Often I will buy a card because the image will be used for
the first slide in a talk – it won’t necessarily make its way into a book, but
sometimes it can reveal a short story worth sharing.
This card was sent to Lilian Wilder, a servant at the time,
who was born in Marylebone in 1885. Her father was a zinc worker and several of
her sisters were also domestic servants. It’s likely that one of those sisters
sent the postcard, but without matching the handwriting to an official document,
it’s impossible to identify which one. None of her sisters appear in an official
record in Eastbourne.
Lilian worked for her employer for several years – she appears
with the family in 1911, four years after the postcard was sent.
Her employer was Spiro Mataxas and he was born in Greece in 1850. By 1911 he had
retired but had been a merchant, travelling the world. This is confirmed by the
places of birth for some of his children, including France and India. Spiro had
married into a family of merchants, his wife's (Calliope Vlasto) brothers were
especially successful as judged by the value of their respective probate
valuations.
