Six pennies

After my sixpence ha'penny blip on Monday I rummaged in the bottom of my drawers and found six old pennies, that would have paid for my brother to spend a day in Wigan Baths in the 1960s.

The family holiday snapshot was probably taken in Wakes Week, July 1932, on Southport beach.

The first penny, top left, is an old Queen Victoria penny dated 1897, by which time my greatgrandmother, Mary, the large formidable lady with hat and handbag on the deckchair in the middle of the photo would have been 30 years old and already had 8 children.  Her family were Scottish weavers who moved from Glasgow to Manchester and then to Wigan to find work in the cotton mills about 10 years before Mary was born.

The second penny, also old Queen Vic, is dated 1900, by which time my grandfather, Sam, kneeling to the right of Mary would have been one year old.

The third penny is Edward VII, dated 1905, the year when Mary's 11th and final child was born.

The fourth penny also Edward VII dates from 1910 the year the king died.  It was the year that the first of Mary's children married.  Her fourth son, Billie, married the daughter of a fellow coal miner and moved into a house a few doors down from his mother.

The fifth penny, dated 1911 is George V, the first year of his reign.  In the 1911 census, Mary lived with her husband, Joseph, a colliery labourer, and 8 of their children.  Of her 11 children, two died in childhood and Billie was already married.

The sixth and final penny is also George V and is dated 1919.  Between 1911 and 1919, five of Mary's sons joined up, fought in France in the Great War, and came home again more or less in one piece.  They all went on to have "normal" lives, including family holidays in Southport.