The photographs of George and Hilda Shaw

135 George & Hilda 1941

George Shaw (1910-1996) and Hilda McGee (1914-1999) married in 1938
and lived at 8 Kent Road, Denton.

After their deaths, a box of photographs ended up in my keeping, the accumulated memories of a lifetime together. Also in the box are many photographs of George Ellison (1903-1956) and Margaret McGee (1904-1997) who married in 1933.

This CD-ROM holds the results of scanning these photographs (with some appropriate additions from the Reynolds Family Album). It has been set up to AutoRun (on Windows systems suitably enabled) an HTML wrapper (ie this file) which, I hope, simplifies the navigation of the images. Each on-screen image has a link to a larger version of the same picture.
Where comments are written on the back of photographs, there are reproduced in bold within double quotes. Unquoted comments are my own.

I made a conscious decision not to involve others in identifying the subjects of the photos as I felt that the effort involved in distributing examples and chasing up replies, on top of the mechanics of compiling the CD, would have would have prolonged the exercise beyond any reasonable timescale. Consequently, any failures of identification are entirely my own. While I have no intention of producing a second edition, I would appreciate any information available on the whos, wheres and whens to fill the obvious gaps in my knowledge. If anyone has a particular interest in the originals, feel free to let me know.

There were two albums in the box, one of 40 leaves (not fully populated) with an ornate frame on the front and a smaller red one with 24 pockets (and some loose photos). I have kept the albums intact but have dispersed the images within the appropriate groups; however the images can be identified by numbers in the ranges 001-071 and 072-098 respectively. Image numbering otherwise has no significance.

In most cases, I have made no attempt to "improve" the images. There are a few shots where I have used my limited skills to diminish the effect of marks on the prints, or to reduce a colour cast.

Table of Contents

In an attempt to bring things to manageable proportions, I have divided the photos into groups as follows —


The bulk of the photos are snapshots, black and white from the 1920s through into the 1960s and colour from the 1950s on. Most of these have been arranged in chronological order, in some cases inferring the dates from shared processor marks on the reverse (hereinafter designated pmk).

  1920s   1930s   1940s   1950s   1960s   1970s   1980s   1990s 
 

The rest of the photos have been distributed under the following headings.
portraits
Mostly studio portraits from the late 19th and early 20th centuries, of the McGee and Shanks families, ie Hilda's parents, aunts and uncles. There are also shots of Hilda, Margaret and the two Georges. Plus there are some whose place in the scheme of things is not known to me.
 
Shaw
These are mostly of Jack & Audrey, their children and grandchildren.
 
McGee
This group includes photos of Hilda's siblings and their children.
 
Ellison
There are undated (and unnamed) photographs of Margaret with the Ellisons, which I judge to be mostly from the 1930s and 1940s.
 
Beeley
There are a number of photos of Eric Beeley and Hetty and her family.
 
ladies with hats
There are undated (and unnamed) photographs of Hilda and/or Margaret with folk who might be Ellisons or might be Shaws or might be someone else entirely, the common feature is ladies with hats with a penchant for ice cream.
 
friends
This group included photos of the staff of Brian Allen & Co. and other persons who are not known to me and don't fit elsewhere.
 
undated
There are some which I cannot accurately date (mostly black and white shots from the 1930s and 1940s) and have grouped separately.
 
others
And finally, there are the others. Grovelling apologies to any who may feel slighted that I have not recognised their great-great grandparents, or even themselves.
 
Birthday
Book
There is also in the box, Hilda's Birthday Book. I have transcribed the contents here.
 
extras
Eight images omitted from Issue 1 are included here.
 

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Boring techie bits

The prints were scanned at 300dpi in 24-bit colour on an Epson Perfection 1640SU Photo using Epson Twain 5.5, for the most part accepting the auto-exposure settings. The resulting images were saved in JPEG format at 1% compression in "large" folders. The image was also cropped (where appropriate), reduced to a reasonable size for on-screen viewing and saved in the same format in "small" folders. An HTML wrapper has been provided to facilitate on-screen viewing.

If you know some HTML then —
< spin> The HTML wrapper has been kept very simple to afford maximum compatibility with an unknown target of browser types and versions. < /spin>
< fact> I don't know much HTML and have cobbled this together as best I can. I hope it works. < /fact>

Yes, I know some of the pages are of unreasonable length but it's all local, there are no phone bills involved, and the organisation was complicated enough without worrying about page size. (And I wrote that before I ran the disc on a Pentium 133 with an 8x CD drive!)

The CD was written using Nero 5.5 in a single session and finalised. Protocols were ISO Level 1 for file/directory names, ISO 9660 for character set and Joliet (Unicode SVD etc).

The covers were printed on an HPDJ960 (inkjet), they are not water-resistant and will fade with time. How quickly I do not know, but it will be faster if exposed to strong light.

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This CD-ROM was produced by John Reynolds.