We have recently acquired a collection of photos from an album believed to have once been owned by a member of the Smith family. Harry Malcolm Smith (1898-1947) features many times in the album which bears the dates 1932 and 1933 on some pages.
A series of winter photos of Mill House and surrounds are described as having been taken by Harry but that could also refer to Harry Jacob Smith, Malcolm's Uncle and Stepfather.
N.B. Copies of these photos can be bought on Ebay as they were scanned by a previous owner of the album. St Andrew's does not benefit in anyway from sales of these photos The original album was then sold at auction without copyright and we purchased the album subsequently when it was put up for sale on Ebay.
Malcolm married Florence May Goude in 1936 but there is no evidence from the album if the lady featured with Malcolm in several photos is her.
Harry Malcolm Smith
Florence May Goude?
Betty Wharton gives this description of the wedding and some of Malcolm's earlier history in the Smiths of Ryburgh. It also explains the very distinctive pose that Malcolm takes in many of the photographs in the album:
Malcolm standing far right in the photo above circa 1943/4 .
There is also what at first glance looks like a family group, picturing some of the same family members as above until we decipher the faded inscription underneath in a set of photos headed Iceland, Spitzbergen and Norway 1933. A good reminder never to make assumptions:
At North Cape Norway
*****with?
Self Stee? Le Brasseurs & Prof Poulton
2 Lap kids taken at 10p.m.
Cars were a passion for Malcolm and the garaged vehicle NG 5867 above, is seen in the album on holiday:
Stanley Judd clearly remembers Malcolm driving a Lincoln and this would seem to be it.
His brother Vardon was certainly a Rolls Royce owner but the Roll's featured in several of the photos taken during a golfing tour of Scotland in 1932 would seem to have belonged to a friend, Leslie Culverwell, pictured below with the Rolls at Gallane and with Malcolm, labelled "on Sacred Ground the 1st tee at St Andrew's":
There is also a series of images taken in and around the gardens of the Mill House Malcolm is easily identified in several of these and could the elderly lady gardening be his mother Alice May Smith?
There was also a page containing six photos of the 1933 school sports.The big house in the background is probably the Manor House because the field below there was used for sports before the era of the present day playing field. It had been headmaster, Ronald Skipper's intention (the man on the left in the posed group photo below)to report the results in the school log book without having to write it all down, but annoyingly over time the press clipping has become lost:
