Florence Barratt, my aunt Florrie, was born in Newark on 10 January 1875. Mary Kemp Barratt, my aunt Mary, was born in Newark on 1 January 1877. William Barratt, my father, was born in Newark on 4 May 1879. In these photos, taken 125 years ago, Florrie and Mary are on the left; Dad is on the right.
The loveliest picture we have of him and his sisters is an oil painting on a glass photographic plate. This is a scan of a print of a slide, so has lost some of its detail.
Aged about 13 in 1892 at Burton-on-Trent. Dad said the suit was bought by his uncle Tom Morley.
We do not seem to know anything about his schooling or when he left school, but he might have given us a clue. He had a way of throwing out non sequitur rhetorical phrases about something or other, indicating that he knew something about it. There were throwaway statements referring obliquely to his first marriage and to Freemasonry, about which more later. Also, he sometimes mentioned dame schools.
Dame schools were private schools run by ladies in the 1800s. As far as I know, they could still have been operating during his boyhood. However, we do know that he did higher studies — there used to be an elaborately designed and printed certificate in the family archives which, from memory, was granted when he passed a City and Guilds trade examination.