Page from Jean Petrie Photograph Album, 1921

Category

Museums & Galleries Item

Item no

51999

Title

Page from Jean Petrie photograph album, 1921

Description

First page from the first of two photograph albums with card and paper cover containing photographs of Jean Petrie as a child. On the inside front cover is written the name "Jean". The other two photographs are of Jean when she was a baby at her grandparents' house in Lossiemouth, where she was born.

Date

1920

Type

Photograph

Accession number

MC883.81

Jean Petrie was born in 1920 in Lossiemouth, the home of her maternal grandmother. Her parents, James and Ethel, both worked in communications, James as a surveyor and Ethel as a telephone supervisor for the Post Office.

James worked in Africa on the Gold Coast for much of Jean's childhood and the photograph albums were made so that he could see the progress of her childhood. The family home was 2 Boswall Loan, Granton and then 3 Columba Road, Blackhall, Edinburgh.

Because the albums were compiled to show Jean's childhood, they tell the story of every day life in a way many albums, which usually focus on holidays and special occasions, do not. The albums are a unique record of a child's life and have an ability to show the world through Jean's eyes. When the albums were donated to the Museum of Childhood, Jean told the curators "I was perpetually photographed to keep him [her father] in touch with the progress of his only child".

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