A Bundle of Worry

The above postcard was shared with me recently, featuring a photograph of two children standing in front of Great Bricett church.

The stamp on the reverse side shows that the postcard was received/processed by Chiswick post office on 16 June 1906, and was addressed to:

Mrs Gomm
4 Hogarth Lane
Chiswick

The note reads:

Dear Mum
Just a card to wish you many Happy Returns of Your Birthday & also ask you if you remember this spot where the Millers daughter was turned into your bundle of worry and mine
Ernest

The sender was Ernest Albert Gomm, a postman from London, who married miller’s daughter, Cinderella Clark. Cinderella was the daughter of Aber John Clark, who was the miller at Bricett Mill, as was his father before him.

The ‘bundle of worry’, Cinderella, was born ‘up the road’ in Barking (Suffolk) while her father was running the mill there, but Abner was born in Great Bricett (likely in Mill House). Her family appears to have been in Barking between (roughly) 1868 to 1880 before returning to run the mill at Bricett.

Ernest was born in Buckinghamshire but appeared to live most of his early life in Chiswick, London – at the address on the postcard even – 4 Hogarth Lane.

They married in Great Bricett church (as referenced in the postcard) on 3 October 1900, and the couple set up home together in Chiswick. They were recorded just around the corner from ‘mum’ in the 1901 census the following year, on Mawson Lane.

At the time Ernest sent this postcard, the couple had just one child, Gilbert Walter, but the next year, their daughter Grace Minna would arrive. I’d love to know why Cinderella was referred to as a ‘bundle of worry’ – I like to think it was a term used affectionately.

What a wonderful personal insight into their lives!

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A note on the photograph:

The photographer was Percival Walter Finter – a ‘native of Needham Market’ who opened a business as a photographer and hairdresser in Bildeston in 1906. As the mark says Needham Market, I would presume the photo was taken before then. He was working as a grocer’s assistant in Ipswich in 1901 so we can probably narrow the date of the photograph down to between 1901 and 1906.

How I’d love to know who the boys were posing out the front!