victoriana? edwardiana? how to date, this is the question

[llywela]

Sorry for so many ancient photos lately, but does anyone out there know anything about the history of clothes? I'm trying to figure out exactly who these two are:

But the identification is woolly (my aunt thinks she remembers who her mum told her they were, 40 years ago, but we aren't sure if their clothes are right for their dates) and it would help if we could identify an approximate date based on their clothes. Any ideas?

There are a couple more pictures that might possibly be him, that aren't much help.


And I'm not sure if this is her again or not


I don't think many of my f-list are terribly active on LJ any more, but if anyone does happen to have any ideas about when these pictures might have been taken, based on the clothes, please do speak up!

Comments

[thisbluespirit]

As I said (and everyone else is saying), it's definitely early 20th C and not 19th C - I'd say 1910s as well. Her skirt and blouse just aren't in the more restrictive style of the preceding decades. But there are lots of clues here that someone more knowledgeable could look at. And she is displaying that watch prominently - that must mean something.

I used to (well still do, I just haven't been around lately) belong to Your Family Tree forum, and all the major UK mags have one, too. You could try joining one and asking - they often have some experts hanging around as well.

Is there any studio marks on the reverse or anything? Sometimes you can look them up in street directories to see when they were in operation, too.

Or you could send a copy into one of the mags and see what happens.

They're lovely photos though - you are very lucky to be getting such a treasure trove coming through!

[llywela13.livejournal.com]

Thanks for all the thoughts!

The individual shots are clearly older and very similar in style to others we have that date to around 1900 - the photography studio has its mark on those, so I could do a bit more digging there. It's the two photos of them as a pair that I'm more curious about; I'm almost certain it's the same man, and he looks older in the one than the other - her clothes are a lot more buttoned up in the earlier one, as well.

So maybe it is Joseph and Penelope, photos taken sometime 1900-1910. They'd have been 35 and 33 in 1900, 45 and 43 in 1910 - looking at the photos, he could certainly be in his 30s-40s, it's her I'm not sure of - but she could be, I suppose. I'm not sure who else they can be - it's definitely my dad's dad's side of the family, as my granddad and his sister both had photos of them. And we've got photographic evidence for the Browning side of the family, so they have to be Coopers, surely.

I might try investigating them in a bit more detail, find out if he's listed in any regiments or something - that might help!

[(Anonymous)]

I'd say the couple were the same in both photos, a few years apart.
I have a family picture with children on which means I can fairly reliably date it to around 1917. My Ggrandfather would have been 50ish but could quite easily be taken for younger, but overall I seem to find people back then looked older than their years.

Good idea to research regiments though; the badges on his collar might be helpful.

Carol