Edwardian and WWI friendship/memory/scrap album spans Gloucestershire (UK), India, Anglo-Indian shipping in between; includes WWI references to include entries from passengers on the ship S.S. "City of Paris" that was later sunk by U-boat in the Meditarranean, and an entry from the Third Engineer on that ship.
Dates of earliest
dated entries are from 1908: many from Gloucestershire, three from the S.S. "Marmora" en route to India in December. 1908. [Many entries are NOT dated, and are not counted in this table.]
Dated Entries in 1909: Three signed in Karachi, two in October, one without month in date.
in 1910: two signed in Karachi, both in December; one entry in 1911, in Karachi, January.
No entries dated in 1912.
Several dated entries for 1913, with one in Karachi (September), one from Pughalmura (September) , from Mussourie (three in September, one in October. [Mussourie is a town in the Himalayan foothills north of Delhi; one undated entry was signed at "Connaught Castle" - not otherwise located - a building that still stands in Mussourie and is listed as an hotel.]
Three entries in 1914: two in Moghulpura (Hyderabad, in central India), one from Simla (far northern India).
Many 1915 entries: the earliest is from Calcutta (north-west India, near what is now Bangladesh) in February. There are seven noted as on the S.S. "City of Paris" dated variously in March, April, August, and September. Thereafter, all dated entries are again in Gloucestershire or otherwise in the UK, dated in September and October. However, there are two Gloucester entries dated in March and May, which the "City of Paris" entries call into question -- which remains hanging. In 1915 there are also two entries signed "Dad" and "Mother".
No entries dated in 1916.
One dated entry in 1917, at the Alleyn's Head Hotel in West Dulwich, in December. This hotel is still in business (but presumably under new management).
There are two dated entries for 1918 without noted location.
The owner of the album was in Calcutta in February of 1915; there are entries on board the "City of Paris" for March and April, and for September and October. In October, the UK entries begin again. One presumes that the album owner sailed somewhere from Calcutta on the "City of Paris" in March and further that she (the tone of the entries suggest that the recipient was a woman) sailed on the "City of Paris" in September 1915 to arrive back in the UK in October. IF the owner sailed back to the UK in the March/April voyage. she could conceivably had her album signed in May in the UK, but not in March. If she did indeed sail to the UK early in the years, she obviously had no album entries on that voyage and then had yet another voyage on the "City of Paris" in September to return to the UK, a schedule that doesn't make much sense.
One of her "City of Paris" 1915 entries is signed by J.J. Humphries, stating that he was the ship's Third Engineer. The voyage took them through the Red Sea and the Mediterranean where they could have been attacked by a German U-boat. They made it safely to the UK but in 1917, on a similar voyage, the "City of Paris" was sunk by a German U-boat with the loss of 122 lives. J.J. Humphries Born in Glasgow) survived until 1943 when he died in service in WW2.
Other WWI references include a patriotic graphic entry celebrating the Allies and their flags, and a Shakespeare quote signed by
3225, Pte F.G. Taynton, D Company, 5 Glo's Reg. The quote begins "Pray now no more, my mother". The passage is from Coriolanus, in which the speaker urges his mother not to continue to praise him (out of his own modesty). One might think this an educated quote for a Private to be making, and might wonder if he was addressing it to his own mother (this is not verified).
A third WWI reference consists of a pretty coloured picture, hand-drawn, of a sailing boat, the picture labelled "Peace". The page is entitled "In Remembrance". It refers to A. Mitchell, 104 Cambridge Road, Hounslow, [today a neat white-painted bungalow], with the note: "Wounded at Richbourgh, France, May 9th, 1915." The place was Richebourg, where fierce fighting took place in 1915. It is not clear if it was A. Mitchell who was wounded and if it is A. Mitchell who is remembered here as having passed away.
Many other entries are not dated and/or have no location noted. The dates throughout the album are random, not in any sequence.
Entries are mixed inasmuch as some handwriting is 'educated' and some not, a few being child-like or uneducated; some writing is feint or otherwise hard to read. Some are laborious, others are elegant. There is at least one example of fancy handwriting. There are a few fairly sophisticated graphic entries, some as photographed.