I never met my Great Uncle ‘Jack’, grandad’s elder brother. He was christened John Theodore Bell but probably got Jack because his father was also a John.
This photograph, part of a family group, was taken at Lound around 1901 (and colourised by me in Affinity Photo 2 on the iPad).
At that time, aged 27, he was working as a steel polisher in New Radford, Sherwood, on the north side of Nottingham. He had married Fanny Taylor, 26, and was living at 16 Deligne Street, with his in-laws, Leicester-born Edward Henry Taylor, 59, an army pensioner and his wife, Chelmsford-born, Sarah Taylor, 54, a lace worker specialising as a clipper – cutting away the connecting threads at the edges of the lace.
The 1911 census records that the couple had one child who died in infancy.
In the 1921 census he is still working as an ‘Iron & Steel Polisher’ in the Raleigh Bicycles factory in Nottingham. They’ve moved to 5 Edith Terrace, Radford, and mother-in-law Sarah, now 73, has moved in with them.
John was born on 1 April 1874.