A 1957 wedding album was dumped behind a Wakefield cafe. A few miles away, a stranger worked out whose it was.
A wedding album from 1957, left behind a Wakefield cafe and never claimed, is traced back to the family it was stolen from — by an amateur historian working from one faded name.
The album was lying behind the cafe when Éva Lemperger found it.
The leather had gone soft and dark with water. The word Wedding was still gold on the front.
Inside were black-and-white photographs of a wedding. A bride in a veil, a groom in a dark suit, two bridesmaids holding bouquets, and four older guests in hats, all on the steps of a stone church. 1
On one page somebody had written a list of names in fountain pen, and a date: June 24th, 1957. The ink had faded to the colour of the paper. 1
Lemperger runs Eva's Kitchen on Kirkgate. She kept the album safe indoors and asked the Wakefield Express to publish an appeal. 2
"It contains old wedding photographs and handwritten names," she said. "It looks like it could be very important to someone or their family." 2
The weeks went by. Nobody came forward.
The list
A few miles away in Ossett, an amateur historian named Anne-Marie Fawcett read the appeal. 1
One name on the faded page was still legible: Maureen Bullivant. 1
"An unusual name like that is a researcher's dream," she said. "It's not a name I'm familiar with and certainly not a Wakefield name." 1
Fawcett found her in the 1939 Register, the record of the population of England and Wales at the start of the Second World War. Bullivant had been born in 1937 and lived with her parents in Sheffield. 1
The marriage indexes gave her the next piece. Bullivant married Peter Gosney in 1958, a year after the wedding in the album. 1
The woman Fawcett had taken for the bride was a witness.
Bullivant's parents turned out to be the way in. Their marriage record named a church: Wadsley Parish Church, in Sheffield. 1
Holding that name, Fawcett could suddenly read the church written on the faded list. It had defeated her until then. 1
"It's like those paint books you'd get as a kid, when you put water over the page and the image would appear," she said. "It all of a sudden made sense." 1
Then came another name, recovered with photo enhancement tools: Barbara Parr. 1
Marriage records confirmed that Barbara Parr, then 21, had married Maxwell Dawson at the same church on 24 June 1957. It was the date written inside the album. 1
Electoral registers put the couple at an address on Walton Lane, in Wakefield. Fawcett posted what she had on the Wakefield Historical Appreciation Site, a Facebook group she helps to manage. 1
A member of the group, Michele Spurr, recognised the surname. She had been at school with a Michael Dawson, and he had lived on Walton Lane. 1
Fawcett sent him a message. "That is something I would never usually do," she said. "But I thought I'd be devastated if it was me, and I just felt the album needed to go back to its family." 1
Home
Michael Dawson confirmed he was the son of Barbara and Maxwell. Then he rang her, and the two of them talked as though they had known each other for years. 1
The album had been stolen. It was among a number of family belongings taken from a storage unit near the cafe. 1
For Dawson, 65, the photographs are some of the only surviving pictures of his parents. Both have since died. 1
They met in person for the first time last week, and he took the album home. 1
"I'm absolutely elated because I am sentimental and it's important for me to have these photos," he said. "I will protect it with my life now, based on the fact that it's all I've got." 1
He joked that Fawcett probably knew more about him than he did. "I thought I'd lost everything," he said. "I can't thank her enough." 1
What I keep thinking about is how ordinary the tools were. A wartime register, a marriage index, an electoral roll, and one message to a man who had never heard of her.
References
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- 2Call to help reunite 1950s photo album with owner after being found in Wakefield
wakefieldexpress.co.uk
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