I put a few pictures from my great-great-aunt Fanny Jane Butler's Bible book up here some years ago, but they were very blurry. Now I have a slightly more reliable camera (albeit still low quality) I'm putting up a few more. The catalyst for this is someone's writing about Fanny on-line in her capacity as a medical missionary and one of the first (if not
the first) qualified female doctors to work in India - where she died, aged 39, having founded a hospital that survives to this day. I keep meaning to blog the little book that her niece Emma Tonge wrote about her, but that will have to wait a bit longer.
These are just a fraction of the total, but they give a flavour. Fanny was born in 1850, and it's anyone's guess as to how old she was when she made this scrapbook, but it seems like the production of a child to me, albeit not a young one, so I'm guessing the early 1860s. The colours have lasted very well, to say nothing of the feathers, flowers, leaves, hair, etc. Indeed, the long golden tresses seem almost too good to be true. Was there some other substance than hair that she might have used at that date?
Which leaves three options. 1) this isn't her book at all, and I've been misinformed by familial Chinese whispers. I don't think that's likely because a near-contemporary photograph of her is stuck in the front in a clear memorializing gesture. 2) She began the book but it was finished by someone else. Again I don't think it's likely, not only because of the air of the religious relic that gathered around her possessions after her death but because of the stylistic unity of the thing. 3) The picture does indeed date from the mid-19th, and the clothes have yet to be explained. Possibly the scene is not a European one? The girl and woman's faces could possibly be Asian, I think. And trousers were no more common as street-wear in 1900 than in 1860, after all. An interesting question! Perhaps some sartorial/artistic expert can help out?
https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=victorian+women+in+trousers&espv=2&biw=1211&bih=620&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiCy6b7usPMAhWjJMAKHWM2CysQ_AUIBigB#tbm=isch&q=pit+brow+lasses&imgrc=36B32H8o6qA88M%3A
Your girls are carrying what look like lunchboxes- and are perhaps on their way to work- which would explain why they're looking so clean and tidy.
In the Proverb page, are the letters cut out of the page?
Edited at 2016-05-07 06:37 am (UTC)
I had hair that colour once. *sigh* I can confirm that the colour of cut hair can last for over 30 years, but beyond that who knows?