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General => Armed Forces => World War Two => Topic started by: Sandra Parker on Saturday 02 March 13 11:27 GMT (UK)
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I have just got this photo and would appreciate some help in identifying the circumstance of the picture.
Mary Chilvers seems to be wearing some type of uniform. A woman riding a bicycle and holding a ?????. As Mary was born in 1881, she appears much too old to be involved in WW1.
Looking forward to some suggestions. It would have been in London in the Rotherhithe, Bermondsey or Wandsworth areas.
Thanks
Sandra
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Fire service? Looks like an old fire extinguisher pump she has
Ady
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Agree with fire service; the cap badge looks very much like an Auxilliary Fire Service badge.
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Agree fire service. The cap badge is NFS/AFS and the buttons are right. Mary is astride a 1930's Raleigh bicycle, she may well have been a messenger, carrying information between the appliances at the scene of the fire and fire service HQ etc. That would put her in her late fifties or early sixties, but don't be deceived, there were some very sprightly elderly ladies about in those days and they were needed!
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Thanks so much for that.
This is her youngest daughter, Ivy, also in the AFS/LFS, so I didn't even think about it being another version of the uniform.
Thanks
Sandra
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What a great photo ;D
Milly
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This is her youngest daughter, Ivy, also in the AFS/LFS, so I didn't even think about it being another version of the uniform.
Mary is wearing a the coat that would go over the normal unifor - sometimes called a great coat - and as you can see part of her dress beneath it and also her shoes not being regulation perhaps she is actually wearing Ivy's hat and overcoat and posing on her bike?
Jean
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perhaps she is actually wearing Ivy's hat and overcoat and posing on her bike?
Jean
....but, different cap badges. :-\
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Didn't spot that :-[
Jean
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Wearing her daughter's greatcoat is a possibility, but it wouldn't explain the totally different headwear. The badges are not even similar. The other thing is that Mary appears younger than other photos of her in 1939/40 (she died in 1942), so maybe it was earlier than the known 1939 of Ivy's picture.
I have contacted the Fire Service to see if they can tell me about the date of use of the hat badge. Will probably have to wait a while for the answer.
Thank you all for the Fire Service clue, I would never had thought of that myself.
Sandra
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In the early part of the war, with the rapid expansion of the fire services, initially there were not enough uniforms for everyone. Post Office uniforms were issued to some members of the AFS/NFS on a temporary basis. This may account for the different headgear. Women were also recruited into the fire services to man mobile canteens which may explain why Mary is not in full uniform. Obviously a hat and coat would be essential, but in a canteen perhaps, ordinary civilian dress was acceptable at that time.
Women also served as drivers and communications personnel as well as fire watchers.
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On reflection that could be a bike tyre pump? In her hand
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Hi
What is in her hand is an old water spray.
It was used for putting out incendiaries, it works like a syringe I remember it as my father had one in the sixties and he used it in his garden for spraying plants he used to mix his fertiliser in a bucket suck it up in the spray push the plunger and the fertiliser would spray out the nozzle at the front. From memory it covered a fair old distance.
Yours Aye
BruceL
Yours Aye
BruceL
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Just when I was seriously thinking about bicycle pump, up comes another more viable thought.
I had been looking at old biciycle pumps on line and although they are very similar, they seem to be a lot shorter than the one Mary is holding and the nozzle bit seems different. The water spray idea is much more in keeping with the uniform.
My thanks to you both for your suggestions. It does point to Mary wearing the uniform in her own right, rather than 'dressing up' in part of her daughter's.
Sandra