🎀Irene Jessie Loosemore🌸

I’m lucky that our spring holiday last month to the Isle of Wight coincided with a postcard/photo/ephemera fair held in the Masonic Hall at Ryde the day after we arrived. It was a super building and look at that wonderful entrance hall. Not a huge fair but brilliant and I had a few nice finds to add to my old photos collection and this is about one of them.

As I was going through the cabinet cards and carte de visite or CDVs as they are commonly known I was looking for any writing of any kind written on them, and this particular one has a dark green shiny back, common at this particular time. It makes it very difficult to read what is written on the back, but if you just tilt it slightly in the light you can see if there is any writing on it and I was lucky and spotted it.

So now I have scanned it front and back I was able to lighten the back image and partially read what is written.

I wasn’t sure of the first name, maybe Nellie or Irene but the surname says Loose????

Aged 6 months. July 1898. What a super clue to this puzzle! As we now know the child was likely born in January 1898 so hopefully will be in the first quarter of that year’s registration records. Also, the photographer was based in Newport, Isle of Wight.

So I went to Ancestry, and browsed the England & Wales, Civil Registration Birth Index, 1837-1915. Put in 1898, first quarter and looked for the surname beginning with Loose, very lucky there was just the one that matched. Irene Jessie Loosemore, and she was on born on the Isle of Wight.

It was good that it was a slightly unusual surname otherwise I might have had a longer search.

I started a small family tree on Ancestry, Irene Jessie Loosemore was born in 1898, her mother was Fanny Mursell Day who was born in 1871 in West Cowes, Hampshire, the daughter of Ellen and James. She married Irene’s father Arthur John Loosemore on 22 January 1893 in Cowes, Hampshire.

They had three children firstly Freda Nellie 1893-1984, then Irene 1898-1949 and lastly Edgar Arthur Francis 23 Oct 1899-20 Oct 1995. Fanny sadly died as a young mother in December 1903 at the age of 32. As you can see below it was again that nasty TB, Tuberculosis, called Phthisis Pulmonalis as cause of death on the digital certificate below. Her brother-in-law Tom, her husband’s brother was present when she died. Tom was married to Alice with three children and was at Madina Road, Post Office, Ventnor, Isle of Wight as a Grocer and Sub Postmaster. I’m thinking that maybe he and his wife were looking after Fanny at their home when she died.

Irene’s father Arthur John Loosemore was born on 7 September 1868, his father was Henry William and his mother, was Sarah Ann Duke. Arthur was a Master Baker and Grocer and the family lived at the premises at 45 Hunny Hill, Newport on the Isle of Wight.

In the 1911 census a few years after Fanny’s death, the three children including Irene were still living at Hunny Hill with their father and their stepmother Nellie Whittington, whom Arthur had married at the end of 1905, the couple had one daughter Molly Rita in 1909.

Irene married Edward Arthur Vincent, a builder, at the age of 44 in April 1942 on the Isle of Wight. Edward was 22 years her senior and had previously been married in 1899 to Annie Elizabeth Booth, they had had no children, Annie had died on 17 October 1937 aged 59.

Irene died on 30 July 1949 on the Isle of Wight at the age of 51. Her husband Edward Arthur Vincent was born on 26 March 1876 and he was 87 when he died on 7 April 1963.

Irene’s father Arthur died on 1 February 1968 on the Isle of Wight at the age of 99.

Are you a descendant of this family?

I was lucky to find a few lovely old postcards on this Isle of Wight Website and below is one of them: Isle of Wight Postcards and more