Ruth's Blog

The photo shows three young women, posed in an informal group.  The card-mounted print was probably produced by a professional seaside photographer.  On the reverse is a hand-written poem:

1. The Pinafore Company
2.  
3. Of Grainthorpe’s host, three ladies fair
4. A trip would take to Clee
5. Their names, their faces will declare
6. The Pinafore Company.
7.  
8. “No tie shall mar our festive day
9. Nor men our patience test
10. They please us not, get in our way”,
11. Says Saucy Sally West.
12.  
13. “Oh thrice grand treat!  We shall not meet
14. With whom we’ve cast our lots
15. Now is our time, we’ll others greet
16. and please ourselves”, said Potts.
17.  
18. “We known are not, and never may
19. Again be free from males
20. So let us make of this our day
21. The most”, quoth Lucy Dales.
22.  
23. Then off they set, a trio gay
24. Their laughter light and free
25. In joyous tune as full were they
26. Of fun and jollity.
27.  
28. The day inaugur'd dull, not so the three
29. No weather them oppressed
30. The world their own, none were so free
31. As Dales and Potts and West.

It looks as if Lizzy, Lucy and Sally, were having what we would now call a ‘Hen Party’, a last celebration before marriage.

All three were wearing pinafores, sleeveless outer garments.  The name ‘pinafore’ derives from the fact that early pinafores were easily removable aprons pinned (pin) to the front (afore) of a dress.

Beside the young women we can see their bonnets and two umbrellas – it was a dull day and might have been raining.  As in most Victorian photos, facial expressions are serious.  The poem, however, records feelings of fun, jollity and freedom, before the burdens of matrimony were taken on.

Lizzy, on the left of the photo, was the daughter of Grainthorpe builder Cornelius Potts, and his wife Martha.  In the centre is Lucy Dales, a farmer’s daughter, and on the right is Lizzy’s cousin, Sally Ann West, who was the youngest.

On 2 August 1883, Lizzy, 26-years-old, married Walter Woodward Brown.  We don’t know when the Cleethorpes photo was taken, but our guess is that it would have been the summer of 1883, shortly before Lizzy’s wedding.

Lizzy and Walter Brown duly married and the following year the first of their five children was born.  Walter was a blacksmith, initially in North Cotes and later in Cleethorpes.

Finally, comparison of the handwriting for the poem with the signatures in the marriage registers of Lizzy and (in 1888) Lucy, leads us to conclude that it must have been Lucy who inscribed the poem on the back of the photo.