Inderwick Road mother and daughter, c1909

The rear of this cabinet card is marked"

"Mummie & Mother Jones, 1908-10. Inderwyck (sic) Rd Crouch End".

I'm assuming that the photo shows a mother and daughter, or perhaps a girl and her grandmother. I'm guessing that the younger subject was in her teens.

There is a row of houses in the background of the photo, running perpendicular to the garden in which it was shot. If the road where the photo was shot has been correctly identified, it can only have been taken in the garden of one of two houses - either Number 2 Inderwick Road, at the south east end of the road, looking up at the houses on Ridge road, or at number 199 Inderwick Road, the very last house on the south side, just before the junction with Tottenham Lane.

If it is number 199, then, the houses in the background would have been those in a row of late Victorian houses numbered 103 to 119 Tottenham Lane. Those were demolished and replaced with the existing buildings towards the end of the last century. So I can't compare their roofline with the one in the background of the photo. Despite Number 2 having been destroyed in the war, the old Ridge Road houses have survived. There are sufficient mismatches between their roofline and the one in the photo for me to discount Number 2 as a possible location. Given this and the fact that the view up to the houses suggests a shallower rather than a steeper gradient, in my opinion it seems probable that the photo was shot in the garden of number 199.

The 1910 Kelly's Directory shows that 199 Inderwick Road was occupied by Arthur Syer. The electoral register of the same year reveals an Arthur Robert Syer at the address. According to the notes on the rear of the photo, the family had moved on before the 1911 census and sure enough that record shows the house in the occupation of a pair of widowed middle aged sisters or friends (judging by their place of birth) living with a single servant. Sadly, beyond the two mentions in 1910, Arthur and his family prove elusive elsewhere in the records. So, I'm unable to cast much light on the characters in the photo.

Going on looks alone, 'Mummie' looks sweet, but I wouldn't want to cross swords with 'Mother Jones'!