Researching a postcard sent to someone who wasn't at their usual address
(on holiday or working away from home) can create a problem. With this card, I
began by looking for a family in Chesham with daughters named Alice and Mabel.
Fortunately there was only one and I was soon able to research the Arnold
family.
Mabel was born in
1900 and in 1911 she was still living at home with her parents, Joseph and
Annie. Joseph was a postman. The couple had five children, but by 1911 one had
died.
Alice wasn't with her
family in 1911, she was working as a servant for Hannah Hawkins, who was a
widow.
The girls' brother,
Frank, was killed in the First World War in 1917. He was only 19. Their younger
brother, Ralph, became a wood turner.
Of course, given the
message on the postcard – The Peace Celebrations went off A1 – has extra
meaning, once we know of Frank's loss.
In May 2022 I gave a talk to Chesham's U3A group and was able to include the brief story of the Arnold family at the end. Afterwards, a member of the group said they would walk home via the war memorial and look for Frank's name. The next morning I received a lovely email thanking me for the talk and with this:
One of our members contacted me later about the Arnolds on the war memorial in Chesham. Apparently, they were mentioned in a book on local history produced in 2018.
That member, along with others, looked at the memorial on their way home and found Frank's details – and the entry in the book that they owned. It's always very satisfying to know that my research (brief though it was for this postcard) has led to renewed interest in the family and, of course, the losses of the First World War.
