I’ve been looking through the album pictures just now as if through the eyes of ELC, and I can see how he could have labeled his own house in China as ELC house.  It’s not quite as impersonal as you might think, especially since he referred to the houses of other’s with their three initials.     They don’t say “ELC’s house” or “WAA’s house”, but rather  ELC house and WAA house, almost as if they were titles.  It could be similar to someone referring to their own house as the “Miller homestead” or “Pelton Manor”.  Using three initials to identify buildings might have been his particular naming comvention.

So, going on the premise that the album belonged to the Cockell’s when were the photos taken? 

As we’ve noted before, it appears that the photos of ELC house in China were taken at two different times, in two different seasons–snow and no.  The manifest show the  Cockell’s made only three trips to Peking as a couple:

1)      Returning from China Oct 1920

2)      Going back to China July of 1921

3)      Going back to China Nov of 1924

They never made any trips to China  after 1924.  If this album belongs to them, then those photos in China would have to have been taken between 1920 and 1924.

We know Kirby Boyd was born in1910 and appears to be about between 12 and 15 years old in the photos.  That would place him squarely within that time frame. If we accept that the album was in chronological order (with the exception of one or two photos)  the photos of Kirby Boyd appear to have been taken on their last trip in 1924 and Kirby would have been 14.  Spot on.

The last two photos are of a damaged street scene and one taken from top of a hill looking down on some roof tops. At first I assumed those photos were taken in China, but now I don’t believe that to be true.  I think it’s quite possible the hill photo was taken from or near the Italian home of ELC.     Look closely – those are high voltage telephone/telegraph poles which first became commonplace in the middle 19th century.  If this photo was taken in 1932, it might have been deliberately taken of the poles and not the scenery.   Having phone service in Italy at that time was quite an event.

ITALY’S PHONES GAIN IN PRIVATE HANDS; Subscribers Increased 150% and Instruments 96% Since End of State Control in 1925.

By ARNALDO CORTESI  Wireless to THE NEW YORK TIMES.

June 19, 1932, Sunday

http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F10611FA3B5A13738DDDA00994DE405B828FF1D3

Whoever took that photo was also very attached to the location, enough to make a colorized version of the scenery.  The tile roofs in that photo closes resemble the tile rooms in the final photo — the damaged street scene. The ends of the rooflines in both photos do not sweep up as we see in the Asian buildings.   The damage on the street looks to me to be that cause by a powerful wind, not from bombs, blasts or an earthquake.

75 KILLED IN STORM IN SOUTHERN ITALY; Navigators Report Blasts Were Heard From Mt. Etna in Northeast Sicily.

November 24, 1935, Sunday

http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F20C10FD3D58107A93C6AB178AD95F418385F9

There do not appear to be any photos taken after this time.  I believe it’s more than likely this album was a personal photo journal of Edward Cockell and wife Katherine, commemorating their  trips to China as well as various site-seeing places in England and Canada.  The album starts in China about 1920-21 and ends in Italy about 1935.  How this got into the hands of Clare Slim Stretch Zalewski is another matter entirely.  

Collins and Co. Ltd. London

Classification:  Trade ;   Finance ;   Insurance  

Place index:  London, City of 

Period covered:  1900 – 1969 

Notes:  Insurance brokers. 

On the afternoon of April 14, during the launch of Brenda Niall’s book, The Boyds, at the National Trust property, Glenfern, in East St Kilda, there was what Niall calls ”one great moment”.

Ten-year-old Thomas Boyd, great-great-great grandson of Captain John Theodore Boyd, who acquired Glenfern in 1876, slipped without fuss into the drawing room, sat at the grand piano and played with serious and unselfconscious concentration.

The formalities were over. Gerard Vaughan, director of the National Gallery, had launched the book in the presence of Niall’s friends and family as well as about 40 members of the Boyd family, including Thomas and his twin brother, William.

People were mingling under the pine trees in the garden at Glenfern, chatting over champagne and tea and sandwiches – much as they would have done had Captain Boyd and his wife, Lucy, been entertaining 125 years earlier. A little girl, Niall’s great-niece, was playing with a large Labrador. Some took the opportunity to explore the house and pause for a few minutes to watch the blond head bent over the ivory keys.

Captain Boyd bought Glenfern for 3259, exactly the same amount as its owner, Thomas Watson, had paid 10 years earlier in 1866. The property included four acres of land and a well-established garden, orchard, vegetable garden and paddocks.

In The Boyds, Niall tells the romantic story of how Captain Boyd, known to the family as Theo, eloped with Lucy Martin, daughter of wealthy pastoralist Robert Martin, in 1857. Boyd was on the staff at Government House at the time but with no settled home and a meagre soldier’s income, Dr Martin did not consider him a good match.

However, when the deed was done he accepted the marriage with good grace. He gave Lucy a huge dowry of 5000 and made Boyd resign from his regiment. The young couple went to New Zealand, where Boyd looked after Martin’s business affairs. They settled on a sheep station and raised 11 children.

When the Boyds returned to Melbourne in 1876 and bought Glenfern, their eldest child was 18 and the youngest a toddler. They added an extra wing in the same gothic style to accommodate their large household and in 1884 built the fine stable block still standing at the rear of the house.

”It was not a quiet household,” writes Niall, ”though it was said that Captain Boyd could quell his unruly brood without raising his voice.” Someone in the family, Niall notes, recognised artistic talent in the teenaged Arthur Merric, as against his name and date of enrolment at Wesley College is a note recommending not extra maths or science but drawing lessons. He married Minnie a Beckett when he was 24.

After Theo’s death at Glenfern in 1891, his lonely widow invited her son, Arthur, and Minnie and their children to live with her but they preferred the simpler life at their home in Sandringham.

Throughout their lives, they dedicated themselves to their art but would not have survived financially without the support of Minnie’s mother, Emma a Beckett.

Little did they know that their marriage would found Australia’s most remarkable and well-known artistic dynasty. Their second son, sculptor and potter Merric Boyd, was born at Glenfern in 1888, the same year his mother painted in the drawing room.

http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2002/05/08/1019441516439.html

Kirby Montague BOYD    Pedigree

Sex:  M 

Event(s)

Birth:   1873

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 Parents

 Father:  Captain John Theodore BOYD     Pin #4964885  

 Mother:  Lucy Charlotte MARTIN     Pin #4964898 

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 Notes and Sources

 Notes:  None  

 Sources:  None  

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Submission Search:  830188-0101108150901

 URL:  

 CD-ROM:  Pedigree Resource File – Compact Disc #139

 CD-ROM Features:   Pedigree View, Family View, Individual View, Reports, Downloadable GEDCOM files, Notes and Sources.

 Order Pedigree Resource File CD-ROMS

James Wilfred Sevor Newbery

  Male    

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Event(s):

 Birth:  21 MAR 1875   

 Christening:  04 MAR 1876   All Saints, Saint Kilda, Victoria, Australia

  Death: 

 Burial: 

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Parents:

  Father:  James Cosmo Newbery 

  Mother:  Catherine Florence