it to about 1920 or 1921. They are:

- Margaret Walker (back row 2^nd from left), born in1916

- Elizabeth Walker (back row 5th from left), born around 1912."

The Photograph

I can’t imagine why this photo would have been taken. The frame is completely plain with no photographer identified. Who would bother? I doubt it would have been for payment that would have to be collected from numerous parents. Could it be a Sunday School photograph?"

Stables

Duff Street is a very short street. One side of it was demolished only a few years ago. If my memory isn’t playing tricks, there is a large green door on the remaining south side, very like the one in the photograph.

The north side probably had similar doors because there was a garage there. I wouldn’t be surprised if it was stables at the time the photo was taken. I seem to recall my mother talking about horses in the area, perhaps belonging to a brewery."

Acknowledgement: Kim Traynor. Tollcross, Edinburgh: September 13, 2009

Kim added:

Smashed Barrel

"My Mum told me on more than one occasion, when I was a child, that a barrel of whisky (though it might have been beer) once fell off the back of a cart and smashed open in the street. Within minutes the neighbours were out with handkerchiefs and towels, trying to absorb as much of the spillage as possible from the gutter.

This impressed me because the nearest thing I could relate it to was a similar scene in the 1950s film of Dickens’ “A Tale Of Two Cities” where the same thing was done to salvage claret running down the street from a broken barrel. This left me thinking that my ancestors must have been a really impoverished, if not to say unhygienic, lot.

Acknowledgement: Kim Traynor. Tollcross, Edinburgh: September 19, 2009